Andrew Gray

There was no one there but us and the fake chickens.

I visited the U.S. Army's training center at Fort Polk in Louisiana this month with some fellow foreign correspondents to see soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division training for a mission in Afghanistan. For 21 days, the soldiers are meant to live and operate as if they had already deployed to the war zone. (You can see the story here.)

The center goes to great lengths to recreate the experience that troops will face in Iraq and Afghanistan. That means fireworks to simulate bomb explosions, fake blood to make casualties look realistic, and Afghan or Iraqi role-players to act as civilians, security force members and interpreters.

The Army even allows "relaxed grooming standards" for the soldiers who play insurgents -- they are allowed to grow beards and long hair to look the part.

The trainers produce a daily newspaper which reports on the previous day's events in the fictional Afghanistan, along with an enemy propaganda sheet which can be filled with lies.

But perhaps the most striking symbols of this attention to detail are the mock villages created with the help of Hollywood set-dressers. We visited one that was close to completion with C.J. McCann, the Army official in charge of the villages. It was rather eerie, standing in the otherwise empty village on a windswept day. The place felt like a cross between a ghost town and a spaghetti western set.

The fake fruit and vegetables, the fake carcasses hanging outside the butcher's shop, the washing hanging out to dry, and the uncannily lifelike fake chickens... they may seem over the top to some. But the Army says the more realistic the setting, the better the training for its soldiers.

Unlike the villages, the video below is not Oscar-worthy. It was filmed with a small, mobile phone sized camera, with the wind whipping around us. But it provides a feel for the level of detail in the villages as McCann explains how they came to be built and how they force soldiers to think about the effect they have on civilians -- even with actions as basic as getting vehicle antennas caught in power lines.

(Just in case you were wondering, TRADOC is the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command. And Fort Irwin is the Army's other major training centre in the United States, located in the Mojave Desert in California.)

For months U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have been asking for more troops and Washington has been increasingly receptive. Today, we turned the spotlight on the skeptics in this story.

How much heed should President Barack Obama pay to their concerns? As a presidential candidate, he promised to send more troops to Afghanistan and he has made the war there the top U.S. military priority. But are more U.S. forces the answer to Afghanistan's worsening violence? If so, how many more?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to make a recommendation to the president on Afghanistan in the coming days.  But Gates has already publicly supported a request by General David McKiernan, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, for up to 30,000 more troops.

Opponents of a big buildup of forces have some alternative proposals:

-- pay tribal leaders or warlords to keep al Qaeda out of their areas.

-- focus international efforts on improving infrastructure and providing humanitarian aid.

-- send a smaller number of troops to accomplish clearly defined missions, rather than large brigades of more than 3,000 which run more risk of alienating local people.

Do the skeptics have a point? Are any of their ideas worth considering? Or should Obama deploy thousands more troops soon, as President George W. Bush did in 2007 with the "surge" in Iraq, to make clear that America will not quit?

Photo credit: Reuters/Bob Strong  A soldier with the U.S. Army's 6-4 Cavalry makes his way down a mountain path during a patrol near Combat Outpost Keating in eastern Afghanistan Jan.24, 2009.

In its desire to get a new White House website up and running quickly (see our original post here), President Barack Obama's administration does not appear to have had time to get all its policy statements up to date, at least when it comes to Iraq.

The section on Iraq says that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden "believe it is vital that a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) be reached so our troops have the legal protections and immunities they need." In fact, U.S. and Iraqi negotiators agreed the draft of just such a pact back in October last year and the final text was ratified by Iraq's presidency council in early December. The agreement came into force at the start of this year.

The statement on Iraq seems to draw heavily on material from Obama's presidential campaign. But Obama will have the chance to outline his latest thinking personally when he meets with his national security team on Wednesday, his first full day in office.

For more Reuters political news, please click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Obama's motorcade en route to White House)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is leading a double life these days.
 
Maybe that's not so tough for a former spymaster but it does make for some awkward moments.
 
As the only member of President George W. Bush's Cabinet asked to stay on under Barack Obama, Gates has to juggle working for the current White House and preparing for the next administration with the president-elect's transition team.
 
"There's only one commander-in-chief at a time and so I'm not forgetting at all, for a second, who is the president until noon on Jan. 20," the former CIA director stressed to reporters on board his plane as he flew to Afghanistan this week.
 
But Gates admitted his dual role did "create some occasional awkwardnesses."
 
Sometimes, he recounted, he has to say: "I would love to come to this meeting at the White House but I actually have a meeting with the transition."
 
Gates made clear he had never missed a meeting with Bush.
 
But he added: "Let's just say that if I'm faced with a choice between attending a principals' meeting on an issue that I think is not particularly hot and meeting with the transition folks, I'll opt for the latter."

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Pool (Gates shakes hands with U.S. Air Force officials at a base in Kyrgyzstan on Dec. 11)

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is often accused of ignoring military advice, using too few troops to invade and occupy Iraq and paying the price with a war that has lasted far longer and claimed many more lives than expected.

Despite that criticism, a new book by U.S. journalist Bob Woodward shows President George W. Bush again went against the advice of top military officers in 2007 by ordering a "surge" of extra troops when violence in Iraq was at its worst.

Moreover, the book says Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney circumvented the military chain of command by using retired general Jack Keane to communicate with Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq.

Bush's supporters say the dramatic reduction in violence since then has fully justified the president's actions.

Woodward's book "The War Within" -- and excerpts published this week in the Washington Post -- certainly raise some interesting questions.

Was Bush right to overrule the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who worried that committing more forces to Iraq would stretch the military to breaking point and leave the United States at risk if a major crisis blew up elsewhere?

Had military leaders become too risk-averse and too wedded to a failed strategy, losing their sense of perspective?

What do these disagreements between administration officials and senior officers say about the state of civil-military relations in the world's only superpower?

Should the disputes be a cause for concern? Or a sign of healthy debate and strong civilian control of the military?

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain had kind words for two of his possible vice presidential picks in recent days but dropped nothing more than hints about his eventual choice.

With the Republican convention starting next Monday, McCain is expected to name his running mate in the coming days -- possibly at a rally in the swing state of Ohio on Friday, his 72nd birthday.

At a fundraising event in San Diego on Tuesday evening, he praised Mitt Romney , once a bitter rival for the Republican nomination who has now become a strong advocate for McCain on cable news shows.

"He does better on television for me than he did for himself," McCain joked, reviving a line he has used before to acknowledge Romney's efforts.

On NBC's Tonight show on Monday, he lauded Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty when host Jay Leno mentioned him.

"He's a great young man," McCain said. "He's a great governor of his state, and he's done a great job, and he was reelected in 2006. It was a tough year for Republicans."

Leno suggested Pawlenty could get "eaten alive" in a vice presidential debate with Sen. Joe Biden, the foreign policy heavyweight chosen by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as his running mate.

McCain did not agree and joked that the real difficulty would be Biden's propensity for verbosity.

"The problem for any of them might be getting a word in edgewise," he said. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

BURBANK, Calif. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who turns 72 on Friday, is used to jokes about his age, so when he appeared on NBC's Tonight Show on Monday he had no trouble countering suggestions he was around for some of the big moments in history.

Host Jay Leno suggested McCain saved Washington, D.C. from British forces in 1814.

"A lot of people think I shouldn't have," the Arizona senator joked, playing on widespread disillusionment with all branches of U.S government.

McCain noted, jokingly, that his social security number is 'eight.'

McCain also suggested Leno could be his running mate. The timing is not quite right -- the next president takes office in January and Leno is not due to stand down as Tonight Show host until next May. But Leno didn't seem interested anyway.

"I can make more doing a week in Vegas. But thanks," he joked.

McCain -- who would be the oldest person to enter the White House for a first term if he won November's election -- plays on his long political experience as a plus factor in the race against Democrat Barack Obama. But some analysts say his age could be offputting to some voters.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

 - Photo credit: Reuters/Scott Audette (McCain with his wife Cindy at an event in Florida on Aug. 18) 

John McCain's campaign has mocked Democratic rival Barack Obama as a celebrity, but the Republican candidate stepped into the world of show business himself on Monday with an endorsement from Daddy Yankee, a Reggaeton star from Puerto Rico. McCain introduced Daddy Yankee , 31, at a high school in the senator's home city of Phoenix, ArizonaThe star, in a black shirt and sporting sparkling earrings and dark sunglasses, hugged some of the female students, prompting screams from the audience.

Some reporters covering McCain (including this correspondent) had not heard of Daddy Yankee and had at best a hazy understanding of Reggaeton, a style of urban music which mixes hip hop, reggae and other influences. But the 71-year-old senator seemed to have at least a passing familiarity with Daddy Yankee's work. He praised the star, real name Ramon Ayala, as a "great American success story".

McCain said the singer had come from a very poor family and a part of Puerto Rico where people often make wrong choices. He noted Ayala had been married for 15 years and had three children. Later, aboard McCain's plane, the singer said he supported McCain because the senator had fought for immigration reform. "He's always been a fighter for the Hispanic community," he told reporters.

Daddy Yankee also displayed some impressive political skills when asked what one of his most famous songs, "Gasolina" -- viewed by some as having rather raunchy lyrics -- was about. "Energy independence," he replied quickly, with a big smile.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.