WASHINGTON - As President Obama considers a request for tens of thousands of more troops in Afghanistan, he faces a growing number of skeptics within his own party.
Among them is Representative John Tierney, a Salem Democrat who leads a House oversight panel on national security.
“The burden of proof is on those who are advocating more troops,’’ Tierney said yesterday at the National Press Club. “I haven’t been convinced yet.’’
Indeed, Tierney said he believes the recent assessment by Army General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, raises as many questions as it answers when asking for 40,000 additional troops to mount a more comprehensive counter-insurgency campaign.
For example, the general lays out an “unrealistic time frame’’ when he predicts it will take 12 to 24 months to turn things around, Tierney asserted, noting that the Pentagon has said repeatedly that a full-scale counter-insurgency strategy can take a decade or more.
Another inconsistency, the congressman said, lies in what is widely accepted as the main objective of the US strategy: preventing Afghanistan from reverting to a haven for the Al Qaeda terrorist network.
Tierney cited statistics that suggest that fewer than 100 Al Qaeda operatives are now in Afghanistan, where the United States already has more than 60,000 troops, while the US has virtually no forces in other countries that have Al Qaeda sanctuaries. -- BRYAN BENDER
Fund-raisers familiar with the guest lists said that Wall Street firms were well represented, although the crowd included more private investors than senior managers at the big banks. At the same time, top fund-raisers said Obama brought in philanthropists and issue-driven donors who had not played a major part in political activism before 2008.
Though money is not flowing into the Democratic Party as it did in 2008 - and the party’s 2009 candidates in two gubernatorial races are struggling - Obama himself remains an attraction. A rally at the Hammerstein Ballroom sold out, with an estimated 2,700 guests paying for tickets that started at $100. At a dinner at the Mandarin Oriental - costing $15,200 per person - Obama planned to mingle with about 200 guests, officials said. -- WASHINGTON POST
The chairmen, Edwin Merwin Jr. and Jim Ulmer, wrote to the newspaper in backing Republican Senator Jim DeMint’s opposition to congressional earmarks. “There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves,’’ the officials wrote Sunday in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg.
DeMint called the comment thoughtless yesterday, and one of South Carolina’s two Jewish legislators, Democratic state Senator Joel Lourie, called on the chairmen to be removed.
Ulmer, the Orangeburg County chairman, said in a statement that the remark was “truly in admiration for a method of bettering one’s lot in life,’’ and he meant nothing derogatory.
Added Merwin, the Bamberg County chair: “I have always abhorred . . . anti-Semitism in any form whatsoever.’’
State GOP chairwoman Karen Floyd called the comment absolutely unacceptable, but said the apologies should end the matter. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS
