This significant new policy is apparently being planned for Spring 2009:
The Pentagon chief, who has been in the position for two years, added that he wanted to send another three brigades of combat ground forces and an aviation brigade, beginning as early as next spring.
A Pentagon official said the plans are likely to be drawn up before Mr Obama takes office on Jan 20. Most will be sent to the poppy-growing South, where the need for more Western forces is greatest, and where 8,000 British troops are currently fighting.
A spokesman said the final number was likely to be "well north of 20,000", and indicated that countries such as Britain already fighting in the south would not face strong US demands to provide more troops.
If you think the numbers involved are large, read on:
Some analysts believe Washington ultimately will need more than 100,000 troops to stabilise Afghanistan before the Afghan army is ready to take over security.
"I suspect that to succeed in Afghanistan, we're eventually going to have to swing a sizeable fraction of what we now have in Iraq into Afghanistan," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"The scale of the shift will be large, and the time needed to pull it off will be long," he said.
Perhaps a gradual withdrawal from Iraq is not going to provide relief for the hard-pressed troops after all.
How will the American public react if war is also going to be a distinguishing mark of the next presidency?
And will this new focus change world opinion on what the US is about when it comes to foreign policy?
w ww.telegraph.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)
). I don't even live in the US. I'm just an
inhabitant of this planet who believes diplomacy has been dropped in recent years in favour of the bullet (-and look at the mess it's got us
into). 
