Gen. McChrystal won't be asking for more US troops

At least not yet. The Secretary of Defense seems to be, er, finessing the issue:

Gates: No Troop Request In Afghanistan Review

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan will not make a specific request for more troops when he submits a review of the situation there in the coming weeks, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday [but from Aug. 11: "Gen. McChrystal said he hadn't decided whether to request additional U.S. forces. "We're still working it," he said.].

Instead, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal will assess conditions on the ground and make recommendations based on whether the mix and number of forces he has been allotted -- 68,000 by the end of the year -- is sufficient to execute U.S. strategy there, Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing held with Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright.

"We've made clear to General McChrystal that he is free to ask for what he needs," Gates said. But "any future resource request will be considered separately and subsequent to his assessment of the security situation [emphasis added]."

At a recent meeting with McChrystal in Brussels, Gates told the commander to concentrate on tasks that needed to be performed and the type of troops necessary to accomplish them rather than specific numbers, according to senior military officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal Pentagon deliberations.

With a focus on "troops-to-task" ratios, McChrystal is expected to provide a breakdown of future strategy -- including increased training requirements for Afghan forces -- that officials said could require at least 15,000 additional U.S. troops next year [emphasis added]. Obama approved the deployment of 21,000 troops this year, 6,000 of whom have not yet arrived in Afghanistan.

"What he's assessing is, have I -- have I got it laid down right?" Cartwright said of McChrystal, who took command in Afghanistan two months ago...

Gates previously expressed concern that the size of the international force in Afghanistan -- including about 30,000 non-U.S. troops from NATO and other allied countries -- could reach a "tipping point" whereby Afghans will turn against them. "I think that most Afghans see us as there to help them and see us as their partner," Gates said Thursday. "I just worry that we don't know what the size of the international presence, military presence, might be that would begin to change that."

Gates said that coalition forces "have to show progress over the course of the next year." Asked how long U.S. combat forces would be needed in Afghanistan, he said it was "unpredictable" and "perhaps a few years," and he emphasized plans to sharply increase recruitment and training of Afghan security forces so they could take over.

Over the longer term, Gates said that even if security is achieved, progress in building Afghanistan's economy and government institutions remains "a decades-long enterprise in a country that has been through 30 years of war and has as high an illiteracy rate as Afghanistan does and low level of economic development." The United States and international partners, he said, "are committed to that side of the equation for an indefinite period of time [emphasis added--but for how long will those international partners, including Canada, be willing to devote big bucks and civilian personnel?]."..