US Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted Monday the July 2011 date to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan was set in stone, putting him at odds with his top Afghan war commander.
Gates and General David Petraeus were in lock-step on the need for a gradual withdrawal, but a series of interviews exposed discord over the flexibility of the start date given last November by US President Barack Obama.
"There is no question in anybody's mind that we are going to begin drawing down troops in July of 2011," Gates told The Los Angeles Times.
But Petraeus, asked in a separate interview whether he could reach that juncture and have to recommend a delay to Obama because of the conditions on the ground, replied: "Certainly, yeah.
"I think the president has been quite clear in explaining that it's a process, not an event, and that it's conditions-based," he told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program on Sunday.
"The president and I sat down in the Oval Office and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice."
Afghanistan, with the help of its Western backers, is trying to build up its army and police so that they can take responsibility for security from US-led NATO forces by the end of 2014.
The Taliban, toppled in a 2001 US-led invasion, still control large swathes of the south and have put up stiff resistance to a surge of 30,000 more US troops due to swell American numbers to 100,000 in the coming weeks.
By: Brant
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1 comment:
"Mixed signals" is a wonderful way of putting it, but the confusion is by now so awful that it has to be intentional or means that something is going truly wrong. Let's say next we would read that Obama has been kidnapped at the dacha -- remember the surprise when that happened to Gorbachev.
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