Obama Urges Sending More US Troops to Afghanistan

[Manuel]

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said today that U.S. combat troops should be shifted to Afghanistan from Iraq.

``This has to be our central focus, the central front of our battle against terrorism,'' Obama said on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``One of the biggest mistakes we've made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here.''

 

[Wow]

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

I thought Obama was going to bring our troops home?
Why would Obama send more Americans in harm's way in a NATO operation?

Where is the change?

Bring our troops home.

 

[editec]

He wants more people there, maybe he should go.

 

[Charles_Main]

A rare good idea from Obama!

 

[Wow]

Obama and his witch need to enlist.
Maybe his witch will be more proud of America, after a few combat tours in Afghanistan?

 

[JZcrayZ]

Obama is the true hawk. Bring the fight to Al-Qaeda.

 

[JZcrayZ]

He wants more people there, maybe he should go.

Unlike the Bush/McCain senseless Iraq policy. Obama's sending more troops to Afghanistan is important for our Nat'l Security.

 

[dilloduck]

Unlike the Bush/McCain senseless Iraq policy. Obama's sending more troops to Afghanistan is important for our Nat'l Security.

Do the Taliban have WMDs?

 

[JZcrayZ]

Al-Qaeda/Taliban are the ones who attacked us in the first place. They're the ones who have declared "jihad" against us.

 

[JZcrayZ]

Do the Taliban have WMD's?

Al-Qaeda/Taliban are the ones who attacked us in the first place. They're the ones who have declared "jihad" against us.

 

[Epsilon Delta]

Do the Taliban have WMDs?

Uh, does it Iraq?

(I mean Iraq post-1991, not counting the ones the US supplied and authorized to be used againt Iran in the 1980s.)

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Uh, does it Iraq?

(I mean Iraq post-1991, not counting the ones the US supplied and authorized to be used againt Iran in the 1980s.)

Two bald faced lies. We never provided chemical weapons to Iraq and we were never in the loop on when they used them.

Now go ahead and trot out your list of legal chemicals that can be used for commerce that can also be used for chemical weapons. I guess we better not sell fertilizer to anyone, cause hey you can make a wmd with that too.

But let us see your supposed proof WE had any say on the use of weapons by Saddam Hussein.

 

[Epsilon Delta]

Two bald faced lies. We never provided chemical weapons to Iraq and we were never in the loop on when they used them.

Now go ahead and trot out your list of legal chemicals that can be used for commerce that can also be used for chemical weapons. I guess we better not sell fertilizer to anyone, cause hey you can make a wmd with that too.

But let us see your supposed proof WE had any say on the use of weapons by Saddam Hussein.

[Robert Byrd, quoting an article on Newsweek]But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's ``human wave attacks'' threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of ``dual use'' equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for ``video surveillance applications''; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of ``bacteria/fungi/protozoa'' to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the

[Page: S8988]
Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. ``Who is going to say anything?'' he asks. ``The international community? F----k them!''
The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests.

[...]

Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:


Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?


The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the RECORD, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

Did the U.S. Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons

(FAS is the Federation of American Scientists, f. 1945 by scientists from the Manhattan Project, "endorsed by 68 nobel laureates in chemistry, economics, physics, and medicine.")

 

[dilloduck]

Al-Qaeda/Taliban are the ones who attacked us in the first place. They're the ones who have declared "jihad" against us.

Several times--are you claiming they are still a threat ? If so, are you going to try to tell me they are only in Afghanistan ?

 

[editec]

I'm beginning to think that sending troops to Asia to track down people who hate us enough to attack America is much like pissing on an ant hill.

Sure when you first start out you might kill a lot of ants, but eventually you just run out of piss.

 

[JZcrayZ]

Several times--are you claiming they are still a threat ? If so, are you going to try to tell me they are only in Afghanistan ?

Hec yes. They are becoming much, much stronger in Afghanistan. If we left they would reestablish it as their base and would be in a much, much better position to attack us.

Al-Qaeda has cells in Pakistan and possibly Saudi Arabia but they can be routed out none militarily.

The war in Iraq may have been won or nearly won, but the war in Afghanistan still has a long way to go.

 

[Bootneck]

Listening to the car radio earlier, I picked up an interesting snippet where Senator Jack Reed said that Mr Obama’s call for more NATO troops in Afghanistan would be targeted at Germany and other EU members who have been reluctant to provide troops in the numbers needed.

More combat troops from Germany!!!??? Please guys! Tell the good senator from Rhode Island that the last thing those of us who have to fight in Afghanistan want is combat troops from Germany! Their rules of engagement, stemming from their constitution, limit their ability to take on the Taliban. Basically, German troops are not allowed to make use of their firearms until fired upon. Not the sort of soldiers to have watching your back!

Recently, elite German soldiers from the KSK spent weeks tracking a high-ranking Taliban leader. They had several chances to shoot the man, but they tried to capture him instead. He escaped.

Germany's KSK special forces have been charged with capturing the terrorist, in cooperation with the Afghan secret service organization NDS and the Afghan army. The German elite soldiers were able to uncover the Taliban commander's location. They spent weeks studying his behavior and habits: when he left his house and with whom, how many men he had around him and what weapons they carried, the color of his turban and what vehicles he drove.

At the end of March, they decided to act to seize the commander. Under the protection of darkness, the KSK, together with Afghan forces, advanced toward their target. Wearing black and equipped with night-vision goggles, the team came within just a few hundred meters of their target before they were discovered by Taliban forces.
The dangerous terrorist escaped. It would, however, have been possible for the Germans to kill him -- but the KSK were not authorized to do so.

Not Licensed to Kill: German Special Forces in Afghanistan Let Taliban Commander Escape - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

And to cap that:

German soldiers, too, have been involved in the recent fighting. According to a report in the Rheinische Post on Thursday, a German patrol was attacked late on Tuesday night not far from the base in Faisabad. The soldiers on the patrol, none of whom were injured, returned fire and killed one person. The event is noteworthy because it marks the first time in the six-year operation that the German army has killed someone there.

The person they killed, though, may not have been from the Taliban at all. According to a Wednesday report in the German news agency dpa, the victim may have been an unarmed shepherd. The agency cites the police chief from the province of Badachshan, Agha Noor Keentoz, as saying that the man merely wanted to signal the patrol away from his herd of sheep. The German army, the Bundeswehr, is investigating the incident together with state prosecutors.

Violence on the Rise: German Troops Kill First Person in Afghanistan - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

So please. No pressure on the Germans to provide more combat troops.

 

[clazona]

PAKISTAN PAKISTAN PAKISTAN.

Not Afghan.

Again...

PAKISTAN PAKISTAN PAKISTAN is where the Taliban/al-Qaeda base of command.

We need to go to their new homeland. How do they attack us in Afghan, from Pakistan!