1st New Battalion Arrives in Afghanistan

(CBS/ AP)  Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says the first of 30,000 additional troops being sent to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.

In a Pentagon press briefing, Morrell told reporters that a Marine battalion ordered to deploy earlier this month already has "some boots on the ground," with the rest of them to be flown in before Christmas.

Morrell says "the surge has begun in earnest."

Officials say the goal is to have all 30,000 troops in place by the end of next summer.

In an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, President Obama said making the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan was the hardest of his presidency so far.

"Because when you go to Walter Reed and you travel to Dover and you visit Arlington and you see the sacrifices that young men and women and their families are making there is nothing more profound. And it is a solemn obligation on the part of me as Commander in Chief to get those decisions right," Obama said.

The President added that his speech at West Point on Dec. 1 was the most emotional speech he has given because he was speaking to the people he was choosing to deploy, many of whom may not return from war.

"And one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war," Obama said. "There was a tendency to say, 'We can go in. We can kick some tail. This is some glorious exercise.' When in fact, this is a tough business."

[NowBeWithThat]

"And one of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war," Obama said.
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Pres. Obama gave the order to send thousands of American troops into harm's way in Afghanistan, and he's still trying to blame Bush.

If we're not in Afghanistan to win, then why are we risking the lives of so many, and spending billions on this war?

Pres. Obama expends so much energy trying to distance himself from the former administration. He's so busy trying to preserve his image of an agent for change - while making the exact same decisions former Pres. Bush made.

The blame game has worn really thin at this point in his term.

Be POTUS and shut it about Bush already.

[bubbadubba]

More US police officers for Afghanistan to protect the Afghans from themselves so they don't have to fight.
Hooray!

[happytravelling]

We spend more on our military than ALL OTHER COUNTRIES COMBINED and the military continues to show how feebly managed they are. Aside from being a puppet of the Bush Regime, helping to justify the Iraq War and providing bogus intelligence and non WANTING to help prepare for a post war Iraq, they continue to try and ply us with BS. Gates statement that we are only in the first year of the real war just shows how stupid they think we are.

[OldTimeTruth]

Thanks for serving! I know most of these people that are bloging on this site have to run their mouths on this and that but I for one just want to say how proud I am of you and thanks for keeping us safe and free!

[wyodutch]

This is great news... 30,000 Americans off the unemployment line.
.
Oh sure... it costs a half-million dollars, per troop, per year to put them in Afghanistan... but what would they be doing at home except shooting pool, drinking beer, crusing Main Street and sucking-up unemployment benefits.

[JJHH3000]

Meanwhile in Western Europe and North America, apologists for radical Islam do all they can to make sure that no one dares to protect their own culture and society from the radical Islamic threat.

See below for letter written to Canadian newspaper regarding Canadian apologist, Eric Margolis.


Editor, The Toronto Sun
Toronto, ON

Dear Editor,
I am writing to express my utter revulsion with the Dec. 13/2009 column by Eric Margolis,
"Swiss fall to racist panic". What a sick display of cowering to Radical Islamists. According to Margolis, Swiss citizens who don't want to be dominated by a hostile foreign culture are "yokels" and Swiss women in particular are to be condemned for supporting the ban on Muslim minarets because of the fact that Switzerland, was regrettably slow in allowing women to vote. Does this mean that Swiss women are supposed to sit back and let the insanely misogynistic Radical Islamic culture take over their country, roll back all progress and start imposing the burqa?

Margolis has the nerve to declare the Europeans who resist Islamisization of their cities are like the Nazi's of the 1930's. Sorry, the situations are diametrically opposed. First of all, the closest thing to the Nazi movement today IS the Radical Islamist movement, not those who resist it, and immigration is Radical Islam's number one strategy. Does Margolis not consider that the Muslim population of Europe is giving people damned good reasons to be afraid. Maybe he was sleeping for the last 10 years and missed all the bombings and riots? He might not have heard of the many, many Imams who preach hatred of non-Muslims in their mosques and who openly advocate replacement of the host nation cultures with one based on Shariah law. Does he not know that Shariah law is already practised in majority-Muslim districts of many European cities, including all the barbarous unspeakably evil practises that go with it? He actually does not know that non-Muslim women are afraid to go without veils in Muslim areas in live in fear of being gang-raped by Muslim youth who are encouraged by radical Imams to see non-Muslims as sub-human? Most important of all, is he not aware that Islam is the dominant religion in a vast number of countries, and non-Muslims are actively persecuted in almost all of them? But Europeans and North Americans are supposed to sing the praises of "diversity" and (one-way) tolerance?

Is collaborator Margolis receiving money from Al-Qaeda or other Radical Islamist groups? He would be one of many multiculturalists and open-immigration advocates on Radical Islam's payroll. I hope you won't continue to despoil the reputation of your newspaper by running columns from a blinkered apologist for Radical Islam.