US military commanders have reportedly told the US special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, that they need more troops to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Last week, President Obama defended the expansion of the war, calling it a “war of necessity.” We speak with Harvard professor Stephen Walt, who argues that the President’s “safe haven” argument for expanding the US military presence in Afghanistan should be viewed with skepticism.
Democracy Now
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Safe havens don't matter :LOL:
ReplyDeleteStephen Walt hates the ANA and wants them murdered. He is trying his darndest to cut off all international funding, training and equipping of the ANA to achieve his insidious goals.
Does he hate them because he's jealous?
ReplyDeleteHey anand, why don't you plant some land mines in your backyard
ReplyDeleteStephen Walt probaby thinks that if the GIRoA, ANA and ANP are murdered; it would benefit him and his people in some way. How, I am not sure. He might really believe in the Taliban, having genuinely been brainwashed by ISI directorate and Saudi propoganda.
ReplyDeleteV, why don't you. I mean you are the one who supports the Taliban against the GIRoA and ANSF.
ReplyDeleteThe ANA and ANP barely exist, and the GIROA <span style="">has almost no authority, and what little it does have is limited to the capital, Kabul. Karzai cannot leave Kabul or even travel within Kabul without a large contingent of US bodyguards.</span>
ReplyDelete<span style="">“The United States has invested over $10 billion to develop the ANA since 2002. However, only 2 of 105 army units are assessed as being fully capable of conducting their primary mission and efforts to develop the army continue to face challenges.”</span>
ReplyDelete<span style=""><span style="">"Since 2002, the United States has provided about $6.2 billion to train and equip the Afghan National Police (ANP). However, as of April 2008, no police unit was assessed as fully capable of performing its mission."</span></span>
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="">- US Government Accountability Office, June 2008</span>
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="">"Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government."</span>
ReplyDelete<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style=""><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="">Bob Herbert, The New York Times, January 6, 2009</span>
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"Our intrest in Afgahnistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. <span style=""><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government." </span></span><span style="">Bob Herbert, The New York Times, January 6, 2009</span>
ReplyDeleteRS. stop lying. 58 out of 131 ANA battalion sized units are CM1 or near CM1 as of the latest reporting.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, the CM1 designation is misleading. Only one tenth of the Soviet army in the 1980s was ORA level 1 in the 1980s, yet it still functioned. A better measure would be ORA levels (1&2), currently 81 out of 131 units are in this category.
ORA levels 1,2,3 = 113 out of 131.
The ANA is already better quality than most militaries in the world today.
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="">My quote is from a GAO report to congressional comities. I intend to shove it up your ass every time you mention the ANA from now on.</span>
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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="">http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08661.pdf</span>
My data is from the declassified June 23, 2009, CSTC-A slide. By the way, some friends of mine tore up the report you mentioned when it came out.
ReplyDeleteRemember that the ANA and ANP started forming after Bush fired Rumsfeld (who opposed significant US trainers, funding, training and equipping for the ANA and ANP) in November, 2006. The data the report used dated the begining of 2008, when the entire ANP only had 3,000 trained police for a country of 33 million. The ANSF have come light years since then. It also used only the ORA level 1 designation, which is problematic. As I said, currently 58 out of 131 ANA battalion type units are CM1 or near to it.
BTW, if you want, I could e-mail a spreadsheet with the most current data to Molly and ask her to publish it on this blog.
The entire ANA operations budget was $246 million in 2006. That year the MNF-I (combined coalition) spent more than $150 billion in Iraq.
You're bluffing!
ReplyDeleteDid you delete your comment here anand, the one were you called me a lair and said "the ANA is one of the best armies in the world"? If so, I commend you for taking a step in the right direction and pray that you will remove the rest of your garbage.
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