More Troops to Afghanistan?

Optimistic Words On Afghanistan

The State Dept was upbeat. More cautious were defense officials. Top brass met Sunday.

By Anne Gearan, Associated Press
August 4, 2009

WASHINGTON -- A day after President Obama's senior defense advisers huddled in Europe to discuss the future of the war in Afghanistan, the State Department yesterday talked optimistically about the conflict that top generals have called a stalemate.

"We believe that this is a struggle that we are now, you know...we have turned a tide," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "We're seeing success in Afghanistan, difficult as it is."

Hours later, five rockets slammed into the Afghan capital, Kabul, one of them near the U.S. Embassy, injuring at least one child, police said. "There's no indication these rockets targeted the U.S. Embassy," an embassy spokeswoman said. She requested anonymity because she was not authorized to release the information.

Crowley's remark came in response to a question about al-Qaeda, the terror network whose shelter in Afghanistan prompted the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Crowley said later he was "not trying to minimize the complexity" of eventual success in Afghanistan.

Defense and military officials have been circumspect about the situation in Afghanistan in recent months, with some of them characterizing the conflict as stalemated.

Even after adding 21,000 troops to expand its war against Taliban insurgents, top defense and military officials are hashing over whether to ask the White House for even more forces in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, flew Saturday to a U.S. air base in Chievres, Belgium, and met Sunday with several advisers including Gen. David Petraeus, who has overall responsibility for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Gates and Mullen were given an interim report on security in Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is putting together an assessment of the war that may include a request for additional U.S. forces and resources.

The trip was organized in secret, and Gates traveled without his usual throng of staff and reporters.

McChrystal's study is expected to recommend a significant expansion of the Afghan armed forces and a reorganization of U.S. and NATO operations. Any request to expand U.S. forces would be on top of the 21,000 increase Obama approved earlier this year.

That brings the total to 68,000 scheduled to be in the country by the end of 2009 - about double the figure at the same time last year.

With 74 foreign troops killed - including 43 Americans - July was the deadliest month for international forces since the start of the war in 2001.

The civilian death toll also climbed yesterday as a Taliban bomb tore through a crowded street in western Afghanistan's main city, Herat, killing 11 people, hurting dozens, and critically wounding the district police chief it targeted, officials said.