Robert Gates Visits Afghanistan

The next stage of the war in Afghanistan is in the works: Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with General Stanley McChrystal and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Monday to review plans for a new American-led offensive. The campaign will target Kandahar, the city that gave birth to the Taliban. McChrystal said he thinks that there will be enough Afghan and American forces for the assault by early summer; so far, only 6,000 of the 30,000-troop surge that President Obama have arrived. He also stressed that it will not be a dramatic offensive. “There won’t be a D-Day that is climactic,” McChrystal said. “It will be a rising tide of security as it comes.”