White House National Security Adviser James Jones has warned US commanders in Afghanistan that they will not receive more troops beyond those already promised by President Barack Obama.
"There was talk about… coming in with more requests," Jones told McClatchy, the parent company of a group of US newspapers, on Wednesday following a tour in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
However, he noted, "everybody had their day in court, so to speak, before the president made his decision. We signed off on the strategy, and now we're in the implementation phase."
In a separate interview published Thursday, the top American military officer retorted that no limits had been placed on the number or types of troops that General Stanley McChrystal, the new US commander in Afghanistan, can request.
Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said McChrystal was leading a 60-day assessment of the campaign in Afghanistan and had been advised to tell Obama, Mullen and Pentagon chief Robert Gates: "Here's what I need."
"There are no preconditions associated with that," Mullen told The Washington Post. "He's… been told, 'In this assessment, you come back and ask for what you need.' There are certainly no intended limits with respect to that kind of request."
McChrystal's predecessor, David McKiernan, had requested 10,000 additional troops to deploy to Afghanistan in 2010, but the request was not met before he left his post under orders from the Obama administration.
Jones said Obama might agree to fulfill that demand, but not before next year.
Obama has dispatched 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, bringing the US contingent there to a total of 68,000 by the end of the year.
Some 57,000 US troops are currently on the ground in Afghanistan alongside 33,000 troops from nearly 40 nations operating under a NATO-led force in a bid to bolster the Kabul government against a mounting Taliban insurgency.
In the first major assault of Obama's new war plan, nearly 4,000 Marines poured into Helmand province Thursday in Afghanistan's south, a stronghold for the Taliban and the opium trade that helps finance the insurgency.
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