NY Times, MSNBC----
Advisers to Obama Divided on Size of Afghan Force
(Discussion on the review process for U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's military assessment of Afghanistan.)
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The military’s anticipated request for more troops to combat the insurgency in Afghanistan has divided senior advisers to President Obama as they try to determine the proper size and mission of the American effort there, officials said Thursday.
Even before the top commander in Afghanistan submits his proposal for additional forces, administration officials have begun what one called a “healthy debate” about what the priorities should be and whether more American soldiers and Marines would help achieve them.
Leading those with doubts is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has expressed deep reservations about an expanded presence in Afghanistan on the grounds that it may distract from what he considers the more urgent goal of stabilizing Pakistan, officials said. Among those on the other side are Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to the region, who shares the concern about Pakistan but sees more troops as vital to protecting Afghan civilians and undermining the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been vocal in favor of more troops, and while some officials said she had not shown her hand during the current deliberations, they expected her to be an advocate for a more robust force.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has voiced concern that putting so many troops in Afghanistan would make the United States look like an occupier, but during a news conference on Thursday he sounded more supportive of the prospect.
“There is a unanimity of opinion about what our objective is, and the objective is to disable and destroy Al Qaeda and remove that threat to our national security,” said David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser. “Obviously, there are a variety of opinions about how best to achieve that objective, and it’s valuable and important to hear those views.”
The emerging debate follows the delivery Monday of a new strategic assessment by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took over all American and NATO forces in Afghanistan in June. Mr. Gates has now forwarded the general’s report of about 25 pages to Mr. Obama.
Although General McChrystal included no specific force proposals in his review, officials expect him to send a separate request in the coming weeks. Military strategists, including one who has advised General McChrystal, said he might offer three options. The smallest proposed reinforcement, from 10,000 to 15,000 troops, would be described as the high-risk option. A medium-risk option would involve sending about 25,000 more troops, and a low-risk option would call for sending about 45,000 troops.
Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, cautioned that talk about troop levels was speculation. “Anyone who tells you that they know how many troops the commander is going to ask for and the options he may or may not present doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because that has not been determined yet,” Mr. Morrell said. He said that Mr. Gates had not made up his mind about what he would recommend to the president.
Mr. Gates could be the key adviser on this decision, and some military analysts predicted that he might recommend what Pentagon officials call the “Goldilocks option” — the medium-risk one in the middle. Because he was first appointed by President George W. Bush, Mr. Gates could provide political cover for Mr. Obama should the president reject the biggest possible buildup.
Mr. Gates has long been worried that a large number of American forces would alienate the Afghan population. But at a news conference with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr. Gates said Thursday that his concerns about the American “footprint” had been mitigated by 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 it 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 General McChrystal’s emphasis on reducing civilian casualties and interacting more with Afghans “has given us a greater margin of error in that respect.”
Mr. Obama has already ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan this year for a total American force of 68,000, on top of 40,000 NATO troops. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Holbrooke pushed for those reinforcements, while Mr. Biden resisted. “It is true that Hillary was very forceful; I had some disagreement in degree with her,” Mr. Biden later told USA Today. “The president ended up landing on a spot that was where she was.”
Mr. Biden has argued that a sizable increase in resources for Afghanistan invariably means less for Pakistan, a concern born out of his frustration as a senator during the Bush administration pushing for more aid to Islamabad. In some ways, he has told colleagues, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan because extremism is on the rise there, Al Qaeda has operating room and the government of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, remains vulnerable.
Other American officials said they worried that General McChrystal simply did not have enough forces to turn around Afghanistan. Mr. Holbrooke just returned from Afghanistan, where he heard from military officers who said they needed more help to execute General McChrystal’s strategy of protecting the population from the Taliban, rather than just hunting militants.
As the president’s senior uniformed adviser, Admiral Mullen has said he worries about the impact of a buildup on the nation’s already stretched armed forces. In July, Mr. Gates announced a temporary increase of 22,000 troops in the size of the Army.
Mediating the debate will be Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser. “My job is to make sure the process works the way the president wants and everybody is at the table,” he said. “I try to be open-minded and not prejudice anything.”
He said he would ensure that dissidents got to voice their views to Mr. Obama. “He encourages vigorous debate,” General Jones said. “The thing not to do in a meeting with the president is to sit on your hands and hope you don’t get called on, because that’s a guarantee that you’re going to get called on.”
Scores Are Dead in NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan
A NATO airstrike before dawn on Friday killed 80 people or more, at least some of them civilians, in a once-calm region of northern Afghanistan that has recently slipped under control of insurgents, Afghan officials said.
NATO officials acknowledged that coalition aircraft had destroyed two hijacked fuel tankers in the tiny village of Omar Kheil, 15 miles south of Kunduz. They said they were investigating reports of civilian deaths, but stressed that the attack was aimed at Taliban militants.
German forces in northern Afghanistan under NATO command called in the attack, news services reported. Afghan officials said that the strike had killed insurgents as well as civilians who had surrounded the trucks and were siphoning fuel when the strike occurred. There were differing accounts of how many civilians were killed.
Mahboubullah Sayedi, a spokesman for the Kunduz provincial governor, said 90 people were killed but that “most of them were insurgents.”
Mr. Sayedi said some civilians had come to get fuel, and other civilians who turned out were sympathetic to the Taliban. In addition, he said, there were reports from the scene that 40 to 50 charred pieces of Kalashnikov rifles were also found, suggesting that many of the dead were insurgents.
“The village, which is on the border of the districts of Ali Abad and Char Dara, is controlled by Taliban commanders, said the Ali Abad governor, Haji Habibullah. Putting the toll at “80 to 90,” he said, “Some of them were civilians and some of them were Taliban fighters.”
But public health officer for Kunduz Province, Dr. Azizullah Safar, said a medical team sent to the village reported that 80 people had been killed, and that “most of them were civilians and villagers.”
It was clear that some of the dead were militants, he said, noting that the site was scattered with remnants of ammunition vests and other gear carried by insurgents.
A statement issued by the office of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said he was “deeply saddened” and had sent a delegation to investigate. “Targeting civilian men and women is not acceptable,” the statement added.
Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led military alliance that is commanded by an American, said officials were investigating reports of civilian casualties. “While the airstrike was clearly directed at the insurgents, I.S.A.F. will do whatever is necessary to help the community including medical assistance and evacuation as requested,” General Tremblay said in a statement.
The episode began late Thursday when a gang of Taliban guerrillas hijacked the two diesel trucks on the main highway south of Kunduz, Afghan and NATO officials said, and drove the trucks to Omar Kheil. But when they came to a river the trucks could not cross, they stopped and told villagers to siphon off the diesel, and scores turned out, Afghan officials said.
The air attack exploded the tankers, and people close to the trucks were blown to bits. Some of those farther away died from severe burns, said the police chief of Kunduz Province, Gen. Razaq Yaqoobi.
At the main hospital in Kunduz, General Yaqoobi said, he saw a dozen badly burned men in their twenties and thirties. Local people said they did not believe them men were from the area.
A spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, took responsibility for the hijackings and claimed that the casualties were all civilians. He said that when the trucks couldn’t cross the river, the Taliban decided to bleed some of the fuel from the tanks, but when local villagers found out, hundreds rushed to collect the fuel.
An I.S.A.F. press officer said that on Thursday night an Afghan command center in Kunduz reported that two fuel trucks had been stolen by insurgents. A few hours later, coalition forces saw the two trucks on the banks of the Kunduz River, said the press officer, Lt. Cmdr. Sam Truelove of the British Royal Navy.
“After assessing that only insurgents were in the area, the local I.S.A.F. commander ordered an airstrike, which destroyed the fuel trucks, and a large number of insurgents were reportedly killed and injured,” Commander Truelove said. “I.S.A.F. has received information that civilians were killed and injured in this attack, and in conjunction with Afghan officials are currently conducting an investigation.”
The Kunduz area is patrolled mainly by NATO’s 4,000 strong German contingent, barred by Berlin from operating in combat zones further south. The Afghanistan mission is deeply unpopular in Germany, and there were concerns that this episode might deepen resistance if a high number of civilian casualties were confirmed.
The overall commander of the NATO force is an American, General Stanley M. McChrystal, though individual nations retain command control over their own forces. The United States has 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, more than any other nation; other nations have about 40,000 troops there combined. Germany confirmed that its commander in the area gave approval for the aircraft to open fire, The Associated Press reported. A Defense Ministry spokesman in Berlin said it believed more than 50 fighters were killed and had no information about deaths of civilians.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for a “prompt and urgent investigation.”
“It is a vital time for NATO and Afghanistan’s people to come together,” he told SKY news. “We have a very strong NATO commitment, we need a strong Afghan commitment and obviously incidents like this can only undermine that.”
General McChrystal, who took command in June, has said would sharply restrict the use of airstrikes here, in an effort to reduce the civilian deaths that he said were undermining the American-led mission by creating anger and opposition among Afghans.
In interviews shortly after he took command, he said the use of airstrikes during firefights would in most cases be allowed only to prevent American and other coalition troops from being overrun.
Even in the case of active firefights with Taliban forces, he said, airstrikes will be limited if the combat is taking place in populated areas — the very circumstances in which most Afghan civilian deaths have occurred. The restrictions will be especially tight in attacking houses and compounds where insurgents are believed to have taken cover. It was initially unclear if Friday’s airstrike met these conditions.
“Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly,” General McChrystal told a group of his senior officers during a video conference in June. “We can lose this fight.”
Robert Gates protests AP decision to publish photos of Mortally wounded US Soldier as "Appalling"
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is objecting “in the strongest terms” to an Associated Press decision to transmit a photograph showing a mortally wounded 21-year-old Marine in his final moments of life, calling the decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency.”
The AP reported that the Marine’s father had asked – in an interview and in a follow-up phone call — that the image, taken by an embedded photographer, not be published.
The AP reported in a story that it decided to make the image public anyway because it “conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.”
The photo shows Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard of New Portland, Maine, who was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in a Taliban ambush Aug. 14 in Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, according to The AP.
Gates wrote to Thomas Curley, AP’s president and chief executive officer. “Out of respect for his family’s wishes, I ask you in the strongest of terms to reconsider your decision. I do not make this request lightly. In one of my first public statements as Secretary of Defense, I stated that the media should not be treated as the enemy, and made it a point to thank journalists for revealing problems that need to be fixed – as was the case with Walter Reed."
“I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard’s death has caused his family. Why your organization would purposefully defy the family’s wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me. Your lack of compassion and common sense in choosing to put this image of their maimed and stricken child on the front page of multiple American newspapers is appalling. The issue here is not law, policy or constitutional right – but judgment and common decency.”
The four-paragraph letter concluded, “Sincerely,” then had Gates’ signature.
The photo, first transmitted Thursday morning and repeated Friday morning, carries the warning, “EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT.”
The caption says: “In this photo taken Friday, Aug. 14, 2009, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard is tended to by fellow U.S. Marines after being hit by a rocket propelled grenade during a firefight against the Taliban in the village of Dahaneh in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Bernard was transported by helicopter to Camp Leatherneck where he later died of his wounds.”
Gates’ letter was sent Thursday, after he talked to Curley by phone at about 3:30 p.m. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said Gates told Curley: “I am asking you to reconsider your decision to publish this graphic photograph of Lance Corporal Bernard. I am begging you to defer to the wishes of the family. This will cause them great pain.”
Curley was “very polite and willing to listen,” and send he would reconvene his editorial team and reconsider, Morrell said. Within the hour, Curley called Morrell and said the editors had reconvened but had ultimately come to the same conclusion.
Gates “was greatly disappointed they had not done the right thing,” Morrell said.
The Buffalo News ran the photo on page 4, and the The (Wheeling, W.Va.) Intelligencer ran an editorial defending its decision to run the photo. Some newspapers – including the Arizona Republic, The Washington Times and the Orlando Sentinel – ran other photos from the series. Several newspaper websites – including the Akron Beacon-Journal and the St. Petersburg Times – used the photo online.
Morrell said Gates wanted the information about his conversations released “so everyone would know how strongly he felt about the issue.”
The Associated Press reported in a story about deliberations about that photo that “after a period of reflection,” the news service decided “to make public an image that conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it.
“The image shows fellow Marines helping Bernard after he suffered severe leg injuries. He was evacuated to a field hospital where he died on the operating table,” AP said. “The picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Julie Jacobson, who accompanied Marines on the patrol and was in the midst of the ambush during which Bernard was wounded. … ‘AP journalists document world events every day. Afghanistan is no exception. We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is,’ said Santiago Lyon, the director of photography for AP.
“He said Bernard's death shows ‘his sacrifice for his country. Our story and photos report on him and his last hours respectfully and in accordance with military regulations surrounding journalists embedded with U.S. forces.’”
The AP reported that it “waited until after Bernard's burial in Madison, Maine, on Aug. 24 to distribute its story and the pictures.”
“An AP reporter met with his parents, allowing them to see the images,” the article says. “Bernard's father after seeing the image of his mortally wounded son said he opposed its publication, saying it was disrespectful to his son's memory. John Bernard reiterated his viewpoint in a telephone call to the AP on Wednesday. ‘We understand Mr. Bernard's anguish. We believe this image is part of the history of this war.
The story and photos are in themselves a respectful treatment and recognition of sacrifice,’ said AP senior managing editor John Daniszewski.
“Thursday afternoon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called AP President Tom Curley asking that the news organization respect the wishes of Bernard's father and not publish the photo. Curley and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said they understood this was a painful issue for Bernard's family and that they were sure that factor was being considered by the editors deciding whether or not to publish the photo, just as it had been for the AP editors who decided to distribute it.”
The image was part of a package of stories and photos released for publication after midnight Friday. The project, called “AP Impact – Afghan – Death of a Marine,” carried a dateline of Dahaneh, Afghanistan, and was written by Alfred de Montesquiou and Julie Jacobson:
“The U.S. patrol had a tip that Taliban fighters were lying in ambush in a pomegranate grove, and a Marine trained his weapon on the trees. Seconds later, a salvo of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades poured out, and a grenade hit Lance Cpl. Joshua ‘Bernie’ Bernard. The Marine was about to become the next fatality in the deadliest month of the deadliest year of the Afghan war.”
The news service also moved extensive journal entries AP photographer Julie Jacobson wrote while in Afghanistan.
AP said in an advisory: “From the reporting of Alfred de Montesquiou, the photos and written journal kept by Julie Jacobson, and the TV images of cameraman Ken Teh, the AP has compiled ‘Death of a Marine,’ a 1,700 word narrative of the clash, offering vivid insights into how the battle was fought, and into Bernard's character and background. It also includes an interview with his father, an ex-Marine, who three weeks earlier had written letters complaining that the military's rules of engagement are exposing the troops in Afghanistan to undue risk.”
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Sources: NY Times, MSNBC, NATO, Google Maps
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