and to route the insurgents from the area, in which he was in control. i went along with a lieutenant colonel steve lutsky, to visit with a redoubtable afghan figure called sadran, flamboyant turbine wearing dyed moustached guy around since the stone age, an extraordinary figure, who s a tribal leader of some renown. at one point, he was on the american side, against the taliban war and later, when president karzai named him to be governor of the province and the people didn t like him there, he shelved that town and abandoned for a while, come back into the fold, was an mp, just lost his parliamentary seat when we went to see him. colonel lutsky went to see him in this meeting i was present to ask him if he could feel the
colonel lutsky had to be diplomatic and say, obviously, we d keep these options under consideration but how about we go forward with the local police initiative? and the tieoff was, lutsky asked him about a house, he knew this warlord, really, was building in the city. he asked him when he would finish it and he said to him, quipped, well, i ll finish it when you guys give me enough money to and they all laughed. it s this horse trading bizarre politics really. dr. jeffrey sachs. john, we heard just a few minutes ago about the kill-capture campaign, which seems to be the pentagon s real strategy, that they can kill enough of the key taliban and insurgents to turn the tide. just what do you think about that, in terms of numbers, recruitment and what you are seeing, and the ability to
paramilitary force and auxiliary force called the initiative, something the petraeus doctrine has seen as potentially useful bolster to our transition efforts with the afghan national army most of you know is accident-prone. and is seen as less than successful. the idea is having villagers who will stand up, militias of their own who will do the fighting for us and in places we don t really have an adequate armed force to transition to. and in this meeting, he s seen many such young cornelilonels c and go in his time and wting to hear what lutsky had to say to him and said we would like to know if you d be interested in this and he suggested he had an alternative idea, how about he give him 20 hand-picked men, the americans armed them, give them communications and then fly them in apaches to where the enemy were and you will bomb them when we tell you to. how about that?