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has hit back hard at Dick Cheney

The decline in Barack Obama's popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 7:38PM BST 22 Oct 2009

Telegraph.co.uk

Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.

His current approval rating - hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle - is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating.

The bad polling news came as Mr Obama returned to the campaign trail to prevent his Democratic party losing two governorships next month in states in which he defeated Senator John McCain in last November's election.

Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: "The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September.

"Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent."

Mr Obama is also facing widespread criticism for his drawn-out decision-making process over what to do next in Afghanistan.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6409721/Barack-Obama-sees-worst-poll-rating-drop-in-50-years.html#

I don't know that we need more troops. Afghanistan, obviously, isn't Iraq, and at some point you start to experience the law of diminishing returns if you keep sending more troops.

We need to decide what our strategy is, and then figure out how many troops we need to execute that strategy. More troops with the wrong strategy won't get us anywhere.

The key to any counterinsurgency campaign is building an indigenous army. We can fight the Taliban all we want, but if we don't build an effective Afghan army, it won't accomplish much.

As to Bosnia I agree but I tend to think we should be occupying less of the world anyway. However Bosnia isn't causing ongoing US casualties and is far less expensive then remakes of Iraq or Afganistan.

It doesn't seem to me we've had a very good track record historicly remaking other countries since the WW2 exceptions of Germany and Japan.

We go into remake country situations and we never leave and have limited success so my tendency with that in mind is to be on the side of limited involvement long term in Afganistan.

By the way are Bornia and Kosavo really still a mess? We have military presence in alot of Europe. Is Germany a mess? Military presence doesn't necessarily mean we are still trying to fix a failed state at least not to the degree we are in Afganistan.