Afghanistan Escalation

PRATAP CHATTERJEE
Chatterjee just wrote the piece "Paying Off the Warlords, Anatomy of an Afghan Culture of Corruption."

He is an investigative journalist, senior editor at CorpWatch and author of Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War and "Iraq, Inc.

REESE ERLICH
Freelance foreign correspondent Erlich has covered the Middle East for
23 years and is the author of three books. His fourth, "Conversations
with Terrorists," will be published in September 2010. He was in
Afghanistan in late summer. Erlich's recent articles on Afghanistan
include "U.S. Aid Often Misses Targets in Afghanistan."

He also wrote "On the Poppy Trail."

REESE ERLICH
Freelance foreign correspondent Erlich has covered the Middle East for
23 years and is the author of three books. His fourth, Conversations with Terrorists, will be published in September 2010. He was in Afghanistan in late summer. Erlich's recent articles on Afghanistan include "U.S. Aid Often Misses Targets in Afghanistan."

He also wrote "On the Poppy Trail."

NORMAN SOLOMON
Solomon, who was in Afghanistan recently, just wrote the piece "The Hollow Politics of Escalation,"
which states: "An underlying conceit of the new spin about benchmarks
and timetables for Afghanistan is the notion that pivotal events there
can be choreographed from Washington. So, a day ahead of the
president's Tuesday night speech, the New York Times quoted an unnamed
top administration official saying: 'He wants to give a clear sense of
both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind
down.' But 'eventually' is a long way off. In the meantime, the result
of Washington's hollow politics is more carnage. ...

"It's one thing to voice opposition to sending more troops into
Afghanistan -- it's another to really try to prevent the escalation.
Few in Congress have gotten serious enough about halting the war's
deadly spiral to sign onto Congresswoman Barbara Lee's bill H.R. 3699,
which would prohibit any increase in funding for additional troop
deployment to Afghanistan. Among Democrats in powerful positions, some
misgivings about the war are evident -- but willingness to withhold
spending for the war is not."

Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.