Obama's Afghan Meetings a Public Spectacle - Jon Ward and Matthew Mosk, Washington Times.
President Obama's weeks-long review of US strategy in Afghanistan has turned the normally secretive process of deciding how many troops to deploy to a war zone and how best to use them into an oddly public affair that has been pored over day after day by television analysts, scrutinized by his critics and sized up by the nation's allies and enemies. As Mr. Obama presided over the fourth meeting of his war council in two weeks at the White House on Friday, even the enemy was trying to influence the outcome. While the White House sizes up whether the Taliban is a threat to the United States or whether it would re-create a safe haven in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, the group placed a statement on Web sites this week saying it does "not have any agenda to harm other countries."
"That was a political message to President Obama in an attempt to change the terms of the debate," said Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University who served as a top adviser to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command. "You can see all sides ratcheting up the pressure on the president - more pressure than would perhaps otherwise be there if this process was going on behind closed doors," Mr. Mansoor said...
More at The Washington Times.