Obama's War Council Divided on Afghanistan

[Severa]

CBSnews.com

President Barack Obama summoned his war council to the White House Situation Room on Wednesday for an intense, three-hour discussion that exposed emerging fault lines over Afghanistan _ with military commanders pressing for more troops and other advisers expressing skepticism.

There was no discussion of specific troop levels during the meeting in the West Wing basement, according to a senior administration official. But the talks underscored the divisions throughout Obama's inner circle that must be navigated in the coming weeks, the official said.


White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Gen. James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, appeared to be skeptical of troop increases, the official said. Vice President Joe Biden, who attended the meeting, has been reluctant to support a troop increase, favoring a strategy that directly targets al-Qaida fighters who are believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

No firm or final recommendations were offered to Obama, the official said, suggesting that views were still evolving.

The meeting, the second of at least five Obama has planned as he reviews his Afghanistan strategy, comes after Obama received a critical assessment of the war effort from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man he put in charge of the Afghan war earlier this year. McChrystal declared that the U.S. would fail to meet its objectives of causing irreparable damage to Taliban militants and their al-Qaida allies if the administration did not significantly increase American forces.

Obama has taken a go-slow approach on the McChrystal report. White House officials say it may take weeks before the president decides whether to overhaul the U.S. strategy or send more troops.

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Gee, while Obama twiddles his thumbs and has his widdle meetings, we get THIS:

MSNBC.com - Eight U.S. troops killed in east Afghan battle - Attack near Pakistan border was one of fiercest in troubled eight-year war

Militant fighters streaming from a village and a mosque attacked a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight American soldiers and as many as seven Afghan forces in one of the fiercest gunbattles of the troubled eight-year war.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack for coalition forces since a similar raid in July 2008 killed nine American soldiers in the same mountainous region known as a haven for al-Qaida militants. The U.S. has already said it plans to leave the remote area to focus on Afghan population centers.

Fighting began around dawn Saturday and lasted several hours, said Bandar, governor of Nuristan province. Badar said the two outposts were on a hill — one near the top and one at the foot of the slope — flanked by the village on one side and the mosque on the other.

Nearly 300 militant fighters flooded the lower, Afghan outpost then swept around it to reach the American station on higher ground from both directions, said Mohammad Qasim Jangulbagh, the provincial police chief. The U.S. military statement said the Americans and Afghans repelled the attack by tribal fighters and "inflicted heavy enemy casualties."

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Oh and then we get THIS little gem:

Politico.com - Jones pushes back at McChrystal

Speaking on a day in which eight Americans and two Afghan policemen were killed in a dramatic daylight strike by insurgents in Afghanistan, White House National Security Advisor James Jones pushed back against assertions that the United States needs more troops in the violence-torn country.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” with John King, Jones said that the current U.S. force there is “robust.” That comment contradicts the top U.S. commander in the field, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has waged an unusually public campaign for more boots on the ground in Afghanistan, warning that the mission there could fail without them.

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Yeah I know I posted a bunch of stuff but here's my main point:
WHY THE HELL ARE WE P***Y-FOOTING AROUND WITH MEETINGS AND ARGUING WITH OUR MILITARY COMMANDERS IN THE FIELD, FOR F**K'S SAKE!
Our brave men and women are DYING over there and it's not getting BETTER it's getting WORSE.
McChrystal asked for more troops, Obama. You PICKED the guy so OBVIOUSLY you recognize his body of work, soooo...what the frig are we waiting for?

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

I'm sorry. Time to get out. Obama is NOT going to fight this thing to win any more than Bush did. He's going to run a political war, or try to, three level chess, as Bush did. You can not win wars that way.

That means that every one of our people who gets hurt or killed will be paying in blood for a political game. Instead of the war fighting they singed on for.

Time to bring them home.