• “Every time we launch one of our unmanned drones from Kansas and kill 100 people, we make 100,000 new enemies.”
• The presidential polls in Afghanistan were “despicable”,
• “Hamid Karzai has stolen the election”…“Now the question is whether he gets away with it.” US president Jimmy Carter
• President Obama should not be sending more troops to that country
• “Americans have turned against the war in Afghanistan.”

WASHINGTON – Former US president Jimmy Carter, who has monitored elections in countries across the globe, Tuesday called the presidential polls in Afghanistan “despicable”, and that President Barack Obama should not be sending more troops to the troubled country.

“Hamid Karzai has stolen the election,” the former president told a small group of donors at his Carter Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. “Now the question is whether he gets away with it.” Carter’s comments came as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, said the US military would need to send more troops to Afghanistan to battle the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

“A properly resourced counter-insurgency probably means more forces and without question, more time and more commitment to the protection of the Afghan people and to the development of good governance,” Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Obama has already sent tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan than his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Official counts have given the Afghan president, who was installed after a US-lead coalition toppled the Taliban in 2001, 54 per cent of the vote. His main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has alleged fraud and a recount is currently underway.

Carter said the election reminded him of past fraudulent elections he had seen, where only 20 per cent of people in a particular precinct were recorded as voting — with 100 per cent of the vote in the area going to a particular candidate. “This is something which President (Barack) Obama is struggling with,” Carter said. In his comments, former president Carter strongly disagreed with the policy, saying, “Americans have turned against the war in Afghanistan.”

And, “Every time we launch one of our unmanned drones from Kansas and kill 100 people, we make 100,000 new enemies.”

Rather than increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan, Carter said, “I would negotiate with locals.”

Speaking about the decline of violence in the US-occupied Iraq, Carter argued, “It wasn’t the surge of American troops that had caused an increase in calm, but General David Petraeus’ willingness to pay bribes and pay Iraqi soldiers.” The same strategy, he said, could also be used in Afghanistan. The Nation. New America Media, New Report, Aaron Glantz, Posted: Sep 15, 2009