White House: Afghan decision in coming weeks

[unhappycamper]

White House: Afghan decision in coming weeks
By Lara Jakes - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Nov 1, 2009 13:18:59 EST

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is still weeks away from deciding whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, the White House said Sunday amid pressure from lawmakers to settle on a war strategy despite muddled politics and concerns of corruption in Kabul.

Top White House advisers said Obama’s painstaking review, ongoing since early September, would not be hampered by Sunday’s announcement from the top challenger in the Afghan presidential runoff election that he would withdraw from a race he was likely to lose.

“I expect the president will make a decision within weeks,” senior Obama adviser David Axlerod said. “As you know, he has gone through a very rigorous process because the goal here is not just to make an arithmetic judgment about the number of troops, but to make sure that we have the right strategy.”

Axlerod said former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah’s decision to withdraw means that Afghan President Hamid Karzai all but certainly will remain in power.

“We are going to deal with the government that is there,” Axlerod said. “And obviously there are issues we need to discuss, such as reducing the high level of corruption. These are issues we’ll take up with President Karzai.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/11/ap_afghanistan_debate_110109/

[notesdev]

1. What's to decide?

Just make the politically easiest decision (some minimal amount of extra troops), it's what's going to happen anyway, so why wait? Keep that status quo and those military contracts flowing, and laugh at those silly anti-war voters who thought different rhetoric meant an expectation of different policy.