Military: Afghanistan War Needs More Time, Money

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

(04-01) 08:47 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The situations in Afghanistan is dire, and progress will demand a substantial and sustained commitment, military leaders told Congress Wednesday, as they laid out more details of the Obama administration's new strategy for the war.

But skeptical members of the Senate Armed Services committee pressed the defense officials about the pace of U.S. troops deploying to the war, and why there are no clear benchmarks on which to gauge whether the new strategy is working.

"How will we know if we're winning?" asked Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "We should not be committing additional troops before we have a means of measuring whether this strategy is successful."

Michele Flournoy, under secretary of defense for policy, said the administration is working on finalizing a set of benchmarks, but moved quickly to send some additional troops to the war because of the urgent need to reverse momentum gained by insurgents.

She and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, also urged senators to support funding to train Pakistani forces to fight militants. And they painted a somewhat pessimistic picture, saying that building the Afghan security forces and bolstering the Pakistani military to fight insurgents on their side of the border will take more time and money.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/03/29/national/w073757D85.DTL

[western mass]

1. Emphasis on the *Money*

Alot of the usual suspects making alot of $$$.

Will Obama keep the military contractors well fed and happy? Magic 8-Ball says....yes.

[change_notfinetuning]

2. as carelessly as Bush got us into Iraq and, in time, more costly - nt

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. Interesting - the USA evolved from colonies that hated domination by an Imperial regime

.
.
.

Now the USA is that dominating Imperial regime

Do as I say, not as I do

progress , , ,


(sigh)