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Mattis: DoD to account for actual number of forces in Afghanistan before asking for more

Military Times: Before the Pentagon deploys potentially 3,900 additional troops to carry out President Donald Trump’s revised strategy for Afghanistan, it will square how many boots it actually has on the ground now, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

“The first thing I have to do is ‘level the bubble,’ and account for everybody that is on the ground there now, the idea being that we’re not going to have different pockets that we are accounting for,” Mattis told reporters traveling with him in Iraq.

Officially, the Pentagon has about 8,500 troops in Afghanistan, and has reported that its force management levels are capped at 5,262 troops for Iraq and 503 for Syria.

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