Afstan: More US troops "sooner rather than later"?

Things seem to be moving forward, especially with increasing success in Iraq:

Pentagon leaders have signaled a buildup in U.S. forces in Afghanistan "sooner rather than later" - a shift that could come this year as they prepare to cut troop levels in Iraq.

Faced with an increasingly sophisticated insurgency, particularly along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, U.S. defense officials said yesterday that they expect sending more troops to have a significant impact on the violence.

"I think that we are clearly working very hard to see if there are opportunities to send additional forces sooner rather than later," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told Pentagon reporters.

He added that no final decisions or recommendations have been made.

His comments suggested an acceleration in what had been plans to shift forces there early next year.

And they came as the political discourse on Afghanistan as a key military priority escalated on both Capitol Hill and in the presidential campaign.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who recently returned from meetings with commanders in Afghanistan, said they clearly want more troops now.

"It's a tougher fight, it's a more complex fight, and they need more troops to have the long-term impact that we all want to have there," said Mullen, who also met last week with Pakistani leaders.

Pentagon officials have been wrestling with how to provide what they say is a much-needed military buildup in Afghanistan while they still have 150,000 troops in Iraq...

Mullen, who was in Iraq last week, told reporters he is likely to recommend further troop reductions there this fall. He said he found that conditions in Iraq had improved more than he expected.

"I won't go so far as to say that progress in Iraq from a military perspective has reached a tipping point or is irreversible - it has not and it is not," Mullen said during the Pentagon news conference.

"But security is unquestionably and remarkably better. Indeed, if these trends continue, I expect to be able early this fall to recommend to the secretary and the president further troop reductions."..

Gates said commanders are looking at moving forces around to take advantage of a small boost in French troops expected in Afghanistan. But he ruled out rolling back some of the promises the Pentagon made to soldiers about limiting their deployments to 12 months.

"I think we're looking at a variety of options on how to respond here," Gates said. "I will tell you that I have sought assurances that there will be no return to longer than 12-month deployments, so that's not something we're considering."..

Gates and Mullen also had strong words for Pakistan, saying that Islamabad must do a better job of preventing Taliban and other insurgents from crossing the border into Afghanistan to wage attacks.

The absence of pressure from the Pakistanis, Gates said, is giving militants a greater opportunity to penetrate the porous mountain border. He said the key is to convince the Pakistani government that its country is also at great risk from the insurgents.

Gates said it is an exaggeration to say the border problems have escalated into a war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And he dismissed as untrue suggestions that the U.S. is massing troops along the border and preparing to launch attacks into Pakistan.

His comments came as U.S. troops abandoned a remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan where militants killed nine of them this week in a large, coordinated attack. Elsewhere in the frontier region, NATO launched artillery and helicopter strikes in Pakistan after coming under insurgent rocket fire, officials said...