The Afghanistan Guessing Game--One Brigade, Two Brigades, Red Brigade, Blue Brigade

Michael thank you for making some sense out of the leaks. I thought Gibbs said today the same thing Jones said this evening, so I was surprised at the CBS announcement.

I would like for the President to wait until he returns from his trip. Will you be going Michael?

So? Why do I care about leaks when I don't understand why we're fighting a war in Afghanistan?

I wonder if it was somebody in the neo-con crowd leaking this in order to try to force the president to commit to their position.

Michael Scherer:

administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

In a related story,
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"The press corps' promiscuous use of anonymous sources work to increase its credibility with the public.
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That skyrocketing public trust in journalism is reflected in poll after poll.
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The press' dedication to transparency and the public interest are the prime reasons why the news business is considered by many to be the growth industry of the future,"
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said multiple officials familiar with the situation.

There are credible people in town who think they know what President Obama is thinking.

There always are, aren't there, Michael Scherer?

obama will come up with a smart compromise. Add 10-15K troops (so as not to appear "soft on terror") but also shift forces from Iraq to afghanistan and, hopefully, get even more help from the pakistani military to deal with their (euphemism alert!) internal issues.

While I have found Obama a disappointment on more issues than I care to name - I do respect his intellect and think he'll come up with something everyone can live with.

I'd like for him to pull every last man, woman and machine* out of Iraq and Afghanistan - I know that's not possible.

*oh wait, I take that back - I hope he leaves a big stack of Predator drones just outside the NW Paki border.

Sigh, once again the antiwar left gets completely ignored. Don't we have enough problems at home without throwing even more money and lives at Afghanistan?

Joe,

No one in DC knows what the President is thinking beside probably Michelle. If you read any books about the campaign or talked to your fellow reporters that Obama is very circumspect and doesn't give clues on his decision. If you can get your hands on the 4 options in discussion than you might have more of a sense of where he is heading.

I love how Obama frustrates you guys so much. But you guys are losing so much crediablity with reporting rumours or make believe. Just admit you don't know and move on.

Obama always thinks long and hard before he moves to the right. The delay is meant to make the Left think he is really one of them.

Obama should trade Afghanistan for healthcare. As in "give me a public option and I'll nuke the place."

Republicans would probably go for that.

After compromising with those who hate him, do everything they can to obstruct him, people who give him zero votes, Obama will be back to pretending he is a progressive again, when he needs money and votes. You lost me when you sided with Lieberman moron.

Oh, and how nice of MS to treat American troops in a war zone like some cutesy Dr. Seuss fantasy.

Not to mention the odd Afghan mom whose child is killed.

"The Audacity to ... Suck"?

"Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources."

Thank you, General Jones. That explains this CBS news report:

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/black-box/

"the president will send a lot more troops and plans to keep a large force there, long term"

These boys are in the pipeline:

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/first-person-sho0ter/

"National Security Adviser James Jones reported $900,000 in salary and bonus from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as director fees from a number of corporations. He received, for example, $330,000 from Boeing Corp. and $290,000 from Chevron Corp."

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/the-gas-must-flow/

First JN-S, now MS: speculative pieces filling space; quoting those treasured anonymous sources.Why not wait until Pres O makes a decison and then work on a peice that tells us how he arrived at that decision? And. you may find people going on the record.

Perhaps it is completely what I had commented on a Joe Klein blog post about 2 weeks ago. Simply, Obama does not have the knowledge or experiences in life that it takes to make these types of decisions.
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A President should come with some type of very good critical thinking skills. Unfortunately you do not learn those skills simply by reading a book or attending a classroom. You gain that experience over time, and through your various experiences.
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Obama, a Community Organizer, and a 1 term Senator who spent most of that time campaigning for the Presidency did not have the qualifications necessary, especially to make these types of decisions. It was clear before he was elected, and now is evident by his own actions.
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DITHERING with a very important decision such as this cannot be explained away any longer by saying "well it was the Bush Administration"...
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There are lives at stake here. Thousands of our American Troop's lives. Obama has failed, yet again.

He is trying to appease everyone; doing so he fails to please anyone.

Right or wrong he needs to start to stand for something, as it is he is losing my support.

President Obama is not a people pleaser. Infact, he doesn't listen to the MSM chatter. During the campaign, Pundits and Democrats fretted about McCain's choice of Palin-saying that Obama had to attack her. He didn't. When McCain ran those Bill Ayers ads, Obama addressed it in one of the debates and moved on. Obama always plays his own game with out discussing it in public. He looks at the long view. Obama wasn't pleasing everyone when he ordered those 3 pirates to be shot nor is he pleasing Pakistan and Afghanistan with the increase drone strikes. The Mr. People pleaser is a narrative perputuated by MSM. Obama thinks MSM is stupid, that's why he always says "this is silly season in politics".

And I loved Joe Klien's advice in By the People when Obama gave his race speech. He said Obama should talk about patriotism. When did patriotism have anything to do with race relations. Blacks and whites have built and died for this country from its inception.

President Obama please continue not to listen to the nagging bobble heads known as MSM.

= DITHERING with a very important decision such as this cannot be explained away any longer by saying "well it was the Bush Administration"...=

The stupidity of the Obama critics is stunning.

It took Boob, Chummey, and Rumsnuts 5 months to fabricate reasons for going to war with Iraq.

And then they mucked it up something fierce and LOST both wars. Iraq was only salvaged because the citizen-soldiers of our National Guards and Army Reserves figured out how to bring civiliation BACK to a country that had suffered over 20 years of Saddam's despotism.

If it had been Rome attacking Iraq, Baghdad would have been leveled just like Carthage.

The problem with re-winning the war in Afghanistan is that Afghanistan has NEVER been a "civilized" country. Even Alexander found that the climate and geography creates a culture not conducive to "civilization." But if we don't find a way to bring Afghanistan into the 21st Century, it not only will continue to be a cesspool of terrorism, we will have another Cambodia as the savage insurgents purge the civilized members of their country.

The critics of Obama are the ones whose blind faith is mostly responsible for the problems our country now has. (Cheney's friends at Halliburton have tried to learn from the mistakes of Cheney's friends at Enron in NOT getting caught.) The critics need to admit their bias and quit personalizing their criticism because it is only a reflection of THEIR personal stupidity.

A "Really Outside The Box" solution to Afghanistan:

We not only need 40,000 + more soldiers to bring military satability to Afghanistan, we likely need about 150,000 more soldiers.

What I am really hoping by Obama delaying a formal decision as to our additional Afghan troop deployments is that he recognizes that this war is not only ideological but economic.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda want to use 12th Century eonomics to run their societies. Their funding comes from 12th Century drug dealing and foreign support from countries (and oil companies) where the leaders want to keep their populations poor and uneducated.

The country that has the second largest investment in Afghanistan is China which also is now one of the few countries in the world with the technology and resources to create the mining industry in Afghanistan which eventually could be a profitable as heroin.

China has also discovered the value of profits and world trade that comes from educated consumers. We buy almost everything else from China. Why don't we have them supply us with 100,000 additional ""Peace Keepers" to help with security in Afghanistan. They might even do it on credit.

When Obama goes to China, this is an option that I am hoping will happen, and could be another reason for his delay of a decision.

phoenix1964

Thank you for expressing rationality and responsibility that seems to be behavior lost by the Reichnut Zombies.

Almost all of the cricitisms of Obama have a personal tone that reflects bias rather than logic or praciticality.

The same people who are the most vocal Obama critics were and are the ones most gullible in trusting Boob, Chummey, and Rumsnuts. By association, hearing their critical drivel is now pissing me off because of the disconnect with logic and the facts.

They fail to see their own conceptual hypocrisy such as idollizing the moral leadership of Sarah Palin who has a "bastard" as a grandson.

That is not a criticism of the child but rather a reflection of the poor role model of the grandmother and the gullbility and bias of her supporters.