Exclusive: Obama's Secret Afghan Exit Formula

Well I guess it's not a "secret" anymore. The question will be is this just an announcement for political gain, or will the withdrawals from Afghanistan soon begin? It won't take long to find out.

From the article:

June 11, 2011
Obama is keeping under wraps a hush-hush plan for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan—and he hopes it will satisfy those pushing for a quick exit and the diehards determined to stay the course, Leslie H. Gelb reports exclusively.

By July 15, President Obama will unveil a plan to reduce U.S. forces in Afghanistan by upward of 30,000, but to withdraw them slowly under military guidance over 12 to 18 months, according to administration officials.

In sum, the quick exiters get the big 30,000 or so number, and the die-harders get one last year-plus at near full strength to weaken the Taliban. Ain’t democracy grand? Officials caution that since no announcement will be made for almost a month, and since Obama is still being battered from all sides, the projected withdrawal total and end dates could change somewhat. No one, not even Obama’s most intimate national-security aides—Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough, and Ben Rhodes—can be certain of their boss’ final calculations, but key officials feel confident that the president’s secret thinking will generally hold.

and this part was interesting:

Nor should the president shy away from establishing the centrality of the U.S. economy in U.S. national security. Saving money in Afghanistan is nothing to run away from, as White House press secretary Jay Carney sought to do last week. “Obviously every decision is made with a mind toward cost,” he said, “but this is about U.S. national-security interests, primarily.”

source


Ok, now let's also work on getting the majority of our troops out of Japan and Germany. World War II has been over for more than sixty years, and those withdrawals alone will save billions of dollars each year.

Originally posted by manta78


Ok, now let's also work on getting the majority of our troops out of Japan and Germany. World War II has been over for more than sixty years, and those withdrawals alone will save billions of dollars each year.

edit on 6/12/2011 by manta78 because: (no reason given)

good point...exactly how many countries are we sitting our troops in as "watchdogs" being payed for by american tax dollars? too many if you ask me...it's like the government wants our military to be situated in every single country on the planet

Wow.... is everyone conned by Obama? You realize we ar e only bringing home US soldiers. We are not leaving now will we save one cent.

Its actually going to cost more because Obama working closely with Hillary are contracting 7 different mercenary groups including Xe (former blackwater) to replace them.

And their plan includes keeping those mercs staffed till 2023.

Thats just Iraq.



Lets hear the plan for the Stan.

I'm listening.

reply to post by Shadowalker


how about you provide some proof for what you're saying?

It googles. Zero-Hedge did a repeat article. The first was MSM. You can find it there at zero.

The disclosure leaves out two 'special security' groups. If I remember right one was haliburton. I know two contractors have security groups in addition to the named five that will replace our service folks.


I would pull it up but I'm cooking for the next week so I cant' get back here to the pc for a while.

reply to post by Shadowalker


After some google searches I found this report which relates to what you are saying:

More Mercenaries Than Troops in Afghanistan

Of the $200,000,000,000.00 (200 billion dollars) spent on the War in Afghanistan each year, just over half is spent on private defense contractors. We have a completely volunteer military now and the numbers just are not sufficient to get the job done, or so we are told. More than half of all personnel fighting in Afghanistan are civilians and this trend appears to be the wave of the future (see graph below). War is no longer about what we think is right in the world and fighting against oppression for others in foreign countries, it is BIG BUSINESS, and that is what we are fighting to maintain.

What we have been told, all along, was our reason to be in Afghanistan was to catch Osama bin Laden. Well, we have done that, but our military chiefs and private contractors will now tell us that Pakistan is a threat and that there will be a replacement for Osama bin Laden. They will tell us that we must keep our presence there because al-Qaeda still has a presence there. They will continue to spend billions of dollars of taxpayers' money for this undertaking, and they will continue to borrow billions of dollars from countries like China to finance this war.

source

reply to post by manta78


Thats not the article but it says part of the same thing. My google-fu isnt bringing it up but I was pretty sure the zero-hedge one covered everything.

I just sat down after cooking all day so give me a min to loosen up and look.

Basically even when we have all of our soldiers out we will be paying the very same thing to replace them all with private contractors. So in the long run as soon as they do the swap we pay market rate for private soldiers and we are a victim anytime they want to raise their rates.

This still isn't the right one either.

rt.com...

The one I read friday named every company and showed how its an even wash. One for one replacement to pull out troops from Iraq.