On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, held a press briefing to discuss developments in Afghanistan. The appearance came days after the submission of a review by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama recommending American strategy.
We'll have a full analysis tomorrow on this, but here's the key point, beyond the spin and bluster about a "new" approach to "protect the Afghan people". While Gates and Mullen would not comment on the troop increase in McChrystal's review, there will now be a process of several weeks in which the Administration will strike a serious pose about the build-up, possibly even spinning against the military to assert its authority and maintain some limits, before a "compromise" of another 20,000 to 25,000 US troops is authorised. That will bring the total of American forces, when you add in the "private" contractors and security units to about 150,000, more than the Soviets had in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Meanwhile this morning, the US-NATO strategy of protection killed up to 90 Afghans when jet bombers struck two hijacked fuel tankers.
SEC. GATES: Good afternoon. I want to start today with an update on where we stand with General McChrystal's assessment on Afghanistan, and then turn things over to Admiral Mullen for his perspective.
First, some context. Soon after taking office, President Obama approved the deployment of some 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help cope with the anticipated Taliban spring offensive and to provide additional security for the Afghan elections last month. Our allies and partners also sent significant additional troops to provide for election security.
In late March, the president announced a comprehensive new civil, military and diplomatic strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda in order to prevent them from launching another major attack against our country.
A new military commander, General McChrystal, was appointed to implement the military component of the new strategy. When General McChrystal took command in June, I asked him to report back to me in about 60 days with his assessment of the security situation and his thinking on the implementation of the president's new strategy.
I received that report two days ago and informally forwarded a copy to the president for an initial read.
I've asked General Petraeus, the commander of Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chairman to provide me with their evaluation of the assessment and the situation in Afghanistan, and will send their views plus my own thoughts to the president early next week. I expect that any request for additional resources would follow after this process and be similarly discussed by the president's national-security team.
All of this is being done as part of a systematic, deliberative process designed to make sure the president receives the best military information and advice on the way ahead in Afghanistan. As I said earlier, what prompted my request for this assessment was the arrival of a new commander in Afghanistan, not any new information or perceived change in the situation on the ground. My request and General McChrystal's response both are intended to help us effectively implement the president's March strategy, not launch a new one.
Admiral?
ADM. MULLEN: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I would just add a couple of thoughts. First, on process, as the secretary indicated, he's asked the chiefs and myself to review General McChrystal's initial assessment and provide our thoughts, our advice. The chiefs and I have already met twice in the tank this week to discuss it, and we're planning at least one more session later on. My intention is to wrap up our review by Friday.
Our job -- and it's one we take very seriously -- is to provide the secretary and the president our best military advice. And we're going to do that with a clear eye not only on the needs in Afghanistan but also the needs of the force in general and on our other security commitments around the globe.
Second, it's clear to me that General McChrystal has done his job as well, laying out for his chain of command the situation on the ground, as he sees it, and offering in frank and candid terms how he believes his forces can best accomplish the mission the president has assigned to him.
And that is what this whole thing is about: the mission assigned, the strategy we've been tasked to implement. There has been enormous focus on troop numbers and timelines lately, lots of conjecture, lots of speculation.
I understand the interest in those things, and it's legitimate. Those numbers represent real units, real people and real families. But the troop piece of this is just that. It's a piece, critical, but it's not total.
What's more important than the numbers of troops he may or may not ask for is how he intends to use them. It should come as no surprise to anyone that he intends to use those forces under his command to protect the Afghan people, to give them the security they need to reject the influence the Taliban seeks.
Now, you've heard me talk for much of the last two years about Afghanistan. You know how much I remain concerned about the situation there. There is a sense of urgency. Time is not on our side.
I believe we understand that. And I believe we're going to regain the initiative, because we have a strategy. We have a new approach in implementing that strategy. And we have leaders on the ground who know the nature of the fight they are in, leaders who know that the other people and the other families who matter just as much, in this fight, are the Afghans themselves.
Our mission is to defeat al Qaeda and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven again. We cannot accomplish that alone. We'll need help from other agencies and other countries. But we will also need the support of the local population.
So in my view, the numbers that count most are the number of Afghans we protect. As one villager told a visiting U.S. lawmaker recently, security is the mother of all progress.
SEC. GATES: Lara.
Q Thanks. A question for both of you. New polls show that public support for the war in Afghanistan is eroding. They're coming just as you prepare to go to Congress to ask for funding to fulfill General McChrystal's anticipated resource request. How concerned are you that the fading support will make it harder for those requests to be fulfilled, and how concerned are you both about this idea, that the war is slipping through the administration's fingers, is taking hold with Americans?
SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, I don't believe that the war is slipping through the administration's fingers. And I think it's important -- first of all, the nation has been at war for eight years. The fact that Americans would be tired of having their sons and daughters at risk and in battle is not surprising.
I think what is important is for us to be able to show, over the months to come, that the president's strategy is succeeding. And that is what General McChrystal is putting in front of us, is how best we can, at least from the military's standpoint, ensure that we can show signs of progress along those lines.
But I think it is also -- there is always a difference between the perspective in terms of timing in this country, and certainly in this city, and what's going on in the country. And I think what's important to remember is, the president's decisions were only made at the -- on this strategy were only made at the very end of March.
Our new commander appeared on the scene in June. We still do not have all of the forces the president has authorized in Afghanistan yet, and we still do not have all the civilian surge that the president has authorized and insisted upon in Afghanistan yet.
So we are only now beginning to be in a position to have the assets in place that -- and the strategy or the military approach in place to begin to implement the strategy. And this is going to take some time.
By the same time (sic), no one is more aware than General McChrystal and certainly the two of us that there is a limited time for us to show that this approach is working, and certainly for the secretary of State and the president as well, because there is this broader element of the strategy that goes beyond the military.
But I would just say we are mindful of that. We understand the concerns on the part of many Americans in this area, and -- but we think that we now have the resources and the right approach to begin making some headway in turning around a situation that, as many have indicated, has been deteriorating.
Q And the Chairman doesn't --
SEC. GATES: I'm sorry. Go --
ADM. MULLEN: The only thing I'd add to that is, this has been a mission that has not been well-resourced. It's been under-resourced almost since its inception, certainly in recent years. And it has -- and part of why it has gotten more serious and has deteriorated has been directly tied to that. President Obama has approved the troops, approved the civilians that, as the secretary indicated, are literally in many cases just arriving on scene.
I talked about a sense of urgency, and I do believe we have to start to turn this thing around from a security standpoint over the next 12 to 18 months.
I think the strategy's right. I -- we know how to do this. We've got a combat-hardened force that is terrific in counterinsurgency. And to listen to General McChrystal, he believes it's achievable, and I think we can succeed.
That said, it's complex. It's tough. We're losing people, as everybody knows. And yet that's the mission that the president has given us in the military, and it's the one that we are very fixed on carrying out.
Read rest of transcript...
Friday, September 4, 2009 at 17:28 
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Amidst the current debate about gathering and disseminating news beyond the "mainstream" media, a lesson comes out of a false story on Iran.
Today, on Iran's "weekend", should be a political catch-your-breath day after the culmination of Parliament's approval of 18 of 21 proposed Ministers for the Ahmadinejad Cabinet. News slowed to a standstill last night, and there is almost nothing of significance this morning. There are Friday prayers in Tehran, but no sign that they will produce the headline statements of the last three months, from the Supreme Leader's 19 June drawing of the post-election line to Hashemi Rafsanjani's 14 July intervention to President Ahmadinejad's hard-line anti-opposition pitch last week.
Chavez's Diplomatic Dive Bombing of Israel: