Afghanistan and Gutting the Military through Budget Cuts

By Charles Hoskinson

AS THE ADMINISTRATION WORKS toward peace talks, its assessment of the situation in Afghanistan is coming under fire for being too rosy. At Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said she’s concerned that closed-door estimates of what will happen in Afghanistan after foreign troops leave in 2014 are far grimmer than the public picture. Josh Gerstein has the story here: http://politi.co/yDtrXO
THOSE CONCERNS HAVE BEEN BOLSTERED TODAY by a secret U.S. military report obtained by British media showing that the Taliban – backed by Pakistan – expect to re-take Afghanistan when U.S. and other NATO forces leave. http://bit.ly/zeoVMh
AN ISAF SPOKESMAN CONFIRMED the existence of the report on Twitter, but noted that it was based on opinions of Taliban detainees which “must be taken in context. They are a sampling of opinions and ideals.”
AFGHANISTAN ALSO IS ON THE MINDS of HASC members today. The panel is holding a hearing on the risks of using Afghan nationals to provide security for U.S. forces. Committee spokesman Claude Chafin says the hearing stems from the killing last March of Spc. Rudy Acosta – whose father is a constituent of HASC Chairman McKeon – by an Afghan security contractor working for a Canadian firm. It’s at 10 a.m. in 2118 Rayburn.
THE AP OBTAINED A COPY of prepared testimony for the hearing from DOD officials, showing that most such killings occurred for personal reasons and were not directed or controlled by insurgent groups. The story is here: http://bit.ly/wSVzf2
MORE THREATS – Afghanistan may be the issue of the day, but talk of Iran also dominated Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, with concerns that Tehran has become more willing to launch terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Greg Miller from the Washington Post has the story here: http://wapo.st/y4Dh3X
THE HEAD OF U.S. FLEET FORCES COMMAND meanwhile pushed back against reports that the USS Ponce was being converted into a floating special operations base in the Persian Gulf. The Ponce is “not going over there as an alternate command ship; it’s not going over there as a special operating force ‘Death-star Galactica’ coming through the Gulf,” Adm. John Harvey told reporters Tuesday, according to Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio. “It’s going over there as” an interim staging base until a newer vessel can be purchased. His story is here: http://bloom.bg/xmiigO
CONSERVATIVE GROUPS HAVE BEEN working to beat back the proposed cuts in Pentagon spending. One of them, the Center for Security Policy, is releasing a state-by-state breakdown of the economic impact of the cuts today at a 9:30 a.m. briefing in 2103 Rayburn. “It is our hope that by bringing this information to the local employers, citizens and community and business leaders who will bear the brunt of this tsunami, they will be better able to prepare for it – and, ideally, to help stave it off,” the center’s president, Frank Gaffney, said. You can see a copy of their report here: http://bit.ly/zhLydD