WASHINGTON (AP) — President Obama is dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, accelerating a risky and expensive war buildup, even as he assures the nation that U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011. The first new Marines will join the fight by Christmas.The escalation — to be completed by next summer — is designed to reverse significant Taliban advances since Obama took office and to fast-track the training of Afghan soldiers and police toward the goal of hastening an eventual U.S. pullout.
Obama: 30,000 more troops to go to Afghanistan by summer
December 2, 2009
**FILE** In this Dec. 11, 2008 file photo, then President-elect Barack Obama, right, stands with then Health and Human Services Secretary-designate, former Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, during a news conference in Chicago. Daschle’s nomination as health and human services secretary was derailed over a back taxes flap earlier this year. But that’s not stopping Daschle, a close ally of the president, from playing a significant role in Capitol Hill health care talks _ much as he’d be doing
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