March 5th, 2013
12:44 PM ET

Mattis wants 13K troops staying in Afghanistan

The top U.S. commander for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region has recommended to President Obama that 13,600 American troops stay in Afghanistan after 2014, a number that is potentially higher than what the administration wants to leave in the country.

At a NATO meeting in February, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said up to 12,000 troops could stay behind, but not all of those would be American troops necessarily. But Gen. James Mattis, head of the U.S. Central Command, revealed the new recommendation to the Senate Armed Service Committee on Tuesday at a hearing.

FULL STORY
Post by:
Filed under: Afghanistan • Military
soundoff (9 Responses)
  1. saywhat

    Why leave at all?
    After all Cheney had declared that we would be there for a 100 yrs.

    March 5, 2013 at 12:52 pm | Report abuse |
  2. saywhat

    The past 11 years have witnessed great period of peace , stability , good will and then no blood shed. Let it go on.

    March 5, 2013 at 12:54 pm | Report abuse |
  3. Brilliant strategist

    Let's quit and run away, like we did in Vietnam and Iraq. The aftermath turned out so well. Now that the most incompetent SecDef in history joins the swift boat liar on Community Organizer's team, national security will be a walk in the park. We don't need ships, or planes, or nukes. Give peace a chance!

    March 5, 2013 at 1:20 pm | Report abuse |
    • banasy©

      Lol. Yeah, okay.

      March 5, 2013 at 2:26 pm | Report abuse |
    • Pete

      @Brilliant,that man Kerry has more medals fighting for our country in Vietnam than 90% of those war mongering idiots like McCain you call hero..Boy are you ignorent !!And remember visit who was Swift Boat if you didn't know was T Boone Pickens the windmillman that Bushs hired to lie to idiots like you because they knew you'd fall for it hook ,line and sinker!! Boy ,ignorence abounds here and here's another one found!!

      March 5, 2013 at 9:07 pm | Report abuse |
  4. saywhat

    I'm sure other powers like Russia,China,India who benefited immensely from our misadventures and foolishness would be praying for our return to that.
    Hope to God for our sake that the new Secy Def. and State don't contribute to gigging an even bigger hole for us.

    March 5, 2013 at 2:22 pm | Report abuse |
  5. Name s kel

    I wrote a good reply to so called brilliant , of course cnn never posted it. Cnn who ever took over the blog site needs to be fired. To much deleting on your end means less people comming on here. Real smart cnn.

    March 5, 2013 at 3:23 pm | Report abuse |
  6. ronvan

    And just what will OUR soldiers, that remain, be doing? Training? Have we not been doing that for a couple of years now? WE, and others, recognize that OUR military is the best equipped & trained in the world, YET, it takes about 3 months to "train" our soldiers. So just when are the afganistans going to get trained? If they don't have it by now then cut bait and get the heck out of there! They will just return to their old ways, and history, anyway.

    March 6, 2013 at 6:00 am | Report abuse |
  7. saywhat

    I also did post a reply to @brilliant yesterday. never appeared

    March 6, 2013 at 12:09 pm | Report abuse |
« Back to main