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Obama promises 10,000 more troops for Afghanistan
I didn't realize he had that authority ...
Barack Obama yesterday pledged to increase US troops in Afghanistan by a third if he becomes president, sending 10,000 more to reinforce the 33,000 already there.

Obama has promised, soon after becoming president in January, to begin scaling back the 156,000 US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and to shift the focus to Afghanistan. He is to fill out his plans in a foreign policy speech in Washington today ahead of his first visit to Iraq and Afghanistan since he launched his presidential bid early last year.

Details of his trip have been kept secret for security reasons but a senior Palestinian spokesman, Saeb Erekat, disclosed yesterday that Obama would be in the region next week, with a meeting in the West Bank on July 23 with the ineffectual Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
Perfect, since Abbas doesn't stand for anything and can't do anything ...
Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said today's speech "will focus on the global strategic interests of the United States, which includes ending our misguided effort in Iraq". He added that a gradual, phased withdrawal of US troops "will allow the US to properly address the growing threat from a resurgent al-Qaida in Afghanistan".

Previewing the speech in an article written for the comment page of the New York Times yesterday, Obama wrote: "As president, I would pursue a new strategy and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more non-military assistance to accomplish our mission there." He said that ending the war in Iraq is "essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and al-Qaida has a safe haven".

In a separate comment on the campaign trail, Obama said the killings on Sunday reinforced the need to switch resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. "I continue to believe that we're under-resourced in Afghanistan," he said. "That is the real centre for terrorist activity that we have to deal with and deal with aggressively."
This concern of yours seems a little .. sudden, Senator. You could have brought this up anytime the last two years and sponsored a bill in Congress to pay for more effort in Afghanistan.
His Republican rival, John McCain, is also to discuss Afghanistan this week. Randy Scheunemann, a senior McCain foreign policy adviser, noted yesterday that Obama had voted in the senate last year against increased resources for US troops in Afghanistan. "Senator Obama is not trying to have it both ways, he's trying to have it every way," Scheunemann said.
Posted by: Steve White 2008-07-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=244260