Officials: Obama advisers are downplaying Afghan dangers

[tonymctones]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3330066

As the Obama administration reconsiders its Afghanistan policy, White House officials are minimizing warnings from the intelligence community, the military and the State Department about the risks of adopting a limited strategy focused on al Qaida , U.S. intelligence, diplomatic and military officials told McClatchy .

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments have found that the Taliban and other Pakistan -based groups that are fighting U.S.-led forces have much closer ties to al Qaida now than they did before 9/11, would allow the terrorist network to re-establish bases in Afghanistan and would help Osama bin Laden export his radical brand of Islam to Afghanistan's neighbors and beyond, the officials said.

[tonymctones]

McClatchy interviewed more than 15 senior and mid-level U.S. intelligence, military and diplomatic officials, all of whom said they concurred with the assessments. All of them requested anonymity because the assessments are classified and the officials weren't authorized to speak publicly.

[Ex Coelis]

the situation on the ground may have changed since the last time I was there, but when I was we were kicking serious ass

you don't hear about everything on the news

[headhuntersix]

We are..the Marines have done some great work...but the Taliban have finally come out to play as u may have seen at Wanat and last weekend. They hit those fobs with over 300 guys. We're wacking em...last weekend they hit a Fob with 200 Taliban and we got maybe 150 of them., They had aircraft stacked all the way up...Apache's to a B1. the Choppers did gun runs all afternoon I guess. Apparently there was low cloud cover so they couldn't get good fires until the late afternoon. They smoked the heavy weapons the Taliban brough in and the our medivac was able to get in but our kids didn;t want to leave..typical. I don't know when u were last there...i was there in 06-07. It was hot for u guys and the Brits..it wasn't that bad for us until late summer. Its kinda like Iraq..we're digging em up but our guys are going to get killed. We'll see what happens.