Pentagon official: Afghan strategy not working

WASHINGTON - A top Pentagon official conceded Wednesday that coalition forces are not winning the battle against an increasingly deadly insurgency in Afghanistan, adding that the U.S. would revise its strategy for the region to include militant safe havens in neighboring Pakistan.

"I'm not convinced we are winning in Afghanistan. I am convinced we can," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in sobering testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. The testimony came nearly seven years after U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's former Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullen, who also revealed that U.S. and Pakistani military officials met Tuesday aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier, said he was already "looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region" that would cover both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26642415/

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{ We never went into Afghanistan to fight the damn Taliban. We went in to get Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. and had to push the Taliban aside to go after Bin Laden. In seven years we haven't been able to catch Bin Laden or destroy al-Qaeda so now the war seems to have become about fighting the Taliban and "nation building" a new Afghanistan.

Why?

The Afghan people are extremely conservative and hard core religious and many of them support the Taliban. Why should American and coalition troops be dying for these people? Bin Laden and al-Qaeda by most reports are in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan and that is where we should be. The rest of Afghanistan should take care of itself. President Karzai is a puppet and his own people seem to hate his guts. We should clear the region of a-Qaeda, kill Bin Laden and get out of there and come home.

No more nation building!!! Don't you think?}