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U.S. commander: more troops or Afghan war lost
Mon Sep 21, 2009 10:01am EDT
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By Peter Graff and Golnar Motevalli
KABUL (Reuters) - The Afghan war will be lost unless more troops are sent to pursue a radically revised strategy, the top U.S. and NATO commander said in a confidential assessment that lays out stark choices for President Barack Obama.
In the assessment, sent to Washington last month and leaked on Monday, Army General Stanley McChrystal said failure to reverse "insurgent momentum" in the near term risked an outcome where "defeating the insurgency is no longer possible".
A copy of the 66-page document was obtained by the Washington Post and published on its website with some parts removed at the request of the government for security reasons.
"Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," McChrystal wrote.
"Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure."
McChrystal, who commands more than 100,000 Western troops, two thirds of them American, has drafted a separate request spelling out how many more he needs but has not sent it to the Pentagon, which says it is considering how he should submit it.
Opinion polls show Americans and their European NATO allies turning against the nearly eight-year-old war.
A request for more troops faces resistance from within Obama's Democratic Party, which controls Congress, but refusing to give McChrystal what he wants would open Obama to criticism from Republicans who say he should act quickly.
In a series of interviews on Sunday Obama said he would not rush to a decision and wanted to first review his strategy for the region before considering whether to send more troops.
"I just want to make sure that everybody understands that you don't make decisions about resources before you have the strategy ready," he told ABC.
McChrystal's spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, said that while McChrystal does not believe he can defeat Afghanistan's insurgency without more troops, he could carry out a mission with different goals if Obama ordered it.
"The assessment is based on his understand of the mission as it was presented to him. If there's a change in strategy, then the resources piece changes," he said. He said McChrystal had no intention of resigning if Obama denies his request.
GRIM PICTURE
In his assessment, McChrystal painted a grim picture of the war so far, saying "the overall situation is deteriorating".
He called for a "revolutionary" shift putting more emphasis on protecting Afghans than on killing insurgents. Continued...
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