WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It will be left to the next president to send a significant number of additional troops to Afghanistan, the Pentagon's spokesman said Wednesday.

U.S. commanders are asking the Pentagon for up to 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan.

The request was a subject of discussion when President Bush met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

But getting more troops to the increasingly violent battle zone is unlikely to happen before Bush leaves office in January, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

"This government is going to work to provide additional forces for Afghanistan next year. How many, whether it's the three additional brigades that the commanders want, I think is a question, frankly, for the next administration," Morrell said at a news conference.

There won't be enough troops to send to Afghanistan any time soon because of commitments in Iraq, which is the priority for the Pentagon.

"The chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said time and time again Iraq is a mission we must do. Afghanistan is a mission we do as we can," Morrell said.

The chairman, Adm. Michael Mullen, has agreed there are not enough troops in Afghanistan, but said the military is constrained by commitments in Iraq.

"We've got our troops committed right now, either preparing there or coming back," Mullen said on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on Tuesday. "And until we get to a point where we reduce that commitment, we won't have significant additional troops to add to Afghanistan."

But a small number of support troops could be sent to Afghanistan sooner, senior military officials said. They said an order for several hundred troops, including helicopter units and combat engineers, is expected to be approved by the defense secretary.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/23/afghan.troops/index.html

I watched that interview......and I think I commented about it in a thread yesterday. Good Job, Fanta.

I wonder how he could find 30,000 to send to Iraq when he wanted them. Now when troop levels are supposed to be back down to pre-surge levels he cant find 1/3 that many to send to fight the ones who attacked us!
He is sorely incompetent and is forgetting Al Qaeda for his private quest in Iraq.
The military commanders advice goes unheeded once again! Worse is the men who are fighting a tough war with inadequate reinforcements. Its basically murder what he's doing to them.
I hope the SOB sleeps well at night!

From what I have been reading Afghanistan could be a trap if we send too many troops. It has just been in the news that we abandoned an remote outpost after the ambush that killed nine. A mission to occupy Afghanistan like we have Iraq could lead to far more casualties at a quicker pace than Iraq. The terrain is much more suited to a defending objective than an advancing objective and the tribes in these remote areas are not likely to co-operate with us. I think we are only there just in case Bin Laden would slip up and make a mistake as to his whereabouts and just maybe we could get him. And the Pentagon knows this is the mission in Afghanistan. Consequently, only a few more troops are needed unless the mission is going to change.

Who told you that crickster?
Bush!!

They abandoned that 3 day old outpost for the same reason those nine boys died died. because of Bush's incompetence as a commander and chief and his personal priorities, which had nothing to do with us being attacked (9/11). He lied to everyone, and wont fight the war that we wanted fought!
He ignored the military experts advice by invading Iraq illegally, and now he ignores their advice to send more troops to Afghanistan. Good men die while this coward Bush chases his profit margins!

You would do yourself a favor by broadening your reading horizons and not to continually just dismiss and laugh at well educated opinion writers instead of insisting that articles you agree with are always right and that all opposing views are farce.

I believe Bin Laden may be in Pakistan. He may even be dead. If you don't know where Bin Laden is you don't have a clear mission.

Bin Laden is dead, the current administration has known this for a long time, thats why the flim-flam job on Afghanistan...

Whether Bin Laden is dead or not has no relevance,
Do you think Al Qaeda is just going to go away because he's dead?
Do you think they are going to suddenly stop wishing to kill Americans because he's dead?
The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
The death of those 9 men and the many others since and before is the proof.
You need to quit reading Republican Blogs crickster and remember why we the people were so willing to send our men and women in harms way. (psst, it wasnt Iraq.)
Bush is a coward and a liar. He doesn't deserve to command our brave soldiers. He doesn't deserve to command little green army men in a sand box!
He has not only forgotten our soldiers. He has forgotten where the real war and enemy is at, and he has never listened to his expert military advisers.
The Generals in Afghanistan are saying that they need 10,000 more soldiers and they say Afghanistan is winnable. I dont know where you get your info. You claim something yet you give no links.
Don't just talk out your Republican, lets see them.
I guess you, like Bush, think you know more than the Generals.
Nobody said war was safe. Its dirty, bloody, and dangerous, but these men still go do it. Bush could at least give them the means to!
The enemy, (remember them) and the cause (remember that) are in Afghanistan not Iraq.
Bush was all too willing to enact stop-loss policies, and stretch the military thin for his private illegal war, but he cant find 10,000 men?
The Surge is over, Iraq wants us to leave, and yet he, (cant?), more like wont send 1/3 rd the number of troops he found for the surge to Afghanistan! There's something terrible wrong with that, Criminal even.
You support the illegal war in Iraq and defend Bush?
There's something terrible wrong with that too!

Instead of sendin more Troops why dont we just send big bombs and blow that place up and not risk any more American lives!!!

The Afghan people are not the enemy! The Afghan people have wanted our help and involvement since 1917.
Unlike Iraq and the illegal war there, they have a leader willing to be involved and an Army that has done their part since day 1.
We also have NATO friends who weren't attacked but have had their young men in Afghanistan dying right along with ours while Bush has been on his personal vendetta in Iraq.
The Afghan's were doing their part before we were attacked. When we went in, the Northern Alliance had been engaged in a war with the Taliban. The American people sought their help and should honor our Alliance.
I guess what I'm saying is that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not the Afghan People so why should we bomb them all.

This is what an Obama supporter writes about Afghanistan.

Fanta, do a little google work on Juan Cole on Afghanistan - I'm not posting the link because if you have to search for such articles you might find credentialed and knowledgeable writers with opinions that differ from yours. But of course you will probably still insist that these writers are on Bush's payroll.



When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' don't seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.

There has now been a rise of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, on a scale never before seen. One killed 24 people in a bazaar at Deh Rawood on Sunday. Robert Pape has demonstrated that suicide bombings typically are carried out by people who think their country is under foreign military occupation. If the US keeps sending more troops, will that really calm things down?

I don't know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted. I wish he would talk to some old Russian officers who were there in the 1980s first. Of course, it may be that this announced strategy is political and for the purposes of having something to say when McCain accuses him of surrendering in Iraq.

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.

I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters. So he made a Zionist speech in Boca. In the context of US politics, that is to be expected; he would not be any sort of politician, much less a phenomenon, if he did not try to reassure Jewish Americans about his commmitment to Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal. But Obama went on to praise Zionist thinker Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people. And then he gave away Jerusalem, undivided and permanently, to the Israelis in the middle of ongoing negotiations over its status between Israel and the Palestine Authority in the context of the Quartet, which the US government supports. Neither of those two things was necessary. It was overkill. And Obama now has some bridge building to do with the Arab and Muslim worlds if he becomes president, since Jerusalem is also dear to their hearts.

Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.

We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.

Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.

Beware.

You got that off a blog. Its an opinion piece wrote by someone going by the handle dday, on http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/whither-afghanistan-by-dday-in-barack.html

He doesnt claim as you say to be an Obama supporter, and I doubt he's an expert on military affairs or the war in Afghanistan.
He's probably a 15 yr old kid sitting in his bedroom!
I dont blame you for not posting a link.
You really should try to get your news and facts from somewhere other than a blog site!
It might help your own opinion be taken more serious, at least it would be a better informed opinion.
The British just killed an important militant leader today in Afghanistan.
Of course the blog opinion article you lifted off digby's Hullabaloo was dated Monday, July 14, 2008, and he couldnt have imagined what would have happened today!

I cant believe you support Bush's illegal unrelated to 9-11 war and wont support the war in Afghanistan.

How could I?
Its unbelievable and unamerican!
Its down right NeoCon!!!

Senior Taliban leader killed in Afghanistan

Tue Jul 22, 2:03 PM ET



KABUL (Reuters) - A senior Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan surrendered to Pakistani authorities and British forces killed another leader, dealing a "shattering blow" to the militant group's leadership, the British army said on Tuesday.

Mullah Rahim, the top commander for southern Helmand province, gave himself up after British forces had killed two other Taliban leaders in little over three weeks.

Hours after his surrender, another senior Taliban commander, Abdul Rasaq, also known as "Mullah Sheikh," was killed in a British missile strike 15 km (9 miles) north of the town of Musa Qala in Helmand on Monday morning, the British army said in a statement. Three other insurgents also died.

Rasaq headed Taliban actions around Musa Qala and was active in the insurgency for a number of years, it said.

"The Taliban's senior leadership structure has suffered a shattering blow," British army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Robin Matthews said in the statement
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080722/wl_nm/afghan_violence_dc

Blow

British forces spokesman in Helmand Lt Col Robin Matthews said: “The Taliban’s senior leadership structure has suffered a shattering blow.

“They remain a dangerous enemy but they increasingly lack strategic direction and their proposition to the Afghan people is proving ultimately negative and self-defeating.

Helmand governor Gulab Mangal last night appealed to all remaining Taliban fighters in the province to lay down their arms.

He said: “This is a great message for Helmand province. I advise all those Taliban who are engaging with terrorist actions that the fighting has no benefit. So this is the time to join with the Islamic Republic and choose a good, right and honourable way”.

http://www.marine-corps-news.com/2008/07/taliban_leader_surrenders_1.htm

Negative and self defeating. If that doesnt say winnable nothing does!
So much for the accuracy of digby's blog!!!

(CNN) -- Local security forces and coalition soldiers in western Afghanistan killed several insurgents Thursday in what the NATO command called a "successful operation against high-priority Taliban targets."

The operation took place in the Shindand district of Herat province. Two Taliban leaders, Haji Dawlat Khan and Haji Nasrullah Khan, and "significant number of other insurgents" were killed, according to a statement from NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/17/taliban.leader/index.html

Thankfully we have allies.
Bush wont help!!

i think that WAR is wrong can we all get along with each other!!! If they got a problem with our country the hell with them!!!

I think they should draft and send 500,000 men to Afghanistan.
Just for starters.

dday did not write the thread I posted. Dday even gives credit to Juan Cole for authoring the piece in the link you provided. Here is what Wikipedia says about Juan Cole the author of the article I posted .

John "Juan" Ricardo I. Cole (born October 1952 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) is an American professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television, and testified before the United States Senate. He has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East and is a translator of both Arabic and Persian. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Comment (formerly Informed Consent).

http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/obama-on-iraq-and-afghanistan-friendly.html
article includes:
reservation of a democratic supporter of Obama on Afghanistan

We invited this to happen when we abandoned the Afghan people following the withdraw of the Russians. Two super powers used that country to play war in then left a void where resentment grew. Now we see the result.