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Rep. Maxine Waters articulates what a great deal of progressives are thinking about this troop escalation in Afghanistan. It's too much with no end date and we need to be getting out of that country, not escalating.

OLBERMANN: The President's new strategy for Afghanistan - are you for it or are you against it?

WATERS: Well, first of all I'm terribly saddened. After having listened to the speech, I felt bad for this young, bright, articulate President who wants to do the right thing, but made commitments during his campaign that he was going into Afghanistan, he was going to get Osama bin Laden, and now he's backed against the wall with a strategy that I think has no end. It doesn't really resonate for me.

I'm saddened because 30,000 new troops are going to go into Afghanistan; I guess they're going to be fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, al Qaeda and Taliban and where does it end? And what do we do? We have to kill all of the Taliban and we're going to try and transition that government into a democracy? I don't get it. It doesn't work for me.

OLBERMANN: Was the setting of a beginning of the end, essentially, in saying that the troop draw-down will begin by July 2011 and will be fully under way no later than January 2012. Was that not sufficient in terms of an end date, or are you suspicious that at some point the military will have to talk him out of it or try to talk him out of that end date?

WATERS: Well, for me it sounded as if we were going to begin training the Afghanistan troops in 2011. I did not hear that we were going to have them all trained and we would be able to get out. I think that he meant that to be the begin of a withdrawal, but of course we don't know when. There's no end date to it.

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The date we can all look forward to: August 31, 2010.

President Barack Obama on Friday declared that the United States would end its bloody and costly combat mission in Iraq by late summer of 2010 — but a dramatic force reduction was not expected until after Iraq's elections at the end of this year.

"Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end," he said in a speech at the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. "As we carry out this drawdown, my highest priority will be the safety and security of our troops and civilians in Iraq."

While perhaps not as newsworthy, Obama's remarks at the end of the speech were striking:

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Obama: As a nation, we have had our share of debates about the war in Iraq. It has, at times, divided us as a people. To this very day, there are some Americans who want to stay in Iraq longer, and some who want to leave faster. But there should be no disagreement on what the men and women of our military have achieved.

And so I want to be very clear: We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein’s regime – and you got the job done. We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a sovereign government – and you got the job done. And we will leave the Iraqi people with a hard-earned opportunity to live a better life – that is your achievement; that is the prospect that you have made possible.

There are many lessons to be learned from what we’ve experienced. We have learned that America must go to war with clearly defined goals, which is why I’ve ordered a review of our policy in Afghanistan. We have learned that we must always weigh the costs of action, and communicate those costs candidly to the American people, which is why I’ve put Iraq and Afghanistan into my budget. We have learned that in the 21st century, we must use all elements of American power to achieve our objectives, which is why I am committed to building our civilian national security capacity so that the burden is not continually pushed on to our military. We have learned that our political leaders must pursue the broad and bipartisan support that our national security policies depend upon, which is why I will consult with Congress and in carrying out my plans. And we have learned the importance of working closely with friends and allies, which is why we are launching a new era of engagement in the world.

The starting point for our policies must always be the safety of the American people. I know that you – the men and women of the finest fighting force in the history of the world – can meet any challenge, and defeat any foe. And as long as I am your Commander-in-Chief, I promise you that I will only send you into harm’s way when it is absolutely necessary, and provide you with the equipment and support you need to get the job done. That is the most important lesson of all – for the consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable.

It seemed as if he was striking out for common ground between the antiwar rhetoric that got him elected and his role as both commander in chief and nation's chief diplomat.

Complete remarks here.

You have to give BushCo credit - they're creative! They've managed to come up with new ways to obscure and even cover their tracks on just about everything:

The Bush administration's novel approach to budgeting for and financing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has made it very difficult to discern the true costs of the conflicts, a new report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concludes.

Historically, the United States has covered the costs of war through the annual appropriations process. Supplemental appropriations were used to cover only initial, unanticipated phases of major conflicts. But the Bush administration relied exclusively on supplemental appropriations to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until 2008 -- seven years after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan and five years after they entered Iraq.

The reliance on supplemental funding creates a misleading picture of overall requirements, said Steven Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at CSBA and author of the report, during a briefing on Monday. "A sound budgeting process forces policymakers to recognize the true costs of their policy choices," he said.

I think it's only a matter of time before we discover they've not only mislead us about the number of civilian deaths, but also lied about the number of wounded and dead American troops.

I expect we'll start to hear a lot about those and other coverups, once the new Obama administration is sworn in.