Afghanistan

Remember Afghanistan? A bit lower in priority than the Olympics.

Apparently our Dear Leader is waiting for the soldiers to step up and pay for their own health care before giving Gen. McChrystal the 40,000 additional troops requested. The reliable media, aka British media, has this to report:

Barack Obama furious at General Stanley McChrystal speech on Afghanistan
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According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.

The General's bluntness?

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".

When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."

He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.

Barbed reference? Slow pace? Surely the General understands the Dear Commander in Chief has priorities.

UPDATED 5PM Found at Contra Obama:

UPDATED 8PM Gateway Pundit offers a not-so-old quote:

"His plan comes up short. There's not enough troops, not enough resources and not enough urgency. What President Bush and Senator McCain don't understand is that the central front in the War on Terror is not in Iraq and never was. The central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the terrorists who hit us on 9-11 are still plotting attacks seven years later."

Senator Barack Obama, On the Bush war strategy, September 9, 2008

And from Jed Babbin at Human Events:

...it’s become clear that the White House will try to compromise McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops in favor of a smaller buildup or no buildup at all.

There is no course more dangerous to the lives of our troops -- and our future security -- than to do what President Obama clearly wants to do: apply Lyndon Johnson’s failed brand of indecisive warfare to Afghanistan.