Sources: Obama near decision on Afghanistan troops
ANN GEARAN | STEVEN HURST | AP | Yahoo.com President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to add tens of thousands more forces to Afghanistan, though likely not quite the 40,000 sought by his top general there, as Pentagon planners work to ready bases and provide equipment the troops would need in a country with [...]
Pentagon Pouring Your Money Into Afghanistan: Are They Preparing for a Very Long War?
Nick Turse | Alternet.org In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year’s Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was “the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate [...]
Peace Prize Anyone? Obama quietly deploying 13,000 more US troops to Afghanistan
Move is separate from Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal’s request to increase troop levels Ewen MacAskil | Guardian.co.uk President Barack Obama is quietly deploying an extra 13,000 troops to Afghanistan, an unannounced move that is separate from a request by the US commander in the country for even more reinforcements. The extra 13,000 is part [...]
McChrystal’s Conundrum
Justin Raimondo | AntiWar.com Is the Afghan war already lost? Well, not quite, says the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, but almost: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) – while Afghan security capacity matures – risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” [...]
Afghanistan: Where Empires Go to Die
Dahr Jamil | GlobalResearch.ca On September 7 the Swedish aid agency Swedish Committee for Afghanistan reported that the previous week US soldiers raided one of its hospitals. According to the director of the aid agency, Anders Fange, troops stormed through both the men’s and women’s wards, where they frantically searched for wounded Taliban fighters. Genghis Khan [...]
A Somber Warning on Afghanistan
Alsion Smale | NYTimes.com Western powers now in Afghanistan run the risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union there if they cannot halt the growing insurgency and an Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former U.S. national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. In a speech opening [...]
US actually increasing personnel in Iraq: More contractors, fewer troops
John Byrne | RawStory.com US forces are not withdrawing from Iraq. Well, its soldiers are. But not civilian contractors. Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to withdraw US troops from the war-torn country, the US is planning to award contracts to protect US installations at a cost to taxpayers that could near $1 billion. In fact, [...]
Sheehan: Wars Barely Register in U.S. National Psyche
In an exclusive interview with RT’s Anastasia Churkina, anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan talks about the need of accountability, an end to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American psyche ignoring the truth.
Afghanistan Contractors Outnumber Troops
August Cole | WallStreetJournal.com Even as U.S. troops surge to new highs in Afghanistan they are outnumbered by military contractors working alongside them, according to a Defense Department census due to be distributed to Congress — illustrating how hard it is for the U.S. to wean itself from the large numbers of war-zone contractors that [...]
Obama: Afghan war secures America
PressTV.com US President Barack Obama says there will be no quick or easy victory over the Taliban, noting that the war in Afghanistan is crucial in protecting Americans from terrorism. Talking in a meeting of veterans in Arizona on Monday, Obama tried to step up the campaign in Afghanistan. “The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just [...]
Obama asks for $1B to add to Army manpower
David Rogers | Politico.com The White House formally asked Congress late Thursday to shift at least $1 billion within next year’s defense budget to expand the Army’s active duty forces by another 15,000 troops in 2010. This would be the first installment toward Defense Secretary Robert Gates decision last month to seek 22,000 more active [...]
Ex-ISI Chief Says Purpose of New Afghan Intelligence Agency RAMA Is ‘to destabilize Pakistan’
Then Maj. Gen. Hamid Gul, Director General of the ISI (far left), with William Webster, Director of Central Intelligence, Clair George, Deputy Director for Operations, and Milt Bearden, CIA station chief, at a training camp for the mujahedeen in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province in 1987 (RAWA.org) Jeremy R Hammond | ForeignPolicyJournal.com In an exclusive [...]
The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War
Prof. Peter Dale Scott | GlobalResearch.ca “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or [...]
NATO chief wants more troops in Afghanistan
Reuters.com NATO’s new secretary-general made a direct call for more troops in Afghanistan on Friday and said training of Afghan forces also needed to be escalated. “Honestly speaking, I think we need more troops,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who took over as head of NATO this month, said from Kabul. “I [...]
Senators, Advisers Urge Obama to More Than Double Afghan Forces
Indira A.R. Lakshmanan | Bloomberg.com President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars. In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and defense officials urged Obama, National Security Advisor Jim [...]
A Deadly Month for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan
Richard Oppel Jr. | NYTimes.com Four American soldiers were killed by a roadside explosion in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, making July the deadliest month for American service members in the country since the 2001 invasion and underscoring the frightening rise in the sophistication and accuracy of roadside bombs. With the four newest fatalities, at [...]
Clinton says 9/11 ringleaders are in Pakistan
Google | AP U.S. officials “firmly believe” that al-Qaida leaders who planned and carried out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are hiding in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday. At a news conference concluding three days of meetings, Clinton said Washington has told the [...]
Gates considers expanding the Army by 30,000
Kevin Baron | Stripes.com Pentagon officials say they have little desire to move beyond a maximum force size of 68,000 servicemembers deployed to Afghanistan as authorized by President Barack Obama, despite calls for more help from commanders on the ground. But some wiggle room may be coming. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he [...]
Obama’s War Signals
Justin Raimondo | AntiWar.com Only Richard Nixon, whose political career was launched and sustained by an ostensibly militant anti-communism, could have traveled to China, and – with conservative support — effected a de facto strategic alliance with a country long considered an implacable enemy. This Nixon-to-China meme is regularly invoked as aphoristic evidence that we must [...]
Gates: More US troops could head to Afghanistan
Lara Jakes | Google/AP The Pentagon’s chief said Thursday he could send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan this year than he’d initially expected and is considering increasing the number of soldiers in the Army. Both issues reflect demands on increasingly stressed American forces tasked with fighting two wars. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ comments came during [...]
