The president has said with increasing frequency in recent days that a big piece of the rethinking of options that he ordered had to do with building an exit strategy into the announcement - in other words, revising the options presented to him to clarify when US troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government and under what conditions.
As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it to reporters yesterday, it’s “not just how we get people there, but what’s the strategy for getting them out.’’
Obama held the 10th meeting of his Afghanistan strategy review since mid-September last night, with a large cast of foreign policy and military advisers, to go over that revised information from war planners. The two-hour Situation Room session was aimed at discussing “some of the questions that the president had, some additional answers to what he’d asked for,’’ Gibbs said.
The meeting was arranged for the unusual nighttime slot to accommodate Obama’s packed public schedule and the fact that many of his top advisers were leaving town for the holiday. No more war council meetings are on the calendar.
The presidential spokesman had said ahead of the meeting that it was possible Obama could lock in a decision then, or that one could come “over the course of the next several days.’’ In either case, it will not be announced this week, he said, and the meeting concluded with no announcement about a decision.
The White House is aiming for an announcement by Obama next week, either Tuesday or Wednesday.
Military officials, congressional aides, and European diplomats said they expect Obama to deliver a national address laying out the revamped strategy.
