Holding firm to his belief that the Department of Defense and White House need to rethink their war strategy, Congressman John Tierney said yesterday that he would vote against legislation that includes $33 billion to fund the troop surge in Afghanistan.
The vote occurred amid increased concern and doubt about the war among lawmakers who reviewed some of the 92,000 classified U.S. military reports that were leaked and published on the online site WikiLeaks.
Tierney said he did not learn anything new from the documents he reviewed.
"It's always been known to be a very hard, messy and difficult environment," he said.
The Salem Democrat called the leaks "unfortunate" and said that the material needed to be examined and scrubbed to ensure that the information in it does not endanger military personnel.
Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said yesterday that the military doesn't know who was behind the leaks, although it has launched "a very robust investigation." Morrell complained that too much was being made of the documents, of which even the most recent is at least 6 months old.
Since assuming chairmanship of the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee in 2007, Tierney has held more than a dozen hearings on issues facing U.S. policy in Pakistan, Afghanistan and broader South Asia and has also traveled to the region on several occasions.
During a phone interview yesterday, Tierney's view of the Afghanistan war was consistent with what it was last December, when he opposed President Barack Obama's decision to add 30,000 troops.
The mission, he said, should be to destabilize and eliminate al-Qaida and other terrorist threats. In Afghanistan, he favors reducing the United States' military footprint and relying on intelligence gathering and the targeted deployment of special operations forces. It has proven an effective counterterrorism strategy elsewhere, Tierney said.
He opposes the "nation-building" component of the existing Afghanistan strategy and considers the deployment of 100,000 troops too expensive, in both blood and treasure.
In his role as subcommittee chairman, Tierney has seen firsthand the perils of operating in Afghanistan. He led a six-month investigation into the Department of Defense's Host Nation Trucking Contract.
"It's a prime example of the corruption that's endemic through the entire system (in Afghanistan)," Tierney said.
The inquiry led to a report, released last month, that said the Department's outsourcing of security on the military's supply chain "fueled a vast protection racket run by a shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials and perhaps others."
Among these unintended consequences is the possibility that the trucking contract "may be a significant source of funding for insurgents," according to the report's executive summary.
"In other words, the logistics contract has an outsized strategic impact on U.S. objectives in Afghanistan," the summary said.
Late yesterday, the House voted 308-114 in favor of the $59 billion spending measure that includes money for the Afghanistan war effort.
The bill has more than $33.5 billion for the additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan and to pay for other Pentagon operational expenses; $5.1 billion to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief fund; $6.2 billion for State Department aid programs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Haiti; and $13.4 billion in benefits for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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