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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><b><i><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">For Immediate Release </span></font></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Nov. 18, 2010 </span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="5" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:16.0pt">U.S. Rep. Johnson Joins
Members in Seeking Afghan Exit</span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S.
Rep. Timothy V. Johnson today signed on to a bipartisan letter opposing a troop
presence in Afghanistan
through 2014.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> The letter
is in response to remarks earlier in the week from Defense Secretary Robert
Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, citing the end of 2014 as the key date for handing
over the defense of Afghanistan
to the Afghan government.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> “This
has become the longest war in U.S.
history,” wrote Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California and the author of the Dear
Colleague letter to President Obama. “The rate of casualties is at an
all-time high. And we have already spent $365 billion on this unwinnable
war.”</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> Rep. Johnson,
a longtime skeptic of the Afghanistan
strategy, concurred.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> “We’ve
already lost 1,400 men and women there and more this year, some 450 people,
than any other of the nine years we’ve been there,” Rep. Johnson
said. “I doubt our country is any safer for that loss of life and the expenditure
of well over $1 trillion in tax dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan remains in chaos. The government
remains inept and corrupt. We’re experiencing more casualties than ever
before and only inflaming the country by our mere presence. Civilian casualties
number in the tens of thousands.</span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"> “Afghanistan
doesn’t have an exclusive haven for terrorists who wish us harm.
They’re all over and there are smarter, more effective ways of containing
them than the conventional strategies being employed in Afghanistan. I
remain firmly opposed to continuing this war and to putting more Americans at
risk,” Rep. Johnson said.</span></font></p>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Robert Naiman<br>Policy Director<br>Just Foreign Policy<br><a href="http://www.justforeignpolicy.org">www.justforeignpolicy.org</a><br><a href="mailto:naiman@justforeignpolicy.org">naiman@justforeignpolicy.org</a><br>
<br>Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan<br><a href="http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern">http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern</a><br><br> <br>