WASHINGTON: The top US military officer on Tuesday urged Congress to approve billions of dollars for the war in Afghanistan, warning the Taliban was gaining influence across the country.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers that “without your continued support, we will not be able to show the meaningful progress in Afghanistan that the commander-in-chief has ordered, the American people expect and the Afghan people so desperately need.”
He warned that the “Taliban have a growing influence in most of Afghanistan’’s provinces, and the border area between that country and Pakistan remains the epicenter of global terrorism.”
President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress for 33 billion dollars in supplemental funding this year to pay for a surge of US troops and for 159 billion in the 2011 defense budget to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As part of Obama’’s surge of 30,000 reinforcements, nearly 4,500 troops have deployed and about 18,000 forces would be in place by “late spring,” Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He said the remaining troops would arrive “as rapidly as possible over the summer and early fall.” Defense officials said the pace of the surge was on track.
The surge meant that more US troops would be in Afghanistan than Iraq by the middle of this year, said the admiral, who was joined at the hearing by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
“Right now, the Taliban believe they”re winning,” Mullen said.
But he said that in 18 months, “if we”ve executed our strategy, we”ll know that they won”t — that they can”t.”
He acknowledged that prevailing would mean “more sacrifice and more bloodshed” but added: “the stakes are too high for failure.”
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