Army’s Top General Backs Troop Boost For Afghanistan

Peter Spiegel reports from Washington on defense. The Army’s top general, who has long raised concerns that repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan could damage the military’s readiness, said he backed an increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The comments by Gen. George Casey , the Army chief of staff, were the latest sign that the Obama administration is leaning towards dispatching thousands of reinforcements to bolster existing U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan. “I believe that we need to put additional forces into Afghanistan to give Gen. [Stanley] McChrystal the ability to both dampen the success of the Taliban while we train the Afghan security forces,” Casey said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” referring to the U.S. commander in Kabul. Casey declined to say whether he backed McChrystal’s specific request for 40,000 additional troops. But he joins other senior military officials, including Adm. Mike Mullen , chairman of the Joint Chiefs of ... (link)