WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon is unable to send additional combat brigades to Afghanistan this year because of constraints imposed by the war in Iraq, leaving the decision on reinforcements to the next president, a spokesman said Wednesday.
US commanders in Afghanistan have requested three more combat brigades, or about 10,000 troops, to deal with growing insurgent violence in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
ink is a question for the next administration."

By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday sought to play down the seriousness of growing violence in Afghanistan but declined to say the United States and NATO were winning their fight against Taliban insurgents.
On a day when President George W. Bush visited the Pentagon to discuss Iraq and Afghanistan with top officials, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the question of additional forces for Afghanistan may be left to Bush's successor.
Article: McCain and Obama hit crunch time in hunt for No. 2

AP The next US president and government will have to make any decisions on a sizable troop increase for combat operations in Afghanistan, a spokesman for

The message coming from the Pentagon is unequivocally clear on which war zone takes priority, “I don’t think it’s any secret to anyone out there that the focus of this building, the focus of this administration has been on winning the war in Iraq…that is the war we are now winning, ” said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell during a press briefing. “And now that we have seen gains there the dividend from those gains, we are looking to see if we can apply them to Afghanistan,” he said.
Morrell emphasized previous statements made be Defense Department official. Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has repeatedly said when speaking of the two wars, ‘In Afghanistan

AP WASHINGTON - President Bush heads to the Pentagon this morning to discuss moving more U.S. forces to Afghanistan.
Amid ever more brazen attacks by the Taliban, the Pentagon brass has made no secret of its wish to throw more units into the Afghan fight. But White House Press Secretary Dana Perino says the president is leery of pulling forces from Iraq in a way that endangers improvements there. She says none of the gains is irreversible.
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BATTLING ‘NEXT-WAR-ITIS’: “We should not starve the forces at war today to prepare for a war that may never come,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates says.