Gates Makes Surprise Visit to Afghanistan: US `in this thing to win'

Gates to Afghans: US `in this thing to win'

KABUL – Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived Tuesday in Afghanistan with plans to assure officials and American troops there that the United States is committed to winning the war despite plans to begin pulling forces out in 2011.

"We are in this thing to win," Gates told reporters while traveling to Kabul, where he plans to meet privately with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and later with troops bearing the brunt of combat.

The secretary's trip to Afghanistan is the first by a Cabinet member since President Barack Obama's announcement last week that he will deploy 30,000 more troops with the intention of starting to bring them home in July 2011.

As Gates took his message abroad, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the overall military commander in Afghanistan, will try Tuesday to convince a skeptical Congress that more troops are needed to fight a growing enemy insurgency. More than 920 U.S. troops have died in the 8-year-old war.

McChrystal's appearance before the House Armed Services Committee starts the first of three days of congressional Afghanistan hearings that are expected to draw hard questions from both anti-war Democrats and conservative Republicans about Obama's stated intention to begin paring down the U.S. role in July 2011.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091208/ap_on_re_us/us_gates_afghanistan

.... "win" or "victory."

Those are words one might use in describing the fabled Alabama Crimson Tide's near-perfect man-handling of the evil Florida Gator empire :) .... they are NOT words I like to use when describing something that will ultimately cost human life ..... on both sides.

This is the down-side of keeping a Bush appointee.

That's a great line. He doesn't mean it, of course. He's just playing out his final hand and managing the decline in an orderly way.

:grr:

Gerald Ford's WIN campaign.

After another $400 billion dollars to maintain this farce for another four years, a collapsed economy?

No Teachers? No Policemen? No Firemen? No jobs? No bridges safe to travel on?