The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: dutch508 on December 01, 2009, 04:57:52 PM
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/01/barack-obama-speech-afghanistan-war
Barack Obama's war: the final push in Afghanistan
• New troops to be in Afghanistan within six months
• US to begin pullout in summer 2011 and end in 2013
Barack Obama is to set an ambitious timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, with the first troops pulling out by July 2011. The announcement is aimed at countering US public fears that the country is being sucked into a Vietnam-style morass.
Reflecting the increased sense of urgency, Obama is to speed deployment of an extra 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan within the next six months – a much faster timetable than the 12 to 18 months that had been briefed by US officials up until today.
The 30,000 figure is lower than requested by the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, but the Obama administration is hoping that other Nato countries will make up the difference. A senior administration official said the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, will announce the deployment of extra troops on Friday.
The additional US forces are intended to counter Taliban expansion and help the Afghan army and police take over responsibility for security faster.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, spoke today of "an accelerated timetable". During a round of television interviews he said the faster the US forces move in, the faster they will move out. "We can't be there forever," he said.
Obama was looking for an "end game" and wanted to "get in there quickly" and transfer responsibility for security to the Afghan military as rapidly as possible, Gibbs said. An administration official said the US aimed to begin winding down troop numbers in July 2011.
Gibbs indicated that there would be no further escalations beyond the one Obama approved on Sunday. Asked on Good Morning America if this would be the last order for extra troops, he said: "The president sure believes so."
US officials said Obama wants almost all the US troops out before the end of his first term in office in January 2013, leaving behind a small contingency force. Gibbs said the president did not want to leave the problem to his successor.
The new strategy comes at the end of three months of intensive debate in Washington over the future of Afghanistan, an issue that has swamped the rest of Obama's agenda. The president, in the biggest decision of his term so far, had to choose between options ranging from sending only a few thousand more troops to the 40,000 requested by McChrystal. The president was set to expand on the thinking behind the new strategy in a speech last night at the US military academy at West Point, New York state.
The risk for Obama is that the extra 30,000 troops may not be enough to counter an increasingly confident Taliban and that the timetable for training the Afghan army and police is over-optimistic.
Two brigades, one from the US marines and one from the army, plus reserves, amounting to 30,000, are to be sent to Afghanistan over the next six months, bringing American troops in the country to 100,000. They are to be based in the south and east, where US and British forces are under pressure and badly in need of reinforcements. The first of the marines are due to arrive before Christmas.
Britain has already committed to sending more troops. Extra troops for Afghanistan will be on the agenda at a Nato meeting scheduled for next week.
There are 95,000 Afghan troops at present and the US wants that number up to 134,000 by October 2010, three years earlier than originally envisaged, and then to 240,000 by 2013. There are about 92,000 Afghan police and the US target is 160,000 by 2013.
There is scepticism about whether the Afghan army and police can be trained up that quickly to take over. At present, the Afghan army has a loss rate of about 25% of its members trained by US and its Nato allies, the bulk of whom just walk away.
Obama, who has already set a timetable for withdrawal of a sizeable chunk of US forces from Iraq by 2011, is keen to shed the label of "war president" and increase his chances of re-election to a second term. Public opinion in the US is steadily turning against the Afghanistan war in the face of mounting American casualties and lack of faith in Hamid Karzai's government.
Obama spoke to Karzai for an hour late on Monday night to brief him about the new strategy that will include "benchmarks" for the Afghan government not only to train more members of the Afghan army and police but also to take steps to tackle government corruption.
Obama's speech is to be followed by appearances at Congress by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen.
~ the One will Win the War...
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I'm so glad he's announcing to the entire ****ing world what he's going to have our troops do..... :maddernhell:
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What gets me is Lord O is going to make a big production out of this announcement.
He could just say, "Sure. Here's what you need." and leave it at that.
But this is O. He will need to point to himself and advise the rest of us that after months of foreign travel, golf, and shopping trips he hath maketh a decision.
And O will announce this at a Military Academy - like that will give his dithering some legitimacy.
And here I used to think Carter was the worst president.
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Does anyone else here think that this is equivalent to FDR stating that we'll have all forces out of Europe and the Pacific by the end of 1944?
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Does anyone else here think that this is equivalent to FDR stating that we'll have all forces out of Europe and the Pacific by the end of 1944?
It does sort of ring familiar.
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I wonder how many teleprompters they have for him?
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Karl Rove said on O'Reilly that his delivery was very boring and unpresidential.....said Obama's teleprompters needed some Energizer Bunny emotion. :lmao:
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Karl Rove said on O'Reilly that his delivery was very boring and unpresidential.....said Obama's teleprompters needed some Energizer Bunny emotion. :lmao:
Well Karl, dictators don't get emotional.
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Well Karl, dictators don't get emotional.
Haven't tried to sit through one of Chavez's diatribes lately, have ya?
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So now the Taliban know when they're going to get their country back ?
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Haven't tried to sit through one of Chavez's diatribes lately, have ya?
no, I haven't...was he a crying mess? :popcorn:
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LOL! I caught some of the cadets asleep during the speech. :lmao:
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LOL! I caught some of the cadets asleep during the speech. :lmao:
Telly Prompter just isn't as entertaining to the kiddies as it used to be.
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Tell the enemy when we're leaving, yet throw 30k into the meat grinder. Great military strategy,
Geez, this couldn't be a cheap political ploy could it? I mean, there's an election in '12. But, the Great One would never do anything for political gain, oh my no.
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Tell the enemy when we're leaving, yet throw 30k into the meat grinder. Great military strategy,
Geez, this couldn't be a cheap political ploy could it? I mean, there's an election in '12. But, the Great One would never do anything for political gain, oh my no.
It's the Bill Ayers plan.
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Does anyone else here think that this is equivalent to FDR stating that we'll have all forces out of Europe and the Pacific by the end of 1944?
Yes.
The approach seems purposely designed to produce total mission failure, but to minimize casualties involved and also to keep the failure from becoming undeniably obvious public knowledge until after the 2012 general election.
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Yes.
The approach seems purposely designed to produce total mission failure, but to minimize casualties involved and also to keep the failure from becoming undeniably obvious public knowledge until after the 2012 general election.
Or it could be political cover. He's already reading the tea leaves and knows the Dems will lose the House and Senate next year. And when the Republicans decide we're not pulling out starting in two years...he can say that HE didn't break his promise.
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Or it could be political cover. He's already reading the tea leaves and knows the Dems will lose the House and Senate next year. And when the Republicans decide we're not pulling out starting in two years...he can say that HE didn't break his promise.
I thought he promised to WIN!
doc
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I thought he promised to WIN!
doc
I didn't listen to his speech, but several articles have pointedly mentioned the fact that he did NOT use the words win or victory last night.
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Call me crazy...but if I were a soldier...I would not be motivated to risk my life, only to retreat after a pre-determined time. The Bronze statue has put the last nail in the coffin. Those who have already given up their life will not have a victory to show for it...This angers me to no end. :banghead:
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18 months will be well spent wiring up some VBIEDs, IEDs and SIEDs for the power grab after forces begin to fall back out of theater.
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No one in the Obama Administration understands the problem, the islamofascist mind. They are at all times at war with the west. The modern war stems from the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood and the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia and the rising power of NAZIsm come together circa 1935.
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/medigest/may00/arabnazi.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/135.pdf
and that's the Suni islamofascists. Even more disasterous are the Shi'a Mahdi or "Twelvers"
http://www.danielpipes.org/3258/the-mystical-menace-of-mahmoud-ahmadinejad
http://ejjhpiano.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/the-twelvers-and-ahmadinejad/
How in hell you make a lasting peace with these madmen is beyond me. I'd
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No one in the Obama Administration understands the problem, the islamofascist mind.
I beg to differ, sir. I'm willing to bet that the Islamofascist in Chief understands the islamofascist mind only too well. It's where he stands on the opinions found in the typical islamofascist's mind that is going to get us all killed or enslaved.
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I beg to differ, sir. I'm willing to bet that the Islamofascist in Chief understands the islamofascist mind only too well. It's where he stands on the opinions found in the typical islamofascist's mind that is going to get us all killed or enslaved.
I apologize in advance for thread jacking but that graphic (http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa200/DefiantSix/BigBrotha.jpg)
Is quite disturbing because it's not far off.
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This situation just begs for another overdub of the bunker meeting from "Downfall."
:evillaugh:
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In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a PowerPoint slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.â€
“Is that really what you think your mission is?†one of the participants asked.
In the first place, it was impossible — the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a major part of the population. “We don’t need to do that,†Gates said, according to one participant. “That’s an open-ended, forever commitment.â€
But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan — the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.
“I wouldn’t say there was quite a ‘whoa’ moment,†a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. “It was just sort of a recognition that, ‘Duh, that’s what in effect the commander understands he’s been told to do.’ Everybody said, ‘He’s right.’â€
“It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent†of the NSC document, said Jones, who had signed the orders himself. “I’m not sure that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same thing, as a military commander.†But what he created in his assessment “was obviously something much bigger, and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended.â€
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501376_pf.html
(http://blog.internetnews.com/apatrizio/facepalm%5B1%5D.jpg)
No, wait...
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v630/MrSnuggleBunny/NextGenROFLPoster.jpg)
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Don't know what religion Obama is, if any. He clearly is not Cheristian, as Black Liberation theology is not a CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Suspect he is a religion ontoo himself.
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/05/narcissistic-synthesis-sometimes-you.html
Scroll down to the Chart and see if there is someone you know there.
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Don't know what religion Obama is, if any. He clearly is not Cheristian, as Black Liberation theology is not a CHRISTIAN RELIGION. Suspect he is a religion ontoo himself.
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/05/narcissistic-synthesis-sometimes-you.html
Scroll down to the Chart and see if there is someone you know there.
First Church of Christ Obamist. He and the flock believe Obama is the Second Coming.
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And the lame stream media are decidedly quiet about Obama's non-attendance at worship services.
I guess he ordered his prayer rug and his Qu'ran online via his Crackbarry. It's safer that way than to actually be photographed going into a mosque armed with those things.
More to the topic at hand, if the NSC can't even articulate a mission that is doable, McChrystal is ****ed.