Top US defense officials say that roughly 3,000 additional troops, which are classified not as combat troops but rather “combat enablers,” will be deployed to Afghanistan in the coming days.
Officials say the decision was made roughly two weeks ago, which puts it at about the same time that the Pentagon was publicly announcing that it was pulling 14,000 support troops from the nation to add 14,000 more “trigger pullers” to the conflict.
Rather, it now seems that the non-combat troops are being replaced by the combat troops, and then new non-combat troops are being added as well, effectively an escalation of the number of troops involved in the conflict under the guise of adding “non-combat” troops. This escalation comes in addition to the expected request of another 20,000 troops from Gen. McChrystal.