afghanistan

Continuing with the question of how Congress will meet the costs of escalation in Afghanistan, Matthew Yglesias flags this Politico piece reporting an initiative by House Democrats to place a one-percent surtax on “middle-class households earning between $30,000 and $150,000,” in addition to higher taxes on wealthier households. It has support not only from Rep. [...]

McClatchy reports that, after weeks of deliberation, President Obama has settled on the number of additional troops he plans to send to Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama met Monday evening with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional U.S. troops over the next year to what he’s called “a war of [...]

Apropos of my query why Peter Orszag, the chief of the White House Office of Management and Budget, wasn’t in yesterday’s all-hands Afghanistan strategy session, Josh Gerstein at Politico has a great catch:
Spotted in the official White House photo of Monday night’s war council meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the White House’s situation room: [...]

Two Algerians held for seven years without charge or trial at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay l have been acquitted after after a trial back home in Algeria, their defense lawyer said yesterday.
Faghoul Abdelli and Mohamed Terari were arrested in Afghanistan by Pakistani police following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They had [...]

Reid Wilson has the first look at a resolution being pushed by Republican National Committee member Jim Bopp, author of the infamous “socialist” resolution, that would aim to prevent future NY-23 disasters by requiring that candidates agree to at least seven of 10 issue promises in order to receive financial support from the RNC. After [...]

Just over the wires:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is holding out the possibility that Iraq’s national election could be delayed beyond January because of a dispute over the allocation of seats in parliament.

I saw in my RSS reader that four U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan in the last 24 hours. Hmm, I thought, I get emails from the International Security Assistance Force — the NATO military command in Afghanistan — and I don’t recall seeing that. So I went back through my inbox and found this [...]

Speaking of the unclear cost of escalating the Afghanistan war, I see via David Dayen and Tim Fernholz that Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, wants to treat war spending like domestic spending:

Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned that if President Barack Obama decides [...]

Chances are President Obama will announce a readjusted Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s very likely that strategy announcement will come paired with an announcement of a troop escalation. Before that happens, however, Obama will host one last all-hands-on-deck meeting with his national security team. Just added to the White House calendar is [...]

The Los Angeles Times earns your readership this morning by running a great piece digging into differing cost estimates between the White House and the Pentagon over how much a troop increase in Afghanistan will cost. The White House says it wants a thorough accounting; the Pentagon appears to be worried that such a thing [...]