WASHINGTON: Seeking a new direction in a war that has gone downhill, the Obama administration is replacing the top U.S. general in Afghanistan with a commander who has special-forces experience.Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a senior administrator with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will take the place of Gen. David McKiernan once confirmed by the Senate. Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez will become McChrystal's deputy with the Senate's approval, which Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked be granted as soon as possible. ``Today we have a new policy set by our new president. We have anew strategy, a new mission and a new ambassador,'' Gates said Monday as a news conference. ``I believe that new military leadership also is needed.'' McKiernan's exit after less than a year comes as more than 21,000 additional U.S. forces begin to arrive in Afghanistan, dispatched by President Barack Obama to confront the Taliban more forcefully this spring and summer.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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