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Obama approves 13,000 more troops to Afghanistan
The additional forces are primarily support forces -- such as engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police -- the Post said, bringing the total buildup Obama has approved for the war-torn nation to 34,000.
Obama approves 13,000 more troops to Afghanistan. (AFP file) "Obama authorized the whole thing. The only thing you saw announced in a press release was the 21,000," a defense official familiar with the troop-approval process told the daily.
The report, posted on the newspaper's website late Monday, came as Obama weighs a request from the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for more combat, training and support troops, with several options including one for 40,000 more forces.
But the newspaper noted that the maximum number of US service members expected in Afghanistan by year's end -- 68,000 -- would remain the same.
Major deployments of support troops have not been publicized by the Pentagon and the White House in the past. When former president George W. Bush announced a US troop increase in Iraq, he only mentioned 20,000 combat troops and not the accompanying 8,000 support troops.
The troop increase approved by Obama brought the level of US forces deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters to a total greater than during the peak of the surge in Iraq in late 2007 and early 2008.
At the start of this month, some 65,000 US forces are currently in Afghanistan and about 124,000 in Iraq, compared to around 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq at the height of the Iraq surge, according to a troop count by the Post.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllAre the Nobel Peace Prize Committee members crying with tears of joy and hope over this remarkable move towards peace Obama has given the world? Perhaps he deserves another.
Was it ever in doubt that BO would go for a "surge" in AfPak--Nobel peace prize or no Nobel? There will be no substantive change in policies as long as we have a government that is there to do the bidding of the powerful and, I might, the ignorant, the stupid, and the bigots.
Obama is worst than Bush..
At least Bush was honest about being evil...
Obama is as evil as it gets...
Stay tuned folks...
That is the definition of a con man!
Can the peace prize be nullified?
No more than it has been, apparently.
Like all current political spin doctrine the Nobel Peace Prize actually signifies the value of violence and in a world where words are used to describe actual happenings we would have Obama winning the Nobel Violence Prize. In the the world of politics, day is night, right is wrong, white is black, and Satan is Christ! Thus: Obama deserves the 'Peace Prize' !!!!
"Change we can believe in?" The march to total fascism continues unabated. There will be a transformation of the people into the serfs, if we are not killed first. Perhaps there is a window of opportunity for us to avoid this fate.
We must take over the Congress. We could storm it like the French did the Bastile, but let's try another way first. We can take over the Congress by tossing out the corrupt inhabitants of that branch of our government. These are the people who are destroying our democracy. Any Representative who voted approval of this troop 'surge' into the illegal wars in the middle east are not representing the people of their district. Any representative who voted to give trillions of our tax dollars to the scum on Wall Street was not following the advice of their constituents. Any representative who is not backing HR 676, Medicare for all, Single payer, has his jeans stuffed with bribes from the insurance corporations and that representative agrees that you deserve to die on the doorstep of a health care facility if you don't pony up lots of more loot to the insurance ghouls who profit by your sickness. Vote these bastards out and let's start anew with REAL change. Maybe our new representatives will vote that a corporation is not a person and may not involve itself in any way in our government...how's that for change?
Obama keeps trying to appease the right wing nuts.
Instead, he should crush their skulls (figuratively speaking, heh heh).
There will never be enough troops sent, according to the right wing nuts--no matter how many are sent. They're just looking for an excuse to blame the black man in the White House for the defeat that was inevitable as soon as they put stumblebum Bush in office.
stop it with the excuses for Obama. he promised hope and change. I guess he isn't man enough to take anyone on. F the right wing. they have no power except for the Democrats and Obama's weakness. Stop making excuses for Obama
Hypothetical questions the MSM should be asking (questions assume the war is legitimate, but asking these questions and the resulting answers will probably reveal the war isn't legitimate):
And what is 13,000 additional troops supposed to accomplish? Does this mean we expect the war to end next year?
- If not, why not send more troops, like another 150,000 so we can end the war after 9 years? After all, aren't we over there to "protect the US"?
- If not, aren't we sending our troops over there undermanned which will lead to more casualties?
- You say we don't have enough military members to deploy? Hey, I thought we were there because "they" are a threat to the US? War is serious, if we don't have enough soldiers, shouldn't we call a draft, rather than rely on volunteers?
Prog 101, 21,000 + 13,000 + 62,000 "in theater" + 70,000 + or - mercenaries !thats over 150,000 already.Pentagon realists have insisted that 500,000 boots on the ground would still be too few for "full spectrum dominance".If we are there to eliminate "Al Qaeda" there are maybe 100 members in the country.If the Taliban is not and never has posed a threat to the U.S. as the administration has been advised,why do we even need to be there?Win some hearts and minds?Or maybe we sell them some "democracy" for some Opiated Hash,with a little pipeline lease on the side.Rely on volunteers ? Cheap imported subcontractors for our War Firms!much better bottom line.A draft might help bring peace,but peace would make a draft unnecessary. peace
The quickest way to end the war is start a draft with none of the VietNam loopholes for the rich kids!!!!!
But I could be wrong !