shocker!!!!! Gates Signals He’s Open to More Troops in Afghanistan

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duh...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates signaled on Thursday that he was open to an increase in American troops in Afghanistan and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was now a “sense of urgency” about the eight-year-old war and that “time is not on our side.”

In a joint news conference with Admiral Mullen at the Pentagon, Mr. Gates said his previous concerns about the American “footprint” becoming too big in Afghanistan had been “mitigated” by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, President Obama’s hand-picked commander who took over American and NATO forces in the country in June.

Mr. Gates said that although he had long been worried that a large number of American forces would alienate the Afghan population, as happened when the Russians had 120,000 troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s, he was taking seriously the views of General McChrystal, who has indicated that the size of the force is less important than what it does.

“Where foreign forces have had a large footprint and failed in no small part has been because the Afghans concluded they were there for their own imperial interests and not there for the interests of the Afghan people,” Mr. Gates said. But he said that Mr. McChrystal’s efforts since June to reduce civilian casualties and interact more with Afghans “has given us a greater margin of error in that respect.”

The change of view on the part of Mr. Gates is important because he is expected to be an influential adviser to Mr. Obama as the president weighs in the next weeks whether to add more American troops to Afghanistan. In the past, Mr. Gates has expressed some skepticism about a buildup.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/us/politics/04military.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print