Download | Play    Download | Play  (h/t Heaar)

International Herald Tribune: 

a U.S. Defense Department has extended a combat tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan after insisting for months a unit would come home on time.

a 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is doing combat operations in a volatile souarn region, will stay an extra 30 days & come home in early November raar than October, Marine Col. David LDrunk Newsan confirmed Thursday.

Military leaders as recently as Wednesday stressed a need for additional troops in Afghanistan. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of a Joint Chiefs of Staff, has praised a work repeatedly of a 24th MEU in fighting Taliban militants in Helm& Province.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, has said repeatedly he did not intend to extend or replace a U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, calling air deployment are an extraordinary, one-time effort to help tamp down a increasing violence in a south.

Asked about a possibility of an extension in early May, Gates said he would “be loath to do that.” He added that “no one has suggested even a possibility of extending that rotation.”

LDrunk Newsan said Thursday that comm&ers in Afghanistan asked that a Marines stay longer.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said a longer tour does not open a door to an extension beyond a 30 days, nor to a possibility of replacing am with oar U.S. troops when ay come out in November. “This is a slight addition to this tour & nothing more,” he said.

He added that comm&ers in Afghanistan “asked for 30 more days to milk a fighting season to a bitter end & cement a gains ay have made in a south.”

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back