The first bracket, which covers joint returns with a liability of up to $22,600, roughly corresponds with households earning up to $150,000. In this case a 1 percent surtax is levied so the maximum additional cost would be $226.

The second bracket applied to tax liability between $22,600 and $36,400 or roughly equivalent to joint returns for couples earning between $150,000 to $250,000, The third bracket applies to those earning over $250,000 with a tax liability of $36,400 or higher.

The rates in the second and third brackets would vary depending on how much needs to be raised to cover the prior year’s war expenditures. But as a rule, the added surtax above $250,000 would be twice the percentage added onto taxes incurred between $150,000 and $250,000.

So, basically, upper-middle-class families and more would be asked to pay for the war. Yglesias comments that it’s a “clear signal” from the House Democratic leadership that any “backbencher who feels like jumping on this bandwagon is safe to do so.”

What will the Republicans say? A new loyalty oath for GOP elected officials and candidates demands support for “military-recommended troop surges” but also for, of course, lower taxes, the catechism of the conservative movement. Which GOP impulse will prove to be stronger?

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 necessity” in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told McClatchy.

Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.

The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan policy that didn’t originate in the White House.

As TWI’s Spencer Ackerman reported last week, an escalation of this size could test the military’s ability to fulfill the president’s request.

If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.

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: Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

His name was not included in a list of participants the White House released earlier Monday, but there has been increasing talk in recent days of the cost of stepping up the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. A quick search of previously-released attendees at the meetings did not disclose Orszag’s attendance.

“Every 10,000 troops would entail a fiscal-year cost of about $10 billion, very roughly speaking,” Orszag said earlier this month at a conference sponsored by Bloomberg News. That comes out to approximately $1 million per soldier per year.

Gerstein’s colleague Ben Smith also made the same play. (Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirms Orzsag’s presence in the meeting to Gerstein here.) And just so I can hit the trifecta on linking to Politico writers, Mike Allen reports that President Obama plans to roll out a revised Afghanistan strategy next Tuesday, Dec. 1.

Faghoul Abdelli and Mohamed Terari were arrested in Afghanistan by Pakistani police following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They had previously been living in Germany, where, their lawyer said, they were involved in the illegal drug trade.

The two men apparently don’t deny drug-dealing, but they’ve consistently denied they were involved in terrorism. They also claimed that they were “brutally tortured” in U.S. custody.

The Algerian prosecutor had sought a sentence of 20 years in prison on terrorism charges.

According to The Associated Press, the verdict was reported by the Algerian state news service but not by prosecutors or the government.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee identifies ten (10) key public policy positions for the 2010 election cycle, which the Republican National Committee expects its public officials and candidates to support:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership; and be further

RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee.

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.

Clinton told reporters at the State Department Monday that U.S. officials are involved in trying to help Iraqi politicians sort out their differences over an elections law that must pass before the vote can be held.

The election is supposed to be conducted in January. Clinton mentioned no specific dates but said the election “might slip” as a result of the continuing dispute over the elections law. She expressed confidence that the voting eventually will be held.

Iraq’s upcoming election, the second since the 2005 passage of Iraq’s constitution, has no shortage of problems. Last week the Sunni vice president vetoed a cobbled-together election law intended to ensure the election could proceed on time. And today an amended law passed parliament — but only after Sunni lawmakers walked out in protest.

I suppose Clinton is saying that the United States will follow the Iraqi lead on this one. But it’s hard to shake the suspicion that if this were Afghanistan, the U.S. would possess a greater urgency about the election being held on schedule.

IJC Operational Update, Nov. 23: Norwegian Home Guard commander visits IJC; Update on ISAF Casualties

KABUL, Afghanistan (Nov. 23) – The Norwegian Home Guard commander visited the ISAF Joint Command at the North Kabul International Airport military compound Nov. 22.

Major Gen. Bernt Iver Ferdinand Brovold was the guest of Maj. Gen. Jacques Lechevallier, IJC deputy commander. During his brief visit to IJC, the Norwegian general was briefed on the different types of threats Afghan people face and the IJC counterinsurgency strategy. Key points focused on protecting the Afghan people, synchronizing good governance with responsive development and security and partnering with the Afghan National Security Forces to accelerate the growth of Afghanistan’s security capacity.

While in Afghanistan, General Brovold will visit Norwegian troops deployed here.

ISAF Casualties

Four ISAF service members died in the last 24 hours in Afghanistan.
Three service members from the United States died in southern Afghanistan yesterday. Two of the service members died as the result of an IED attack, while the third service member was killed by insurgent’s small arms fire in a separate incident.

Another U.S. service member was killed as a result of an IED detonation in eastern Afghanistan today.

With due respect to Gen. Brovold, in journalism we call that “burying the lede.”

Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, warned that if President Barack Obama decides to send additional troops to Afghanistan, it should be funded with the new tax.

“If we have to pay for the healthcare bill, we should pay for the war as well,” Obey told ABC News in an interview, “by having a war surtax.”

Obey said his proposed tax would be a “graduated” tax on income that would help offset the roughly $40 billion in new costs needed to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a cost estimated by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag.

Previously, Obey had expressed his concerns over war financing as more of a pointed question. But Tim talked to his spokesman and it appears to be a rather robust proposal:

Essentially, below the $150,000 level, the 15 percent bracket for a family, there would be an increase of one percent of your current level, so for most people that would be 15.15 percent. Separate changes would happen between the $150-$250,000 income level and above $250,000, which would be set by the president depending on his eventual decision on what to do in Afghanistan; currently, the war costs about $68 billion a year, but that could increase if the White House decides to send more troops or spend more money on development projects.

Tim writes that it will be hard for Obey’s inevitable critics “to argue against this bill in good faith.” Just wait!

Vice President Biden

Secretary of State Clinton

Secretary of Defense Gates

Ambassador Susan Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy

Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

General James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General David Petraeus, U.S. Central Command

General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Commander in Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (via videoconference)

Anne Patterson, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan (via videoconference)

General James Jones, National Security Advisor

Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor

John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security

Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, Special Assistant to the President for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Earlier in the day, Obama will meet separately and privately with Biden and Clinton. Interesting omission in light of questions about how much the increase will cost: Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The Pentagon cost includes higher combat wages, extra aircraft hours and other operations and maintenance costs, but omits such items as new weapons purchases — one-time costs that vary by year — and support equipment like spy satellites and anti-roadside-bomb technology.

The Pentagon also does not try to estimate costs of new bases for additional soldiers.

But in a memo early this month, obtained by The Times’ Washington bureau, the Pentagon’s own comptroller produced an estimate that broke with the customary Defense formula and did include construction and equipment.

According to that memo, a 40,000-troop increase would cost an additional $30 to $35 billion annually. That’s on top of current war costs — which, as the piece reports, are rather hard to determine with precision. But if we take the memo’s reported calculation of at $750,000 per soldier/sailor/airman/marine annually, then we’re looking at an existing cost of $51 billion before an escalation. (And that seems kind of small, no?) Why the Pentagon thinks that the American people need to be lied to in order to go along with escalation is a whole other story — one that, perhaps, will be told in congressional testimony.

Additionally, it was kind of interesting to see this New York Times story go into how the different troop-escalation options would be implemented without a consideration of how many troops are actually able to deploy.