Report: Obama leaning towards 34,000 additional troops in Afghanistan (chad)

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

The first troops wouldn't arrive until March and the last of the surge troops wouldn't arrive until the end of 2010.

source

Isn't that kind of outside the one year window for success that McChrystal talked about way back in July / August?

And why 34,000 troops? As I understand it McChrystal laid out 3 options with 40,000 being a the medium risk middle path and 20,000 being the high risk bare minimum. So why 34,000? It seems that trying to split the difference here is kind of foolish.

posted by xgenghisx at 03:15 PM

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