Word: war
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...grapple with the war he inherited, President Obama has made several important changes. He and Gates fired the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in May, replacing him with General Stanley McChrystal, who is currently in the middle of a 60-day assessment of how to turn the Afghan war around. Obama is dispatching an additional 21,000 U.S. troops there this year, bringing the total to 68,000 by 2010. His commanders recently ordered 4,000 Marines into Helmand province to begin the long process of "clear, hold and build" - driving the Taliban out of its strongholds, staying there...
While Americans might believe these latest moves are helping put the Afghan war back on track, a report released on July 22 by the independent Center for Strategic and International Studies says much more needs to be done. This Washington-based think tank is no bunch of liberal do-gooders; it's run by John Hamre, a former Pentagon deputy secretary who also serves as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, which advises Gates on national-security issues...
...war, Cordesman writes, has been bungled since the U.S. launched it after the 9/11 attacks to punish the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden. "Americans need to understand that the war has been critically under-resourced for seven years, almost totally because of U.S. decisions and mistakes," the report says. "This has been the key reason the insurgents have taken the initiative." He says the Pentagon should be ready to dispatch between three and six brigade combat teams (10,000 to 25,000 additional U.S. troops) over the coming year. "This is an American-led war, and large increases...
...political and economic chaos that the conflict has created. Armed groups frequently force civilians to mine the minerals, extorting taxes and refusing to pay wages. The report quotes one miner from South Kivu: "We are their meat, their animals. We have nothing to say." (See pictures of the civil war in Congo...
...report released earlier this week, Global Witness claims that multinational companies are furthering a trade in minerals at the heart of the hi-tech industry that feeds the horrendous civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (Global Witness is the same nongovernmental organization that helped expose the violence that plagues many of the sources of diamonds.) However, the accused companies, with varying degrees of hostility, deny any culpability, saying Global Witness oversimplifies a complex economic process in a chaotic geopolitial setting. (See pictures of diamonds set on onyx and black enamel...