US troop buildup carries high costs in lives and money

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WASHINGTON — If President Barack Obama orders tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan next Tuesday as expected there will be an enormous cost both in terms of soldiers' lives and money.


White House spokesman Robert Gibbs admitted Wednesday that each extra American soldier deployed will be at a cost of a million dollars a year, not including the added expense of training and maintaining a security force.


Casualties have been steadily rising since Obama took office, and sending in more troops is likely to translate into many more encounters with Afghan insurgents and therefore fatalities.

More than 800 American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan, and October was the deadliest month since the start of the war in 2001 with 74 US soldiers killed.

Obama "must prepare the US and the world for the fact that the present level of US, allied, Afghan, and Pakistani casualties will almost certainly double and probably more than triple before something approaching victory is won," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote last week.


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[FiveGoodMen]

1. And will provide no benefits whatsoever.

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2. as obvious as it is

. . . it still bears reminding some folks here.