Updated at: 0054 PST, Friday, December 04, 2009 WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama said he'd send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. But the actual number could be higher.Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he asked the president for flexibility on the number in case military commanders in the field request additional medics or troops trained to detect improvised explosive devices.Gates told a Senate committee Thursday that he got approval for the 30,000 troop deployment to be expanded by as much as 3,000 if necessary.Obama had granted authority to the defense chief to send up to 3,000 medics, intelligence analysts, bomb disposal specialists and other support troops if necessary to safeguard American combat forces, Gates told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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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