Lindsey Graham: 2014 is real date for Afghanistan withdrawal
It's looking less and less likely that a serious troop withdrawal from Afghanistan will happen in 2011.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday that 2014 was the more realistic date for a drawdown.
"I think in summer of 2011 we can bring some troops home but we're going to need a substantial number of troops in Afghanistan past that," Graham told ABC's Christiane Amanpour.
"2014 is the right date to talk about. That's when Karzai suggests that Afghans will be in the lead and I'm very pleased to hear President Obama talk about 2014," he said.
"What I want to talk about is winning. Having the ability to stabilize Afghanistan and be a good partner with the United States forever. That means we're going to need military force for quite a while, post 2014 when the Afghans hopefully get in the lead," Graham continued.
"It will be great to have a couple of air bases there in perpetuity to help the Afghans send the right signal to the regions," he added.
At the same time Obama announced last year that he was sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, he also announced that a drawdown would begin in the summer of 2011.
"Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011," Obama said in a speech.
After winning back the House in November's midterm elections, Republicans signaled that the president's 2011 deadline would be a target.
"Republican Representative Buck McKeon, who was all but certain to be the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, signaled that the party would ensure that US forces have the 'time" to achieve their goals," AFP reported.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said last week that NATO should endorse Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's 2014 timetable for withdrawal.
Last Wednesday, the Obama administration began to de-emphasize the 2011 date.
Lindsay Graham...a real American. The press doesn't ask and he doesn't tell.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
good one!
The old flamer.
far left loon >.<
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So Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thinks he's the Commander in Chief?
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Starve the WAR Beast...
... Save the World.
Oh, I'm sure he likes to play "dress up".
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Look, it's really very simple - Let's get the fuck out of Afghanistan now! Not in 2011, not in 2014. As for leaving a "few" bases there - what part of "They fucking don't want us there- at all!" does Lindsey and the rest of Warmongering, DC not get?
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.
George Carlin
the Teabaggers withdraw Lindsey Graham from the US Senate?
* Assuming the don't repeal the 17th Amendment first and let the South Carolina Legislature do it before then.
"That's fu*#ing retarded."
Big City Mayor
Remember "seeing the light at the end of the tunnel"? Of course it was a light that could never be reached. So what's an appropriate version for the current stuff in the Middle East?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK2u4y7J58I
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
"What I want to talk about is winning. Having the ability to stabilize Afghanistan and be a good partner with the United States forever.
Oh yeah, Lindsey, right. I'll bet the Russians said the same thing, as did the Brits before them. Anybody who seriously talks about any foreign state as being "a partner with the United States, forever" is so out of touch with reality as to be considered delusional.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.
George Carlin
We should send the kids of everyone in Congress and the White House over there. Then we'd have a damn withdrawal.
NOBODY 2012
From George Carlin: "If you're pre-born, you're fine, if you're pre-schooled, you're fucked. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. Pro-life, these people aren't pro-life, they're killing doctors, what kind of pro-life is that? What, they'll do everything they can do save a fetus, but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it?" Yes indeed Lindsey Graham, let us sing a tune together, shall we? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9DHgnKeAxo
"No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master." - Hunter S. Thompson
Did you read the comments on that video? Most of the commentors think holy war would be a good idea. The one guy who said he's tolerant of other religions (but not of atheists) gets flamed for not being a real Christian. Of course, you have to wonder how many of those 'Christian Soldiers' have enlisted.
I'm an atheist. It really wounds me that he's not tolerant of me. Boo Hoo. I'm not tolerant of his war mongering ways.
needs to keep those dollars flowing. So the generals and 'serious people' like Ms. Graham have been delegated to convince the public that we need to keep losing for a few more years. They are pushing hard on the staying in Iraq meme as well. And it looks like the President is going to cave again, while more people die.
I read a great article today about Bobby Kennedy - the pain and loss of his life led him to a point where he asked of every policy, "What is the moral thing to do?" Even as he lay dying he asked if anyone else was hurt. President Obama needs to start asking that question.
Colonialists don't leave.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEzOgpMWnVs
...will you be out of your closet by 2014?
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
At least he speaks the truth .. what is, after all, the Anglo-American mission in Afghanistan.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
C'mon, Lindsey, tell us the truth: the USA is never leaving Afghanistan.
...dead kids, who knows how many Afganis. How does that make you feel, war pigs?
"He wrote this book here and the book says ; He made us all to be just like him So, if we're dumb, then god is dumb and maybe even a little ugly on the side".
Frank Zappa
Just like we were only going to be in Iraq for . . . "Oh about six months max - Iraqi Oil will pay for the War" "Greeted with Flowers and Candy" . . . when we started shipping out back in fall of 2001.
Damn Americans are fools.
I remember it well.
Let's see you, your kids and your grandkids humping the hills of Afghanistan, Mr. Big Talk.
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'til their judgement day comes
Yeah!
I guess that Obomba really does want to be a one term president.
...warmongering pricks. Blood drenched, evil fucks, I wish that kharma existed. If it did, there'd be a lot of dead assholes out there.
"He wrote this book here and the book says ; He made us all to be just like him So, if we're dumb, then god is dumb and maybe even a little ugly on the side".
Frank Zappa
The United States spends roughly $1 trillion each year on its bloated war/intelligence/national security complex and yet we can't even manage to "win" a war against a small handful of illiterate Muslims in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Then again, "winning" the war doesn't appear to be on the agenda. Fighting the war is what matters. It lines the pockets of the uber-wealthy defense executives (and former Congressman and military officers), pumps hundreds of billions into the American economy, and provides our nation with a strategic outpost in one of the most strategically significant areas of the world. And I'm sure the presidents, and Congressmen, and military officers don't object to the almost unchecked power and influence they have received as a result of our never-ending foreign wars.
Eisen und Blut! "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of [insert dates of pre-imperial America] - but by iron and blood." - Otto von Bismarck
...the war on terror, war on drugs, war on poverty. no end in sight, not meant to be an end at all.
"He wrote this book here and the book says ; He made us all to be just like him So, if we're dumb, then god is dumb and maybe even a little ugly on the side".
Frank Zappa
Absolutely. i mean, ""It will be great to have a couple of air bases there in perpetuity to help the Afghans send the right signal to the regions"... a couple of bases in perpetuity?
the rights fetish with war as economic machine couldnt possibly be on display any clearer than that. sounds like Bismarck would have been great chums with McCain f'rinstance.
its sad that rather than an economic machine it is (like the British Empire and others learned) a drain on the coffers - maintaining an empire seems to be economically self defeating. even if some sectors of the evonomy are given work to do (MIC). the fact that Graham blithely spouts off that 'it will be great' without any kind of consideration to or even a passing nod at the cost he just saddled the nation with - should his wet dream come true - is gobsmacking. gobsmacking in its unselfconscious unintellectual jingoism and hubris.
i wish someone could set a dollar figure on what that will cost per year, and that would be just two of the thousand and two bases eating money by the trillion. fucking deficit hawks- sorry, hypocrites..... so wideeyed to some sorts of spending and so walleyed to the rest.... no there isnt meant to be an end to it at all but if thats the case, that its perpetual, when will you face up to financial realities inherent to that? some of the regular people are getting it but the ivory towerites, the people in the Bubble keep persisting as if things can continue indefinitely with no change of course.
the worry is reality comes to bite you (collectively) on the arse before the sane/regular people convince bubble denizens something needs to change. most of the problems in the US i think are fixable without needing to junk the system - SS, medicare/aid, so forth. but not, i think, indefinite and perpetual maintenance of the military machine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkEl2U6YbMk
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Only have read the headline...
2014 is the real date, until 2013 when the real date will be 2040.
far left loon >.<
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_Has_ to make for great policy
Karsai wants 30,000 troops gone ASAP.
Graham can Fly a kite in a thunder storm.
Donaldd
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