WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is set to announce a blueprint for bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan that is expected to reduce the number of troops by up to 5,000 next month, as well as a broader plan for recalling the rest of the 30,000 surge forces he sent there in 2009.
The plan Obama will announce in a speech Wednesday is designed to put the U.S. on a path toward giving Afghans control of their own security by 2014.
Obama was given a range of options for the withdrawal last week by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. The military favors a gradual reduction in troops but other advisers are advocating a significant decrease in the coming months.
The president has said he favors a significant withdrawal, his advisers have not quantified that statement.At a democratic fundraiser in Washington Monday night, Obama said that by the end of the year, "we will be transitioning in Afghanistan to turn over more and more security to the Afghan people."
Following the announcement on the drawdown, Obama will visit troops Thursday at Fort Drum, the upstate New York military base that is home to the 10th Mountain Division, one of the most frequently deployed divisions to Afghanistan and Iraq.
While much of the attention is focused on how many troops will leave Afghanistan next month, the more telling aspects of Obama's decision center on what happens after July, particularly how long the president plans to keep the surge forces in the country.
Obama is expected to at least map out the initial withdrawal of the surge troops when he addresses the public. But whether those forces should come out over the next eight to 12 months or slowly trickle out over a longer time is hotly debated.
Military commanders want to keep as many of those forces in Afghanistan for as long as possible, arguing that too fast a withdrawal could undermine the fragile security gains in the fight against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the al-Qaida training ground for the Sept. 11 attacks. There are also concerns about pulling out a substantial number of U.S. forces as the heightened summer fighting season gets under way.
Retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he believes the initial drawdown should be "modest."
But other advisers are backing a more significant withdrawal that starts in July and proceeds steadily through the following months. That camp believes the slow yet steady security gains in Afghanistan, combined with the death of Osama bin Laden and U.S. success in dismantling much of the al-Qaida network in the country, give the president an opportunity to make larger reductions this year.There is also growing political pressure on Capitol Hill for a more significant withdrawal. Twenty-seven senators, Democrats as well as Republicans, sent Obama a letter last week pressing for a shift in Afghanistan strategy and major troop cuts.
"Given our successes, it is the right moment to initiate a sizable and sustained reduction in forces, with the goal of steadily redeploying all regular combat troops," the senators wrote. "The costs of prolonging the war far outweigh the benefits."
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, differed with that assessment. He told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday that he agreed with Gates in hoping the withdrawal would be "modest."
"I believe that one more fighting season and we can get this thing pretty well wrapped up," McCain said.
There is broad public support for starting to withdraw U.S. troops. According to an Associated Press-GfK poll last month, 80 percent of Americans say they approve of Obama's decision to begin withdrawal of combat troops in July and end U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan by 2014. Just 15 percent disapprove.
Obama has tripled the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan since taking office, bringing the total there to about 100,000. The 30,000-troop surge he announced at the end of 2009 came with the condition that he would start bringing forces home in July 2011.
The president took months to settle on the surge strategy. This time around, aides say the process is far less formal and Obama is far more knowledgeable about the situation in Afghanistan than he was in 2009, his first year in office.
Aides say Obama won't be overhauling the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan as he starts the drawdown. Instead, they say he sees it as a critical part of the process to end the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and turn security responsibility over to the Afghans.
On a trip to Afghanistan earlier this month, Gates advocated for a comprehensive decision from the president.
"I think to make a decision on July in complete isolation from anything else has no strategic meaning," Gates said. "And so part of that has to be kind of, what's the book end? Where are we headed? What's the ramp look like?"
Gates is retiring from the Pentagon June 30.
There are also indications that the administration, having learned from the U.S. experience in Iraq, will set deadline dates for the drawdown as it progresses, in order to keep pressure on the Afghans and give Congress mileposts.
With Iraq as a blueprint, commanders will need time to figure out what they call "battlefield geometry" — what types of troops are needed where. Those could include trainers, intelligence officers, special operations forces, various support units — from medical and construction to air transport — as well as combat troops.
Much of that will depend on where the Afghan security forces are able to take the lead, as well as the state of the insurgency. Part of the debate will also require commanders to determine the appropriate ratio of trainers versus combat troops.
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Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns contributed to this report.
The FDA's new warning labels to scare you away from cigarettes
Following many other countries, U.S. warning labels on cigarette packages are about to get a lot more guilt-trippy. This morning, federal health officials unveiled nine new warning labels that will be plastered over cigarette packages next year. "The graphic images will include photographs of horribly damaged teeth and lungs and a man exhaling smoke through a tracheotomy opening in his neck," reports The New York Times. "The Department of Health and Human Services selected nine color images among 36 proposed to accompany larger health warnings." Secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius issued a statement praising the graphic photos as "frank, honest and powerful depictions of the health risks of smoking and they will help." Meanwhile, big tobacco is threatening legal action saying "the images would unfairly hurt their property and free-speech rights by obscuring their brand names in retail displays, and by demonizing and stigmatizing the companies," reports the Times. The FDA was given the power to more heavily regulate the tobacco industry following anti-smoking legislation President Obama signed into law two years ago.
22 killed in suicide car bombings south of Baghdad
BAGHDAD (AP) — Suicide bombers detonated two explosives-laden vehicles early Tuesday near a government compound by a southern Iraqi governor's home, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi officials said.The attacks come as Iraq's top political factions started to discuss in earnest whether to ask some of the U.S. troops to stay beyond the Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline because of the security situation.
While violence is well below what it was during the years that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, militants are still able to launch deadly attacks. The ongoing violence has led to concerns about what happens when the 47,000 remaining U.S. troops are withdrawn.
Still, such violence is rare in the mostly Shiite province of Diwaniyah, which is 80 miles (130 kilometers) outside of Baghdad and well south of most of the insurgent strongholds.
Diwaniyah Gov. Salim Hussein Alwan said he was leaving his house when a suicide bomber rammed into a police checkpoint outside his house.
"I was in the garage preparing to leave when the attacker hit the police barrier outside and crashed with their vehicle," Alwan told The Associated Press in a phone interview.Minutes later, another suicide bomber attacked a compound housing the governor's office and other governmental buildings, according to a police officer and two medical officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to journalists.
At least 37 people were wounded in the attacks which occurred at about 7:30 a.m. when security forces were changing shifts, the officials said.
Like most government buildings in Iraq, the governor's house and office are surrounded by walls, and visitors must pass through checkpoints manned by security forces to get inside. The attackers did not appear to make it through the security perimeter but blew themselves up at the checkpoints."I had no idea what happened," one security personnel told Iraqiya TV from his bed at the hospital. "I heard only an explosion, flew to the air and went back to ground," he added as his neck and abdomen were bandaged.
No one has claimed responsibility of the attack, but suicide bombings are the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The last major attacks in Diwaniyah had been in 2009 when a bomb attached to a bus killed six people and 2007 when roadside bomb targeted a police patrol, killing at seven officers.
Hamid al-Mutlaq, a Sunni lawmaker and member of the parliament's security and defense committees, blamed Tuesday's attacks on political disputes that have delayed the selection of top security posts.
Iraq's prime minister has failed to fill the top posts at the interior and defense ministries more than five months after he seated his government for a second term. The country's warring political factions have been unable to agree on who should run the powerful and sensitive positions."We have said before that there is a failure in the security forces and they are infiltrated," al-Mutlaq said.
In Baghdad, a bomb attached to a minibus killed the driver while the bus was traveling Tuesday in the capital's western Harithiya neighborhood, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Mousawi said. It was not immediately known what was the motive was behind the attack.And two soldiers were killed and five other people were wounded when a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army patrol in Baghdad's eastern Palestine Street, a police officer said.
Also Tuesday, an al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility for a brazen attack last week against a government compound in northeastern Iraq. Assailants set off a suicide car bomb and then stormed the compound in Diyala province, killing nine people.
The Islamic State of Iraq, a front group for al-Qaida in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for a number of recent attacks on government facilities similar to the one carried out last week in Baqouba.
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Associated Press writers Hamid Ahmed and Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.
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