Americas

Americas

Petraeus Returns to Senate Hearing

17 June 2010 01:51 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The commander of American forces in the Middle East, Gen. David H. Petraeus, carried a canister of water as he returned to the Senate early Wednesday to continue testimony about Afghanistan before the Armed Services Committee, and joked that only after his brief collapse a day earlier had he remembered a lesson from his early career: â€œAlways stay hydratedâ€, APA reports quoting â€œThe New York Timesâ€
On Tuesday, General Petraeus had been facing intense questioning on the presidentâ€™s order to begin reducing American forces in Afghanistan next year when he slumped toward the microphone on his table. He left the room for about 30 minutes, returning amid applause to blame dehydration. General Petraeus, 57, a long-distance runner who has undergone successful treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, had just flown back to Washington after a trip to Europe and the Middle East.
On Wednesday, General Petraeus repeated that the July 2011 deadline set by President Obama to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan was the date â€œwhen a process begins,â€ and â€œnot the date the U.S. heads for the exits.â€
General Petraeus, testifying with MichÃ¨le A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, said that in July of next year, the process of handing over security duties to Afghans will be continuing and that American troops would be withdrawn in a responsible manner based on conditions in the war zone.
The two are confronting intense bipartisan challenges to the Obama administrationâ€™s decision to set a deadline to start pulling troops out of Afghanistan.
At the start of the Senate panelâ€™s session on Tuesday, lawmakers posed a fundamental question: Does the administrationâ€™s timetable for withdrawal help the mission, or hurt the chances for success by undermining confidence that the United States has the will to see it through?
General Petraeus explained that the presidentâ€™s order to begin reducing American forces had two purposes. One is to underscore the â€œenormous additional commitmentâ€ in troops, civilian experts and money for Afghanistan, while the other is to convey â€œa message of urgency.â€
â€œThere was a nuance to what the president said that was very important, that did not imply a race for the exits, a search for the light to turn off or anything like that,â€ he said. â€œIt did imply the need for a greater urgency.â€
Those answers appeared not to satisfy Senators Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the committee, and John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican. Both said they continued to support Mr. Obamaâ€™s order to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but questioned setting a deadline for withdrawal.
Mr. Levin asked the general whether his support for the administrationâ€™s timeline represented his â€œbest, personal, professional judgment.â€ The formulation of the query had a subtle but unmistakable potency because senior officers are sworn to render their best military advice to the president â€” and to offer unvarnished assessments to those exercising Congressional oversight.
â€œIn a perfect world, Mr. Chairman, we have to be very careful with timelines,â€ General Petraeus said.
Mr. Levin pressed. â€œDo I take that to be a qualified yes, a qualified no or just a nonanswer?â€ he asked.
â€œA qualified yes, Mr. Chairman,â€ General Petraeus replied.
Mr. McCain was more direct. â€œI continue to worry a great deal about the message we are sending in the region, about whether weâ€™re actually going to stay or not and whether weâ€™re going to do whatâ€™s necessary to succeed, rather than set an arbitrary timeline,â€ he said.
On Wednesday, when General Petraeus reiterated the militaryâ€™s stance, Mr. McCain continued to argue that the decision to announce a withdrawal date â€œdoes not bode well for success in Afghanistan.â€
â€œIf we sound an uncertain trumpet, not many will follow,â€ Mr. McCain said. â€œAnd thatâ€™s whatâ€™s being sounded now.â€
On Tuesday, after the unexpectedly abrupt end to the session, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, pointed out that not all the additional troops ordered to Afghanistan by Mr. Obama had even arrived yet. Pentagon officials said 93,000 American troops were now in Afghanistan, a number scheduled to reach 105,000 by the end of the summer.
Mr. Morrell said the â€œpace and the breadthâ€ of the troop reduction ordered for next year â€œwill be totally determined by conditions on the ground.â€ And he stressed that the president and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates would not order the military â€œto do anything precipitous.â€
â€œWe hope conditions are such that we can draw down a large number of forces,â€ Mr. Morrell said. â€œBut it is premature to assess that now. We have a lot of work to do between now and then.â€
Before the session adjourned, Mr. Levin told General Petraeus and Ms. Flournoy of his concerns that the effort to expand and improve Afghan security forces was not proceeding rapidly enough to turn the mission over to the local authorities.
â€œWhat is disturbing and hard to comprehend is that the training mission still does not have enough trainers to process all the Afghan recruits who are signing up to join in the security forces,â€ Mr. Levin said.
Ms. Flournoy said that despite gaps in the training program, the Afghan National Army was on schedule to meet a goal of 134,000 troops this year, and that the Afghan National Police force was on track to reach its goal of 109,000 officers in the same period.
General Petraeus told the senators that â€œthere will be nothing easyâ€ about the mission in Afghanistan and that it was â€œlikely to get harder before it got easierâ€ to secure Taliban strongholds across the south.