You are a beautiful person.
Posted on 09/21/2009 3:04:40 AM PDT by SE Mom
The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."
His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.
McChrystal concludes the document's five-page Commander's Summary on a note of muted optimism: "While the situation is serious, success is still achievable."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
A reminder of Vietnam.
I am going to take this opportunity to encourage everyone to send a package to someone fighting in that hell hole under this Communist CIC.
If your budget is tight-
Next week Walgreens will have some things you can get for free.
Dentek Dental Care
Robitussin DM To Go
Chapstick Fresh Effects
Oral-B Advantage 1-2-3 Toothbrush
Emergen-C Booster
Vaseline Sheer Infusion Lotion
You buy it and you get a register reward. You can’t use the reward on the same item but you can buy a different item. Takes some effort..but roll away..and send someone a care package.
bump
I'll see ya and raise ya one!
Of all of the things that Obama has done to harm this country since he got in office, his treatment of our soldiers(new ROE,etc.) pisses me off the most. The very idea that he would postpone making a decision on Afghanistan just so he can ‘focus’ on his commie healthcare plan is truly unconscionable. Obama behaves more and more like a clinical sociopath every day. There is something very cold and calculating about the man..it’s creepy.
You are a beautiful person.
These are MUST reads for those who have anyone serving or who care about and support our military.
“AMBUSHED MARINES’AID CALL REJECTED”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2340992/posts
“WE’RE PINNED DOWN:’4 U.S. MARINES DIE IN AFGAN ABUSH”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2335142/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2336737/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2335336/posts
“GIS TOLD NOT TO RISK CIVILIAN LIVES”
http://www.military.com/cs/Satellite?c=maArticle&cid=1199422047446&pagename=News%2FnwsLayout
“OBAMA’S RULES OF ENGAGEMENT IN AFGHANISTAN COSTING OUR TROOPS LIVES”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2335891/posts
“BAGRAM INMATES CAN CHALLENGE DETENTION: PENTAGON”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2339337/posts
“ANALYSIS: WHITE HOUSE POSTPONING HARD CALLS ON WAR”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2340176/posts
“NO DEADLINE FOR TROOPS WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN: OBAMA ADMN”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334327/posts
“MILITARY LEERY OF AFGHANISTAN ESCALATION WITH NO CLEAR GOALS”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2335026/posts
“U.N. LAWYERS TARGET U.S. TROOPS”
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=337473733467144
“Justice: As if fighting a war in Afghanistan isn’t hard enough, ambitious global prosecutors have rolled into Kabul looking to charge U.S. troops. Intentional or not, such legalism will sap U.S. morale as it did in Vietnam.
At about the time NATO’s new secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, warned NATO’s European members against an early pullout, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, whose body is charged with looking for international war criminals, announced he was looking for new “clients” from anyone with a grievance in Afghanistan.
At a briefing Wednesday in The Hague, Moreno-Ocampo said he had launched a new war crimes inquiry, seeking information about “torture” especially — a European obsession — and had already mined the human rights groups for stories. He added he was also “very open” to more information from foreign governments.
Oh, he’d been evenhanded in his Monday-morning battlefield quarterbacking of course, promising he’d prosecute both Taliban and NATO troops as moral equals.
But it doesn’t take a genius to know what the spotlight-loving attorney (who once launched his own reality TV show back in Argentina) is really after: Americans in the dock as war criminals.
The atmosphere that makes a prosecutor like Moreno-Ocampo ambitious enough to go after Americans instead of a real monster like, say, Fidel Castro, can only occur when the West’s will has weakened, as Rasmussen warned.
After all, if a war to defend our civilization can be reduced to a series of police-brutality cases, then Afghanistan isn’t about victory.
This is underscored by Washington’s conflicting aims.
Though our president has rightly boosted the number of troops in Afghanistan, he’s created a climate of doubt by declaring the war on terror an “overseas contingency operation” and stating he doesn’t believe in “winning.” It’s poison for morale and gives momentum to the kind of bureaucratic, legalistic and defeatist thinking that preceded our bitter pullout in Vietnam.
Moreno-Ocampo’s entry into Afghanistan is a sign that legalism has begun to overtake victory as a goal, at a time when our Taliban foes still believe in victory.
On the battlefield, our troops are increasingly constrained by legalistic rules of engagement.
Case in point: On Tuesday, four U.S. Marines and seven of their Afghani allies walked into a well-planned ambush and were killed in the Kunar province near the Pakistani border.
“We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today,” Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, told his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter’s repeated demands for helicopters, McClatchy Newspapers reported.
Rules of engagement condemned them to die because they couldn’t get air cover.
According to McClatchy: “U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.”
Meanwhile, all pullout talk condemned those U.S. troops, too.
Ground intelligence sources who might have warned them were reportedly more fearful of Taliban retaliation than convinced that American troops would be able to defend them, given the weakening will of the West. They opted to survive.
Now, the latest legalistic block against winning is an international prosecutor looking for NATO troops to prosecute.
Back in 2002, President Bush told the ICC that there wouldn’t be any of that, and he rescinded the U.S. signature from the Rome Statute that would have opened the door to that. Today, there’s a legal battle going on at the ICC to make U.S. troops subject to doing it and there’s no signal from the White House that it will stop it.
Don’t think Moreno-Ocampo won’t do it. His history as a prosecutor suggests an affinity for publicity over justice, which is just what the anti-American crowd wants.
(snip)Someone like that won’t hesitate for a minute to make a big show of putting U.S. troops in the dock for “war crimes” no matter what the impact in Afghanistan. That’s defeat.
____________________________________________________________
Then there is this little tidbit:
0’s Giant Ego is too busy trying to be king of the World. He has no time to be bothered with what could be avoidable deaths of American servicemen.
Besides, he’s proving his qualifications to head up the “Security Council” (excuse my utter hysterical laughter!) to the America hating dweebs at the U.N..:
“Obama to seal US-UN relationship”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2334897/posts
*PLEASE NOTE THIS PARAGRAPH IN THIS ARTICLE IN PARTICULAR.*
“In preparing his assessment of the Afghan command, McChrystal found an American military culture that showed a great concern for troops’ protection – sometimes at the expense of their relations with Afghan civilians.
To change those relations, McChrystal wants American forces to think twice about basic conduct - for instance no longer pointing their guns at people when they pass in convoy or blocking narrow roads with their convoys, while relegating Afghans to the ditches.
To deal with the most contentious aspect of those shaky relations, McChrystal has already committed to try to reduce civilian casualties by issuing new orders that restrict when troops should call in bombing strikes.”
http://www.hotsr.com/news/WireHeadlines/2009/08/02/general-wants-more-troops-for-afghan-war-26.php
From the posted article by McClatchy ‘We’re pinned down:’:
“...U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.”
___________________________________________________________
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/75036.html?storylink=MI_emailed
(snip)..Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.
U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.
“UPDATED2: No, Obama’s VA did NOT pull so-called ‘Death Book’ from website”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2324272/posts
“As I write this article I want to make it clear that I don’t blame the US Military as a whole for this. This is directed towards the decision makers, who clearly do not understand two things. The first is Islam itself, and the second being that catering to Muslims does not work. It just leads to non-Muslims becoming more like Muslims.
In the last two months there has been an upsurge in the idea department of pleasing the Islamic world. Yesterday it was revealed that the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen had stated that the US has to get more credibility with the Islamic world.
“Our messages lack credibility because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises,” he added....”
http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-military-leaders-bowing-down-to.html
As a Vietnam vet I never thought I’d see another surrender in war for the U.S. But it’s happening again. What the Libs don’t understand is that every serviceperson and their families will now loathe the Left and take that feeling into the voting booth.
Bookmark! Thanks for the links.
BTTT
I try to do what I can to put a smile on their face..because they never know when it will be their last.
I have a Walgreens manager who will actually order a quantity of the free items for me. They get reimbursed from the manufacturer so they aren’t going negative at a loss.. and it helps the store, too.
If you don’t have that kind of manager, go in on Sunday to make sure you can get your stuff. Sometimes it goes fast.
“Military growing impatient with Obama on Afghanistan”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2343591/posts
Your kidding right? From 2004 to 2007 the insurgency was raging out of control in Iraq.
No I’m not kidding. If you look at the numbers of bad guys being taken out from 2005-2007, you’ll find that by conservative estimates (mine, in “America’s Victories”) they exceeded 40,000 dead and another 200,000 wounded based on Iraqi morgue stats. Perception is that it was “raging,” but reality was that they were running out of bodies. One of the reasons for the success of the “surge” is that we were surging against the B team, the C team, and the practice squad, having already wiped out the pros.
Great idea. I have been sending boxes to Afghan soldiers since last November. The post office has flat rate boxes.
Walgreens also has discontinued counters. Last week I stocked up on chap stick.....3 or 4 to a package for 25 cents. I use coupons to greatly reduce the cost of fruit cups, tooth paste, tooth brushes, etc. I also buy DVDs when they are on sale for $4-$5.
We are retired on a limited budget, but there is so much you can do for a little money. Each time you go to the store pick up a couple of things....that way you don’t really notice the cost.
I participate through Adopt a Platoon. Go to this website and vote for them...www.ilovechristiecookies.com
A cookie company is going to award the favorite charity $25,000. Select Adopt a Platoon Lozano, TX from the drop down box.
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