As it now stands, the administration's plan calls for sending three Army brigades from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. and the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y. and a Marine brigade, for a total of as many as 23,000 additional combat and support troops.
Another 7,000 troops would man and support a new division headquarters for the international force's Regional Command (RC) South in Kandahar, the Taliban birthplace where the U.S. is due to take command in 2010. Some 4,000 additional U.S. trainers are likely to be sent as well, the officials said.
The first additional combat brigade probably would arrive in Afghanistan next March, the officials said, with the other three following at roughly three-month intervals, meaning that all the additional U.S. troops probably wouldn't be deployed until the end of next year.
Note the timeframe. Our Iraq surge put in a new brigade per month and we can't do better than a brigade per three-month time period. We just can't surge better geography.
That will give us 8 Army brigades and two Marine brigades when the reinforcement is completed.
I think it should be enough to win. But I seem to be in the minority on this issue.
More importantly, has our president decided to win the war? That's his most important decision.
UPDATE: No decision has been made:
"Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false," Jones, who generally keeps a low public profile, said in a prepared statement Monday night. "He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources."
Silly me, assuming a decision had been made.
Somone in the military may be trying to salvage as much of their troop request as they can with a leak.
