Word: speech
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President Barack Obama has tied his decision to order 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to a pledge that they'll start returning home in 2011. But the President's West Point speech Dec. 1 was mute on his plans for the growing Afghan army, which remains the best - some would say only - way to bring home American personnel. His vagueness on the question of increasing the Afghan forces was understandable: the U.S. and its allies have already boosted target troop levels for the Afghan army four times, and the U.S. commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, wants the target...
President Obama's first speech about Afghanistan back in March took place in a government office building on a stage lined with bureaucrats at 9:40 in the morning, when most Americans focus on coffee, not TV. In its wake, polls showed that somewhere between 60% and 70% of the country supported his plan to send more troops to fight a seven-year-old war in a distant desert...
...according to a recent CBS News poll, including just 17% of Obama's Democratic base. So the President's aides needed to upgrade the setting, interrupt the networks' prime-time lineups and tug a bit harder at the nation's patriotic heartstrings. (Read the full transcript of Obama's speech...
...Administration that came to power by rejecting President Bush's "surge" of troops into Iraq. But nothing about Afghanistan has gone as expected. In March, his advisers spoke of the new strategy as a break from the past. Obama had then spoken of a "way forward." His speech Tuesday night was titled "The Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan...
...Obama faces pushback from members of his own party, who have been complaining loudly about the wisdom and cost of the decision. "The U.S. government is already spending $3.6 billion a month on the war in Afghanistan," said Representative Louise Slaughter of New York in a statement after the speech. "I see no good reason for us to send another 30,000 or more troops to Afghanistan when we have so many pressing issues - like our economy - to deal with in this country...