Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan

It was a mistake to escalate the war. It is a mistake to continue the war. The only thing we are going to get out of Afghanistan are more broken bodies and military funerals.

Pentagon Doubts Grow on McChrystal War Plan

Monday 10 May 2010

by: Gareth Porter | Inter Press Service

Washington - Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.

Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, it has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.

The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.

The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.

The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".

http://www.truthout.org/pentagon-doubts-grow-mcchrystal-war-plan59362

When we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, I opposed it here at the DU. I have never changed my mind about it. You don't go hunting for a billionaire who sometimes lives in caves with hundreds of thousands of troops and war machinery.

President Bush will forever own the Iraq blunder. President Obama should have known better to venture into this shit believing these generals.

Just get us out. Now.

The rest of the people are immersed into whatever fancy occupies their time: iPhone v Android, American Idol, Lost, etc.

People like us, OTOH, are the precious few that know the true nature of Room 101, to use an Orwellian metaphor.

their first clue that this man is lacking good character? :eyes:

How about the recent revelation that OUR TROOPS are guarding the damn Poppy Fields for Karzai's drug warlord brother. :wtf:

Not to mention, big brother Karzai, et. al., are as corrupt as they come. The mayor of Kabul didn't even LEGITIMATELY win his last election. Yet, McCrystal and all his cronies supported him?!?

But now, after all this history, you finally "catch a clue" that McCrystal's planning may be just a tad FUBAR?

GENIUSES! SUPER GENIUSES! :puke:

...pretty much sums up the Afghan imperial occupation for me. The bloated war machine needs justification for existence as well.

The empire is unsustainable (I recommend Chalmers Johnson's books and American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips). History is screaming at us and the response from corporate-owned Washington is blissful silence.

I thought Rome to be a cautionary tale, not a blueprint.

:thumbsdown: