"We have tested all the assumptions"

By Steve Hynd

I'm loathe to link uber-dork Jake Tapper but he does have the story of the day:

Senior administration officials tell ABC News that President Obama at his war council meeting tomorrow will assess four different specific strategies for Afghanistan and Pakistan, including two different options put forward by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

At his meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, October 30, President Obama asked Pentagon officials to assess in detail two other strategy options, including the missions, troop requirements and cost.

All four options increase the levels of US troops in Afghanistan. The president has not yet been presented with those new assessments.

All four options will be discussed in detail when the Joint Chiefs and other senior officials meet with the President tomorrow.

Rumors that Obama had already decided on 34,000 troops seem to have been exaggerated some and it appears Obama will now decide when he returns from his trip abroad, but all the options do involve a troop increase. Obama told ABC News:

�I've been asking not only General McChrystal, but all of our commanders who are familiar with the situation, as well as our civilian folks on the ground, a lot of questions that, until they're answered, may -- may create a situation in which we resource something based on faulty premises,� Mr. Obama said, �And I want to make sure that we have tested all the assumptions that we're making  before we send young men and women into harm's way, that if we are  sending additional troops that the prospects of a functioning Afghan  government are enhanced, that the prospects of al Qaeda being able to  attack the U.S. Homeland are reduced.�

His obligation, the President said, is to make sure that �whatever investments we make are leading to a safer United States, are sustainable.�

�There are a whole host of those questions that we have worked through systematically.  I have gained confidence that there's not an important question out there that has not been asked and that we haven't asked -- that we haven't answered to the best of our abilities. And as a consequence of the process that we've gone to, I feel much more confident that when I issue my orders, that not only do we have a better prospect of success and we are serving our men and women in uniform well, but that we are not also looking at an indefinite stay in -- where we have bought, essentially, a -- a permanent protectorate of Afghanistan that I think would be unsustainable.� [Emphasis Mine - S]

There's a logical disconnect here though. The one thing that never seems to have been on the table is a timetabled withdrawal. That's not too surpising. As Gen. Jim Jones told Spiegel, "generals always ask for more troops" and the civilians who might have raised it as an option are deliberately ignoring arguments applied to Iraq from 2006 to 2008 - arguments they often made themselves - that the only way to force political reconcilliation and better governance from a host nation that is fully aware it is propped up by Western military force is to announce a date certain for the end of that prop.