Sending Extra 30,000 Fresh Meat to Afghanistan Absolutely Reasonable, US Believes

US congressmen approved the amount of $33 billion for the increase of the military contingent in Afghanistan, as President Obama insisted. It was not a unanimous decision, though: 308 congressmen voted for, whereas a third of the members of the House of Representatives voted against it. A hundred and two of them represent the Democratic Party, which means that the nation of Democrats presided over by a Democrat does not have one single position about the continuation of the war in Afghanistan.

Photo: Sending Extra 30,000 Fresh Meat to Afghanistan Absolutely Reasonable, US Believes

The leaders of the Democratic majority unexpectedly had to deal with counteraction on the part of angry Democrats rather than Republicans. For instance, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Barbara Lee of California sated that the documents, which had recently emerged on Wikileaks, became yet another evidence to prove the inexpediency of the war in Afghanistan against the background of serious problems inside the USA.

President Obama sticks to another opinion. In his first public statement about the publication of numerous documents about the war in Afghanistan Obama said that the situation was just another confirmation of the importance of the US-led strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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"While I am concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations, the fact is these documents don't reveal any issues that haven't already informed our public debate on Afghanistan," Obama said.

"Indeed they point to the same challenges that led me to conduct an extensive review of our policy last fall," added Obama, in his first public reaction to the release of the documents.

"For seven years, we failed to implement a strategy adequate to the challenge in this region," Obama said.

"That's why we have substantially increased our commitment there, insisted upon greater accountability from Afghanistan and Pakistan, developed a new strategy that can work," he said.

Thus, the House of Representatives approved the bill to assign $33 billion to send the additional contingent of 30,000 servicemen to Afghanistan. It just so happens that America prefers to turn a blind eye on the publication of nearly a hundred of confidential reports and continue to fund the politically and militarily hopeless war in Afghanistan.

The US administration disregarded the recent confession from the former chief UN inspector for arms control Hans Blix. The official said that the US and British governments relied on low-quality intelligence information and that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant danger to the international community.

"When we reported that we did not find any weapons of mass destruction they should have realised ... both in London and in Washington, that their sources [on weapons] were poor," he told a public inquiry in London on Tuesday.

"Their sources were looking for weapons, not necessarily weapons of mass destruction. They should have been more critical of that," Blix said.

It is an open secret that it is very easy to start a war, although it takes many victims to end it.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that 92 percent of the additional contingent (30,000 men) would be deployed in Afghanistan by the end of the year, and the number of US military men serving in Afghanistan would reach nearly 100,000.

The US administration is too naïve to believe that such an increase of the contingent will allow to struggle against the Taliban more effectively. The Taliban intercepted the initiative in this endless guerrilla warfare a long time ago.

This year, the US Congress has approved the assignment of $130 billion on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over $1 trillion have already been spent on the operations sine 2001. The victory is nowhere near, but the number of US losses continues to grow every day.

Ivan Tulyakov
Pravda.Ru

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