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After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless U.S. commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas.
Obama has said that he prefers "not to hand off anything to the next president" and that his strategy will "put us on a path toward ending the war." But he doesn't plan to give any more exact timetable than that Tuesday night.
The president will end his 92-day review of the war with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He spent part of Monday briefing foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls.
Before Obama's call to Britain's Gordon Brown, the prime minister announced that 500 more U.K. troops would arrive in southern Afghanistan next month — making a British total of about 10,000 in the country. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose nation has more than 3,000 in Afghanistan, said French troops would stay "as long as necessary" to stabilize the country.
Obama's war escalation includes sending 30,000 to 35,000 more American forces into Afghanistan in a graduated deployment over the next year, on top of the 71,000 already there. There also will be a fresh focus on training Afghan forces to take over the fight and allow the Americans to leave.
He also will deliver a deeper explanation of why he believes the U.S. must continue to fight more than eight years after the war was started following the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaida terrorists based in Afghanistan. He will emphasize that Afghan security forces need more time, more schooling and more U.S. combat backup to be up to the job on their own, and he will make tougher demands on the governments of Pakistan as well as Afghanistan.
"This is not an open-ended commitment," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "We are there to partner with the Afghans, to train the Afghan national security forces, the army and the police so that they can provide security for their country and wage a battle against an unpopular insurgency."
On a few of the bigger questions most on the minds of increasingly restive members of Congress and the public, such as how much the additional $30 billion to $35 billion cost will balloon the already skyrocketed federal deficit, how long the U.S. commitment will continue and how it will wind down, Obama was expected to make references without offering specifics.
Gibbs said detailed discussions on costs would be held later with lawmakers.
Even before explaining his decision, Obama told the military to begin executing the force increases. The commander in chief gave the deployment orders Sunday night, during an Oval Office meeting in which he told key military and White House advisers of his final decision.
At least one group of Marines is expected to deploy within two or three weeks of Obama's announcement and will be in Afghanistan by Christmas, military officials said. Larger deployments will begin early next year.
The initial infusion is a recognition by the administration that something tangible needs to happen quickly, officials said. The immediate addition of Marines will provide badly needed reinforcements for those fighting against Taliban gains in the southern Helmand province, and also could lend reassurance to both Afghans and a war-weary U.S. public.
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Well deserving of that Nobel Peace Prize. A war is one hell of a carbon footprint.
Nice move President Johnson. So intelligent of you to take General Westmoreland’s learned advice.
Don’t worry, we’ll be out by 2017, what’s a quarter century of war to a nation so utterly pussified that they like to actually pretend that every day is the first day of the war. Too busy doing coke and wearing helicopter pilot sunglasses I guess.
F U Mr. Obama. Another failed war president… another 40 Billion a year added to the already untenable burden on our tax dollars. The military industrial complex has it’s puppet installed and they are bankrupting America nicely. Disgusting, immoral, and downright criminal. We have been had folks, Obama is a fraud, pure and simple.
Must be time for a revolution.
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What a nice Christmas present from the Nobel Peace Prize winner to his constituents and the soldiers who will die for nothing. Are you sure Obama is not a Bush?
“Change We Can Deceive in.”
Once again, the Corporate War Party wins. And most Americans continue to believe they have a “choice” between 2 wings of the same Party.
Once again, Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, Libertarians, anti-War Greens & Independents are proven right. But those people won’t tow the Party line so will be given as little media coverage as possible in the “free” press.
Smells pretty rank — must be time to flush the system.
“He also will deliver a deeper explanation of why he believes the U.S. must continue to fight more than eight years after the war was started following the Sept. 11 attacks by al-Qaida terrorists based in Afghanistan” Even the AP spews out bat squeeze. The 9-11 hijackers were based in Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan (an inconvenient truth). The Taliban very temporarily hid BIn Laden successfully (that we let him escape) from Afghanistan AFTER the attacks. I’m sick of the lies.
oh no,
we cant say anything bad about mr. change! that would be racist!
NEVER MIND HE CAME IN POSING AS THE NEXT JFK. 2 NEVERENDING
WARS STILL RAGING, BLACKWATER STILL ON THE GOVT. PAYROLL,
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TAXPAYER MONEY GIVEN TO WALLSTREET,
A PHONEY HEALTH INSURANCE BILL THATS A HUGE BOON TO THE
INSURANCE INDUSTRY, AND NOW THE ESCALATION IN THE COUNTRY
CALLED THE GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES! i call him a fucking fraud!
change we can believe in???? the last president that tried to change
anything got assasinated, he wanted to end the fed, he didnt want israel
to get nukes, he wanted to break up the c.i.a., and he wanted to pull out
of vietnam….and for trying to save the country he got a bullet in the head.
and now the chickens are coming home to roost. i say if obama was white
he never would have been elected, why? he was a one term senator
that never accomplished anything, he campaigned on change and the
only thing thats different is hes more articulate than the last evil fuck
who occupied the white house! so the country had a feel good moment
about electing a black president, wow! aint we special, too bad we never
get a real choice, i voted for the useless fuck because the only choice we
ever get is the lesser of two evil fucks! weve been conned, slippery dick
cheney must be creaming his jeans with obamas announcement of more
troops sent to kill and die to keep the opium in the hands of the c.i.a.
THIS IS ONE EVIL FUCKING GOVERNMENT! the system is hopelessly broken
we need a total taxpayer revolt, they are bringing this country down,just
like they did the soviet union in the 80s afghanistan worked then and it
will work now. say goodbye to the ussa, say goodbye to soveriegnty,
NEW WORLD ORDER, GLOBAL SLAVERY HAS ARRIVED, thats the
change you can believe in………oh yea, fuck that uncle tom obama!
do something about it….. post signs, get active…. show everyone that the time has come. I know everyone here probably has a similar feeling about how bad we all hate the government at this point. There has to be a spark, and im sure both sects of people can agree on that.
check out the article below on rawstory – US grants $262M in aid to Moldova
why? oil-rich Moldova, though landlocked, is very close to the Caspian and is notorious for illegally shipping weapons at the behest of the US military to warring Shia and Sunni factions in Iraq. the lender, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a CIA/International Republican Institute front operation set up by Bush in ‘02, recently pumped $17 million into Honduras right before the Zelaya coup.
expect a “surge” in terrorist soundbites to help justify corporate America’s unholy conflagration in Afghanistan
We must all be on guard for defense budget cutters and peaceniks. They want to take away our guns and leave us with only baseball bats to defend ourselves. Keeping Americans safe at home and abroad costs money. Soldiers and policemen have to be paid and weapons have to be made. There is no better way to spend a dollar than on our defense. Wars might never end, but real Americans do not fear a long fight.
Agree w 13, the losers who want to cut our war budget would think differntly if they embraced enterprise. If you made guns, wouldnt you want to sell it to everybody? of coarse! Wars will never end because our troops have to keep the world safe for Americans from the rest of the worlds slackers who arent strong enough to make money the right way.
So, will that include wiping out the poppy plants? We fuck around there, while the “movers” are dividing up Africa.
Maybe it will start with a Christmas bombing? Been there, done that.
Afghani-Nam: Love it or leave it. At this rate, Obama will lose the Democratic nomination in 2012.
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