U.S. Eyeing Plan For Fifth Brigade In Afghanistan
Let’s ask this question …
We here, now that the focus is away from Iraq (and ignoring that success) and back to the ‘failure’ in Afghanistan that we just didn’t have enough troops in A-stan.
Well, our coalition buddies aside in Iraq, we had/have a hell of a lot more supposed help from the rest of the world in A-stan via NATO. Yet, for all the bullshit commentary about Iraq is that we were loosing there because we didn’t have the support of our ‘friends and allies’ from around the world … yet, we ’surged’ with many more of our own troops in Iraq and finished the hard job.
We never left A-stan … We have had the assistance of those same ‘friends’ the anti-Iraq war crowd has been yelling about … Yet those friends couldn’t pull more than their own weight and get that hard job done in this time? Now we have to ’surge’ in with more of our troops … basically “go it alone” … to have success?
For me, it says a hell of a lot more about our military than it does about the militaries of our ‘friends’ and that whole NATO thing.
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama could eventually send five combat brigades to Afghanistan, including one devoted wholly to training the Afghan army, Pentagon officials said on Friday.
The White House is expected to announce up to three new brigade-size deployments for Afghanistan as early as next week to help meet a long-standing request for additional forces from field commanders.
The Obama administration is examining plans to send as many as 30,000 extra troops overall in the next 12 to 18 months to quell violence that has surged to the highest levels since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime.
The Pentagon has talked of adding four combat brigades — units of about 3,500 soldiers. But a fifth could be deployed later this year to train Afghan troops, according to officials who stressed that the planning was subject to revision.
Small groups of soldiers from the brigade would be assigned to operate within Afghan army units as part of a training and mentoring program intended ultimately to have Afghan soldiers lead security operations.
“That’s what’s being looked at right now,” said one official.
Some extra U.S. troops have already begun arriving in Afghanistan, including 3,700 soldiers from a combat brigade of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division that deployed this month.
The three brigades expected in Obama’s announcement would include a large Marine task force and would increase the number of U.S. troops to the Afghan combat zone by up to 17,000.
Add to that an additional 5,000 support troops heading for Afghanistan and the United States could wind up sending a total of 25,000 extra forces by mid-summer, officials said.
There are currently 36,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including 17,000 under NATO’s 55,000-strong International Security Assistance Force.
Top military officials say more Western troops are needed in Afghanistan to buy time until an effective Afghan army and police force can take over security in the country.
The current plan, intended to put an Afghan “face” on the struggle against the Taliban and other militant groups, is to grow the Afghan army to an active force of about 134,000 soldiers from about 84,000, according to U.S. officials.
(Reuters)
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Barack Obama’s Al Qaida initiative began months before his election
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama was working with Arab intermediaries to establish an unofficial dialogue with Al Qaida long before his election as the 44th U.S. president, according to a report in the upcoming weekly edition of
Geostrategy-Direct.com.
Al Qaida has offered what has been described as a truce in exchange for a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to the report.
Obama has deemed the U.S. reconciliation with the Muslim world, including Iran, as his main foreign policy goal, sources quoted in the report said. The president has been aided by several Persian Gulf Arab Muslims with ties to Al Qaida’s leadership in Pakistan, they said.
On his first day in office, Obama ordered the shutdown of the U.S. Navy prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which where 245 suspected Al Qaida members are detained.
Subsequently, in his first television interview as president, with the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite channel on Jan. 26, Obama spoke about his own ties to the Muslim world:
“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect,” Obama said . “I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.”
[quote][/quote]
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2009/ss_terror0079_01_28.asp