McChrystal's Afstan options and Obama's al Qaeda option/Choppers

How the president may low-ball:

Top Troop Request Exceeds 60,000
Commander Prefers 40,000 for Afghanistan, but His Report Gives Obama 3 Options

[In April Gen. McChrystal's predecessor, Gen. McKiernan, was only asking for 10,000 more.]

The request for troops sent to President Barack Obama by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan includes three different options, with the largest alternative including a request for more than 60,000 troops, according to a U.S. official familiar with the document.

Although the top option is more than the 40,000 soldiers previously understood to be the top troop total sought by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. officer in Kabul, 40,000 remains the primary choice of senior military brass, including Gen. McChrystal, the official said.

The details of the three scenarios were first reported by ABC News and confirmed by the U.S. official. The third option presented to Mr. Obama would be only a small increase that would keep U.S. forces largely at their year-end levels of 68,000 troops.

The troop request is expected to be deliberated today at Mr. Obama's fifth cabinet-level meeting of his war council amid indications of growing official unease about such a significant escalation.

Although most requests for forces include only a single troop figure, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that Gen. McChrystal's request was unusual given the continuing review of Afghan strategy. It is rather common in military planning, however, to discuss three different scenarios in order to illustrate why the middle option is preferable option [emphasis added, and in other organizations - MC]...

Senior Army officers acknowledged in interviews, for instance, that the U.S. doesn't have nearly enough helicopters in Afghanistan to meet the current demand for safe movement of troops around the country...

White House officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama's review is centering on ensuring the war is focused on preventing al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan -- a narrower objective that could require fewer, if any, new American troops [emphasis added]. The officials acknowledged that the administration's strategic review no longer sees the U.S.'s primary mission in Afghanistan as completely defeating the Taliban or preventing the armed Islamist group from any involvement in the country's future...

...focusing the U.S. mission in Afghanistan solely on destroying al Qaeda could make it easier for Mr. Obama to make a public case for giving Gen. McChrystal the lowest end of his three options, which would amount to only a small increase...

The argument that a return of some Taliban elements would not directly threaten U.S. security has been pushed by allies of Vice President Joe Biden, who has argued against a major increase in force levels. The distinction Mr. Biden draws is shared by Barnett Rubin, a top aide to the administration's special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, arguably the central player in the deliberations, is one of the officials who appears to most strongly disagree with that assessment. Earlier this week, the defense chief said that a Taliban takeover of wide swaths of Afghanistan would allow al Qaeda to "strengthen itself" by creating new havens for the terrorist group.

But participants in the current review said that neither Mr. Gates, who picked Gen. McChrystal for his job, nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have yet made clear what strategy they favor in Afghanistan or what forces should be sent there...

Lack of helicopters and other equipment problems could present a more intractable problem for a bigger force trying to reach Afghanistan's key battle zones. The country is mountainous and lacks reliable roads, so most troops and supplies are ferried to their bases aboard helicopters rather than on trucks or other ground vehicles.

Last summer, the Army deployed a second combat aviation brigade to Afghanistan [ordered there under the Bush administration], doubling the number of Army helicopters there from 114 to about 228. But with U.S. troop levels almost doubling in 2009, senior Army officers acknowledge that the U.S. still doesn't have nearly enough. "Simply put, we just don't have enough birds," one officer said in an interview this week. "The Taliban have made more and more of the roads inaccessible to us [emphasis added], so the need for helicopters keeps growing."..