Obama Afghan strategy decision 'within days'

Obama has been weighing requests from military top brass for up to 40,000 additional troops to be deployed to Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama has concluded months of deliberations on whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan and will announce his decision within days, the White House said Tuesday.

- After completing a rigorous final meeting, President Obama has the information he wants and needs to make his decision and he will announce that decision within days - White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Obama late on Monday held the ninth and last in a series of meetings with top commanders and national security advisors to examine the troubled war effort against the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda allies.

The US leader is widely expected to reveal his decision next Tuesday, possibly in a nationally televised address, although a White House official said "nothing had been confirmed" about the timing of the announcement.

Obama has been weighing requests from military top brass for up to 40,000 additional troops to be deployed to Afghanistan, where 68,000 US troops are already on the ground.

US and NATO troops have been waging an increasingly costly war against a Taliban-led insurgency that is in its ninth year and taking an increasingly heavy toll on the more than 100,000 troops deployed under US and NATO command.

An administration official said Monday's meeting "possibly" is the last time Obama will consult his team before making an announcement, though he cautioned - That's not something we can say definitively. -

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama's decision on troops could be announced as early as next week.

- It's not going to happen this week - he said. - Obviously the first possible time would be some time next week.-

National Public Radio, citing unnamed sources, said that the president plans to make the announcement in an address to the nation on Tuesday, December 1.

The two-hour meeting included Obama's top defense and security aides, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Also attending via videoconference were two men very much at odds over the decision: General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Karl Eikenberry, US ambassador in Kabul.

McChrystal has cautioned that the intensifying Taliban insurgency could win out if he does not get all 40,000 troops he has requested as reinforcements within a year.

But in diplomatic cables leaked earlier this month, Eikenberry -- a retired army general who commanded US forces in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 -- warned against more troops until Afghan President Hamid Karzai gets a grip on rampant corruption in his administration.

Some of America's allies in the war, now in its ninth year, are no longer willing to wait for the tide to turn: Canada and the Netherlands have announced plans to pull their troops out in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

Gates in a speech in Canada on Friday said US forces could provide a "sustainable" replacement in the south for the departing Dutch and Canadian troops.

But he called on other allies to step forward, saying the Afghan effort will - require more commitment, more sacrifice, and more patience from the community of free nations. -

Those tensions now look set to dominate a December 3-4 meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

Obama also faces opposition to the dispatch of more troops from members of his own Democratic Party who question the wisdom of deploying additional soldiers.

Polls show the American public becoming increasingly disillusioned with the war, and some fear a deepening military commitment could dominate his presidency, as Vietnam did Lyndon Johnson's in the 1960s.

Some Democrats have called for a "war tax" to offset the cost of any troop build up, amid widespread concerns about the size of the US federal deficit.

But the military strongly favors a so-called surge, and Obama risks being denounced by Republican critics as weak on national security if he refuses McChrystal's request.

More than 800 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan and the number of casualties is rising. October was the deadliest month for US forces there since 2001 and another four US fatalities were reported Monday, while another troop death was announced on Tuesday.

Foreign troop fatalities so far this year in Afghanistan have reached 481, including 297 Americans, according to a running tally by the -icasualties- website. This compares to 295 foreign deaths for all of 2008.