Afghans cool to prospect of more U.S. troops

In the Helmand River Valley, where more American troops have shed their blood this year than anywhere else, the police chief has a simple message to the Obama administration as it debates whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. Four thousand Marines arrived in Helmand in July carrying a new strategy: set up camp on the ground they capture. Today, 32 of their men dead, the Marines have brought a shaky peace to the valley and spend as much time protecting the population as hunting the Taliban. Asadullah Sherzad, the province's police chief, praises the additional troops and thanks the United States for sending them. But that does not mean he thinks more Americans should come. "As many foreign forces can come here as they want," he told ABC News. "But without Afghan forces, they won't be effective." In a fractious country, that was the most widely held opinion expressed in two dozen interviews conducted by ABC News in Kabul and across the country's most volatile provinces.