The US ambassador in Kabul has written to the White House to oppose sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

In a leaked cable, Karl Eikenberry said President Karzai's government should first prove it would tackle corruption.

The message arrived amid intense debate over strategy, with President Obama yet to make a decision on troop numbers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8356094.stm

2950 Days, 300 Billion Dollars, 911 Dead Americans – End the War, Bring back the Troops: Congressman Eric Massa (D) calls for recalling the US troops from Afghanistan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJ_4BrFVp4

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?_r=2&src=twt&twt=nytimes

Afghanistan is a country the size of Texas, with only a handful of major roads. So when the U.S. military wants to haul gear, supply isolated outposts, reposition forces, or evacuate wounded troops, the first, best and sometimes only option is to do so by helicopter.

Which means that the demand for helos at most U.S. bases far outstrips the supply. And the helicopters that do fly operate under unforgiving and often dangerous conditions, as we saw in Monday’s twin copter calamities, which killed 14 Americans. In short, helicopters are the irreplaceable connective tissue of the Afghanistan war effort — and its potential Achilles’ heel. “It’s our strategic weak point,” a defense official told Danger Room.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/helicopters-achilles-heel-of-the-afghanistan-war/

THE POLITICAL SCENE about the C.I.A.’s covert drone program. On August 5th, officials at the C.I.A., in Langley, VA, watched a live video feed relaying closeup footage of one of the most wanted terrorists in Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, on the rooftop of his father-in-law’s house.

The video was captured by the infrared camera of a Predator drone—a remotely controlled, unmanned plane that had been hovering, undetected, two miles or so above the house. The C.I.A. remotely launched two Hellfire missiles from the Predator, and Mehsud and eleven others died.*)

There was no controversy when, a few days after the missile strike, CNN reported that President Barack Obama had authorized it. However, there was widespread anger after the Wall Street Journal revealed, at about the same time, that during the Bush Administration the C.I.A. had considered setting up hit squads to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives around the world.

Hina Shamsi, a human-rights lawyer at the New York University School of Law, was struck by the inconsistency of the public’s responses. She said of the Predator program, “These are targeted international killings by the state.”

http://www.the-peoples-forum.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=15053

*) This was actually attempt #16 – the first 15 drone attacks on him, missed their target.

A slight majority of Americans think that the war in Afghanistan is turning into another Vietnam, according to a new national poll which also indicates that nearly six in 10 oppose sending more U.S. troops to the conflict.

Fifty-two percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say the eight year long conflict has turned into a situation like the U.S. faced in the Vietnam War, with 46 percent disagreeing.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/19/cnn-poll-will-afghanistan-turn-into-another-vietnam/

When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.

Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6875376.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

On the eighth anniversary of the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the spotlight is on the Obama administration's evolving war strategy in a nation long known as the "graveyard of empires."

The current discourse on what is now dubbed "Obama's War" focuses on the number and composition of troops, as well as the overarching strategy (counter-insurgency, rapid withdrawal, a mix of military and reconstruction operations).

But we should not lose sight of another consequence of the October 7, 2001 invasion: the detention of thousands of people suspected of being hostile to the United States. They remain held at prisons at Guantánamo, Bagram Air Field, and elsewhere. They have now become Obama's enemy combatants.

http://counterpunch.com/berrigan10132009.html

President Barack Obama is quietly deploying an extra 13,000 troops to Afghanistan, an unannounced move that is separate from a request by the US commander in the country for even more reinforcements.

The extra 13,000 is part of a gradual shift in priority since Obama became president away from Iraq to Afghanistan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/obama-afghanistan-troop-deployment

London: A poll commissioned by BBC radio suggests that more than half of all Britons oppose their country's military campaign in Afghanistan.

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed by pollster ICM said they opposed the war and only about 37 percent supported it.

http://www.dailytownsman.com/article/GB/20091007/CP01/310079963/-1/CRANBROOK/bbc-poll-more-than-half-of-britons-oppose-their-countrys-campaign&template=cpArt