Commanders seek more forces in Afghanistan (more Bush lunacy)

[ProSense]

Commanders seek more forces in Afghanistan

Taliban prepare offensive against US, NATO troops

By David Wood, Baltimore Sun | January 8, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Taliban forces, shattered and ejected from Afghanistan by the US military five years ago, are poised for a major offensive against US troops and undermanned NATO forces. This has prompted US commanders here to issue an urgent appeal for a new US Marine Corps battalion to reinforce the American positions.

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President Bush is expected to announce this week the dispatch of thousands of additional troops to Iraq as a stopgap measure. Such an order, Pentagon officials say, would strain the Army and Marine Corps as they man both wars.

A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to be withdrawn within weeks to deploy to Iraq.

Snip...

Despite the presence of about 30,000 NATO troops -- roughly 10 percent short of what its member nations had pledged to provide -- Taliban attacks on US, allied, and Afghan forces more than tripled in the past year, from 1,632 in 2005 to 5,388 in 2006, US officials say.

Suicide bomb attacks increased from 18 in 2005 to 116 in 2006. Direct-fire attacks also more than tripled, from three per day in 2005 to more than 10 per day in 2006.

more...

John Kerry, September 28, 2006:

Neither can the Administration pretend that the war in Afghanistan is over or that the peace has been secured. The truth is, we are slipping dangerously backwards. The Taliban insurgency still threatens the Karzai government. The opium trade increased by 60% last year, roadside bomb attacks have more than doubled this year, and suicide attacks have more than tripled. Forty percent of the population is unemployed and ninety percent lack regular electricity

We know the risks of letting Afghanistan become a terrorist haven. Yet the Administration's policy has defined cut and run. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man's land. Cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda affiliate operating from Afghanistan. That's right - the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they're still holed up in Afghanistan.

The central front in the war on terror is still in Afghanistan, but this Administration treats it like a sideshow. When did denying al Qaeda a terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan stop being an urgent American priority? How on earth did we end up with seven times more troops in Iraq - which even the Administration now admits had nothing to do with 9/11 - than in Afghanistan, where the killers still roam free?

We need a new policy - the one the president promised when we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Just last Thursday, the Secretary General of NATO called for additional troops, saying "more can be done and should be done," and the top UN official in Afghanistan said last week that more troops and economic aid are urgently needed.

Where NATO allies have pledged troops and assistance, they must follow through. But the United States must lead by example by sending in at least five thousand additional American troops. More elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces to bolster reconstruction efforts; and more infantry to secure the border with Pakistan, where attacks from the Taliban have tripled in recent days. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists.

We must also commit more in development aid. The President's talk of helping rebuild Afghanistan rings hollow when his Administration has appropriated nearly four times more in reconstruction funds for Iraq than for Afghanistan -- and actually cut Afghan aid by 30% this year. We need more reconstruction money -- not less -- to combat the flourishing drug trade and ensure that the elected government in Kabul, helped by the United States, not the Taliban helped by al Qaeda, rebuilds the new Afghanistan.

[northofdenali]

1. So we'll send more troops to Iraq -

Where the terra-ists aren't, instead of where they are. Of course, makes perfect sense to me :sarcasm:

[ProSense]

2. Must get oil! n/t