Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

tampabay.com
By William R. Levesque
November 27, 2009

With President Barack Obama poised to ramp up troop levels in Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command planners are in the midst of the military’s biggest logistical challenge since the Vietnam War.

How do you marshal billions of dollars in equipment to escalate one war in Afghanistan while scaling back another in Iraq? …

In a wide-ranging interview with the St. Petersburg Times this week, [Army Maj. Gen.] Dowd said landlocked Afghanistan presents greater difficulties than Iraq with its fewer routes of supply.

CentCom is now conducting an assessment of air strips in Afghanistan, and Dowd said engineers will have to expand them in order to resupply larger numbers of troops by air.

“I’m a little concerned about” airfield capacity, Dowd said. “We’ve got to expand and make it better.” …

Obama is expected to announce next week an escalation of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan that will send as many as 30,000 additional troops on top of the 68,000 already there.

Much of the U.S. equipment in Iraq will never return to the states.

Often, it isn’t cost-efficient to do so, planners say.

Much of it will be sold to Iraqi security forces, Dowd said. Other gear not sent to Afghanistan after refurbishment in Kuwait might be placed in storage somewhere in CentCom’s area of responsibility, which includes 20 nations in the region. …

www.tampabay.com/news/military/war/centcom-planners-study-massive-move-of-equipment-to-afghanistan/1054693

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Americans Seek Up to 7,000 Extra NATO Troops for Ramp-Up in Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com)
By Peter Spiegel and Stephen Fidler
November 23, 2009

The Obama administration is in advanced talks with its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies for a coordinated rollout of a new Afghan war strategy, which U.S. officials hope will include a commitment by European allies to send several thousand additional troops.

U.S. and European estimates of the new troops they may get from NATO allies vary from 3,000 to 7,000. Those would complement the additional U.S. forces Mr. Obama is considering; those options range from 10,000 to 40,000, but U.S. officials have said a combination of combat troops and training forces totaling 35,000 has gained the most momentum. …

According to people briefed on U.S. plans, the Obama administration is targeting six European allies to contribute battalion-sized units, generally about 500 to 1,000 troops. Officials say they are most hopeful they can get commitments from Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Italy, which has 2,800 troops in Afghanistan, has signaled it would be willing to keep deployed the 400 added soldiers it sent as part of stepped-up security surrounding the August Afghan elections. An Italian official declined to comment. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown likewise has signaled intention to send 500 more troops, and Turkey has recently announced it is doubling its current complement from 800 to 1,600.

Both Germany and the United Kingdom could find it politically difficult to commit more troops — at least in the coming weeks. …

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125875420517357953.html

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The Wall Street Journal
Alan Cullison
November 17, 2009

Pentagon Pledges Improved Transparency and Plans Open Hearings in a Move to ‘Increase Credibility’

Officials unveiled a new $60 million detention facility at the main U.S. air base in Afghanistan and promised greater transparency at a prison where Afghans have long suspected hundreds of their countrymen are being held for dubious reasons.

The new prison and the pledge to open the inmate review process come as the Department of Defense worries that abuses and militant recruiting within Afghan prisons are helping strengthen the Taliban. A Pentagon review earlier this year called for a broad overhaul of the Afghan penal system, as well as of the U.S.’s prison at Bagram Air Base.

The old Bagram prison is housed in a Soviet-era machinery hangar. Critics of the old prison, where two inmates died after being interrogated in 2002, have referred to it as “Obama’s Gitmo.” …

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125832165575649413.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

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PRESS TV
October 18, 2009

While Washington is weighing its options on sending more troops to Afghanistan, the US army is spending billions of dollars on upgrading its bases in the war-torn country.

The Washington Post said on Sunday that the US military has wanted to spend 1.3 billion dollars on more than one-hundred military projects across Afghanistan.

Based on the report, 30 million dollars of the money will be spent on the main US base located near the northern Afghan city of Bagram.

The move is aimed at ensuring that Afghanistan’s infrastructure can support US and NATO forces for years to come.

The US military has already spent roughly 2.7 billion dollars on construction in the last three years.

This comes as Washington says it closed its 2009 fiscal year with a record 1.4 trillion dollar budget deficit.

The report comes as US President Barack Obama is weighing a request for the deployment of an additional 40,000 troops in Afghanistan.

www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=109029&sectionid=351020403

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