The Afghan National Army consists of almost 40,000 soldiers today, with several thousand more in training.
I was involved in their first major combat operation in January, 2003. They are motivated. There are some really, really good leaders in there, too. (There are some duds, too. They are working to weed them out). Many of the early officers were taken for political reasons, and you often have guys on the same staff who fought against each other some time in the last couple dozen years.
Ultimately, these guys will shoulder the load and we'll go home. They take more of it all the time.
I think Scheuer is mistaken to give as much credence as he does to the statements of Taliban spokesmen. Also, he seems to suggest that the opposition of Hekmatyar and Haqqani is something new. Both of those guys were with the TB and against us from Day One, even though both had fought against the TB.
The idea that Massoud's guys will flip as a unit... unlikely. More likely they will break up into separate factions as Atta, Daoud and Fahim Khan all have their own vision. The other two are nominally loyal to FK at this time, who is nominally loyal to the government.
Afghanistan has not had a functioning, legitimate central government since 1973. All these guys have decades of experience in which you needed to be loyal to family, tribe, and ethnic group above all.
As far as Scheuer's comments about tracking people down... I suspect that, although he was an agency guy, he was a Langley weenie that never walked that ground, and certainly didn't look at it with the eye of a combat infantryman or guerilla campaigner (as I do). It is very, very good terrain for hiding. Which is an understatement that should produce peals of laughter from anyone else who's been there.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
post 19 is right on - unless the bases of operation in Pakistan are attacked with air power, we won't be able to close this out.