Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
CNN
April 29, 2008
The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 PM
WOLF BLITZER: The U.S. plans a major increase in troops for Afghanistan next year. It's a new plan to try to prop up a struggling NATO program faltering in its attempts to stop the Taliban.
Let's go to our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre. He's watching this story for us.
All right, what's going on here? Why isn't NATO apparently up to the job?
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Wolf, sometimes it's hard to spot a turning point except in retrospect. But Pentagon planners are hoping that the small U.S. operation could be the start of something big.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MCINTYRE: These Marines are on a Taliban-killing hunt in southern Afghanistan, but the fresh reinforcements are also the vanguard of a much grander plan, a new American initiative to, over the next two years, reassert U.S. leadership and rescue the sputtering NATO mission, a mission that President Bush had to be coaxed to say was succeeding.
REPORTER: Do you think --
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I do. I think we're making good progress. I do.
MCINTYRE: The Marines, seen here test firing their weapons a few days ago, are part of the first major U.S. offensive in the south in years. They swept into poppy-rich Helmand province, an area along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan, which has become a lawless Taliban sanctuary.
When he reluctantly dispatched the Marine Expeditionary Unit to Afghanistan earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted it was a stop-gap measure until NATO came up with reinforcements.
DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES (January 24): This is a one time plus up, this 3,200 Marines that we're sending over there.
MCINTYRE: But sources say Gates has since given up on NATO and it's increasingly likely Marines will have to say beyond their seven month tour until early next year when the U.S. has plans to add at least two additional brigades, some 7,000 more troops to its forces in Afghanistan.
But as the most recent suicide bombing indicates, the insurgency is spreading to the American sector in the east. And last Sunday's assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai shows the man the U.S. is relying on to unify the country is just one security lapse away from death with no obvious successor in the wings. (END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: The Pentagon is resigned to the fact that aside from the British, Canadians and Dutch, NATO just doesn't seem to have the stomach for the tough fight needed to fight the Taliban. Pentagon planners are working on a new strategy that would put American troops, probably more Marines, in a lead role -- Wolf?
BLITZER: Jamie, thanks.
April 29, 2008
The Situation Room (CNN), 5:00 PM
WOLF BLITZER: The U.S. plans a major increase in troops for Afghanistan next year. It's a new plan to try to prop up a struggling NATO program faltering in its attempts to stop the Taliban.
Let's go to our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre. He's watching this story for us.
All right, what's going on here? Why isn't NATO apparently up to the job?
JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Wolf, sometimes it's hard to spot a turning point except in retrospect. But Pentagon planners are hoping that the small U.S. operation could be the start of something big.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MCINTYRE: These Marines are on a Taliban-killing hunt in southern Afghanistan, but the fresh reinforcements are also the vanguard of a much grander plan, a new American initiative to, over the next two years, reassert U.S. leadership and rescue the sputtering NATO mission, a mission that President Bush had to be coaxed to say was succeeding.
REPORTER: Do you think --
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I do. I think we're making good progress. I do.
MCINTYRE: The Marines, seen here test firing their weapons a few days ago, are part of the first major U.S. offensive in the south in years. They swept into poppy-rich Helmand province, an area along Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan, which has become a lawless Taliban sanctuary.
When he reluctantly dispatched the Marine Expeditionary Unit to Afghanistan earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted it was a stop-gap measure until NATO came up with reinforcements.
DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES (January 24): This is a one time plus up, this 3,200 Marines that we're sending over there.
MCINTYRE: But sources say Gates has since given up on NATO and it's increasingly likely Marines will have to say beyond their seven month tour until early next year when the U.S. has plans to add at least two additional brigades, some 7,000 more troops to its forces in Afghanistan.
But as the most recent suicide bombing indicates, the insurgency is spreading to the American sector in the east. And last Sunday's assassination attempt against Afghan President Hamid Karzai shows the man the U.S. is relying on to unify the country is just one security lapse away from death with no obvious successor in the wings. (END VIDEOTAPE)
MCINTYRE: The Pentagon is resigned to the fact that aside from the British, Canadians and Dutch, NATO just doesn't seem to have the stomach for the tough fight needed to fight the Taliban. Pentagon planners are working on a new strategy that would put American troops, probably more Marines, in a lead role -- Wolf?
BLITZER: Jamie, thanks.