The lion cometh.

 Hear him roar:

Statement by Keith Urbahn
Office of Donald Rumsfeld
December 4, 2009

“White House officials are not credible in denying President Obama’s intended meaning when he said on Wednesday night that ‘commanders’ were ‘repeatedly’ denied additional troops and resources in Afghanistan.

The administration now claims President Obama was actually referring to denials of troops by his own Secretary of Defense in 2008. This is obviously not what the President meant. If it is what the President meant, he owes an apology to General McKiernan for dismissing him, for it was General McKiernan who sought additional forces in 2008.

This looseness with the facts seems to be a pattern in the current administration’s efforts to blame their challenges on their predecessors. Nearly one year into this administration, that approach is wearing thin.

Afghanistan has always posed challenges, but in the judgment of the commanders at the time, Afghanistan was properly resourced for at least the first five years of the conflict. Those resources were aligned with proper and achievable goals: eliminating an al-Qaida sanctuary and preventing further terrorist attacks against the United States.”

If they fail to adapt...

...or treat OEF Part 2 like the Riverine Squadron debacle, no, they won't have a place in McChrystal's war. 

 Killer takeaway quote:

The main obstacle to a major Navy role in Afghanistan is not material, but cultural. The Navy’s leadership is dominated by line officers. This perpetuates an institutional culture valuing warships and warplanes. However, the enemy has neither fleet or coastline. All the carrier strike groups in the world will not find victory in the mountains of Afghanistan. To win over the hearts and minds, McChrystal’s strategy requires a surge of a new sort: of nurses, doctors, dentists, engineers, and civil-affairs units, the domain of the staff corp officer. While staff corp officers have a secondary role in the Navy’s traditional warfighting focus, they have played a major part in the Navy’s humanitarian and development cruises. Staff corp officers might not be able to plan a defense of the North Atlantic, but they can run health clinics, manage construction projects, and coordinate with NGOs. They are America’s soft-power specialists. If the Navy is going to take advantage of the humanitarian and development institutional knowledge of its staff corp officers, it must overcome its cultural biases towards the interests of line officers. In the 1980s, the Soviet Army learned that Afghanistan was not the Fulda Gap. Now, the US Navy must accept it is not the Taiwan Strait either.

Truer words have never been spoken. Certainly not by a SWO. They all threw up in their mouth a little.

Read it all here.

Here we go.

Says Neptunus Lex.

Why were we there again?

Wasn't it to prevent tom-foolery like this?

Think what you want of Bush and unilateral foreign policy, but this is now an Obama administration problem. And a vexing one at that.

And so it begins.

The witch hunts, that is. If you're a politically correct O-4, O-5, O-6+
or senior enlisted, do yourself a favor and roll before they roll over on you.

 Because that's what this is.

Progressives tell POTUS, "hell no, let's not go."

 Heh.

Good luck with that. 

Silly rabbits - didn't anyone tell you the decision has already been made?

Intel agencies are elevating turf battles over their actual jobs.

It just wouldn't be the same if they didn't do nonsense like squabble over this.

34K

is the number McClatchy is reporting POTUS has settled on to send to Afghanistan for COIN: revisited.

    34

+ 15K Navy and Air Force Individual Augmentees

+ 6K Reservist mobilizations / IRR call-up's

= 55K