Obama told more troops needed for Afghan victory

US PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan has told him that without more troops the US could lose the war that Obama has described as the nation’s foremost military priority.

Obama must now decide whether to commit thousands of additional American forces or try to hold the line against the Taliban with the troops andstrategy he has already approved. Obama made clear in television interviews he is reassessing whether his narrowed focus on countering the Afghan insurgency is working and will not be rushed into a decision about more troops.

“Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it,” Gen Stanley McChrystal wrote in a five-page summary of the war as he found it upon taking command this summer.