CBS Confirms: Obama Will Send Almost 40,000 Additional Troops to Afghanistan (rayj)
Or, twice the amount of troops used during "the surge" in Iraq. Where's the outrage?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories...

Who needs Republicans...

 ....when Democrat leaders can shoot themselves in the chest all by themselves?  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn
and do you see this?
The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there.

That means it really gets going in 2011! So this is not going to end this term.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

Read McChrystal's report
The good General wants 18-24 months to see if his strategy can succeed.
[ Parent ]
this is worse than the report.
This is 24 months after 12 months.  

I am crushed. I even defended the initial sending of more troops by Obama, but I am now totally crushed.  This country has no hope of getting out of this empire. John McCain, Hillary Clinton are both cheering this on too.

 

New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

[ Parent ]
Listen
we all (all of us who hoped Obama would be a bit of fresh air on the stale failed politics of the past) have been beaten down by the right wing policies of Obama and company. We have to base OUR strategy and tactics for change outside (and to some extent inside...to the extent it works) of electoral politics. The crap that is stinking up this country is pervasive...it starts with Obama and permeates the Democratic Party. I also voted and gave money and time to the Obama campaign; I thought he would be bad but much better than McCain. He is certainly better but he is on the other side of the line that separates us from them.
[ Parent ]
thanks for the pep talk


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
[ Parent ]
I don't see any good coming out of this
is there a clear mission there? our soldiers are getting killed and nothing is accomplished...
re
Tonight, after months of conferences with top advisors, President Obama has settled on a new strategy for Afghanistan. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that the president will send a lot more troops and plans to keep a large force there, long term.

to do what? get killed?

Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200...
The deal was already struck by Kerry
and we cannot backstab our international partners so quickly.

1. Phony* "surge" to

1a: Provide political cover for getting out of Iraq.

1b: Provide strategic and tactical aid to Pakistani Liberals fighting a Civil War against Radical Islam.

2. We cease attempting to remake Afghanistan in a Western image and

2a: Accept that "corrupt" warlords will rule that backwards land

2b: Switch to a 'Chaosistan' approach centered on US forces concentrated in cities while Special Forces and robots target terrorists with global and regional reach.

This strategy was the strategy we should have employed from the get-go and will work.

* Even the man who lied about the murder of Pat Tillman knows that we would need hundreds of thousands of troops to do what he describes; he lies again by saying we need 40,000.

when you say phony do you mean
that the 40K troops that will go a year from now won't really go, or that the leaked report is not really the plan and they have different expectations of what will happen with 100K troops in Afghanistan?

New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
[ Parent ]
What's the strategy here?
During the surge in Iraq, the goal was to pacify the insurgency that had centered around Baghdad and the Anbar province. With the help of the Sunni Awakening, that by and large succeeded. But this was due largely to the fact that the Iraqi insurgency was based in Iraq itself.

But that's not the case with Afghanistan at all. The al Qaeda/Talbian insurgency is based in Pakistan, so even if the extra troops are able to at least stabilize the Helmand province, AQ and the Taliban can still launch cross border attacks against coalition forces. So, I mean, what's the exit strategy here? It doesn't make sense.

It really reminds me of LBJ's private reason for escalating the Vietnam War: he said he did it because he was afraid that if he didn't he would get impeached by Congress.  

Prop up the druglords, control the poppy trade
as was revealed by former Amb. Murray.

Well over 50 percent is controlled directly by actual members of the Karzai government, including Karzai himself and his brother. The biggest heroin dealer of all is probably General Dostum, who has just been brought back and who many in the Pentagon think should be empowered because of his fighting reputation. Dostum is a terrible murderer who used to tie dissidents within his own ranks to tank tracks and run them over. Dostum is closely linked to President Karimov of Uzbekistan, and a great deal of the drug traffic goes out through Uzbekistan, up the railway line to St. Petersburg, and out into Europe through the Baltic.

There's a sense in which Afghanistan is the greatest developmental success the West has ever seen, because the GDP of Afghanistan has increased by about 150 percent since we invaded it. The trouble is all of that increase is in heroin. In 2001, the Taliban had cut the heroin harvest down to virtually nil. Last year it increased by 40 percent on top of a 60 percent increase the year before. And nowadays they don't even export opium anymore. As I say, it's a big developmental success.

They've got into value-added. It's all made into heroin before it's exported now. And we know where it is: Dostum's heroin factories. It's done on an industrial scale. Petrochemical tankers carrying the chemical precursors are sharing the same road as our troops. But it's done by the government we are protecting. There are so many lies about Afghanistan. It's about money, it's about oil, it's about drugs, it's about the abuse of human rights, it's about degradation, and it's about all of us paying, through our taxes, for wars which benefit a tiny clique.


[ Parent ]
Protect pipeline construction from the Caspian basin
The Obama admin is working on the completion of a project begun in 1995 to construct a pipeline from the Caspian Sea, with over $12 trillion in oil reserves through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

COMPANY NEWS; UNOCAL TO SIGN PACT WITH TURKMENISTAN

October 21, 1995

The Unocal Corporation said yesterday that it would sign an agreement with the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan as a first step in an $18 billion project to transport natural gas and oil across Afghanistan to Pakistan. The company, which is also involved in an $8 billion oil development in nearby Azerbaijan, said the project would unlock huge gas reserves in Turkmenistan that the republic developed and has not sold. Unocal and its partner, Delta Oil Company of Saudi Arabia, will spend $10 million during the next year on engineering and marketing studies to determine where a pipeline could be built and who would buy the gas.



[ Parent ]
Work is scheduled to start next year
[ Parent ]
Obama has taken donations from Chevron (who bought UNOCAL)
all they had to do was dust off those drawings...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/p...

[ Parent ]
sigh
When Obama backed off on gay rights, I didn't say anything. When he didn't support a strong public option, I was miffed, but I thought we need something, now. When Obama didn't intend to provide any substantial financial reforms, I was pretty pissed.

And now that he's sending 40,000 troops to Iraq, I'm left pondering over two questions: Where in the flying frak is the Democrat I helped to elect? and Who elected the Republican?

I'm going to be completely honest right now, if I get a call today about the President's approval it would be "very dissatisfied" and I'm not sure I would vote for his re-election whatsoever.

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