KREM 2 News @ 5 will not air Tuesday night due to a primetime address from President Barack Obama. Instead, CBS's Katie Couric will anchor coverage of the President's speech, and KREM 2 News @ 6 will air at the regular time.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and ordering military officials to get the reinforcements there within six months, White House officials told CNN Tuesday.
Obama will travel to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, later Tuesday to officially announce what is expected to be his second escalation of U.S. forces in the war-torn Islamic country since he came to power in January.
The president also is seeking further troop commitments from NATO allies as part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at wiping out al Qaeda elements and stabilizing the country while training Afghan forces.
The expected new troop deployment would increase the total U.S. commitment to roughly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, bolstered by about 45,000 NATO forces.
Obama, whom Republicans had accused of "dithering" over the decision, came to the conclusion that the deployment needs to be accelerated to knock back the Taliban, the officials said.
The push for a speedy deployment is surprising because White House officials who defended Obama's slow pace of coming to a decision had said the Pentagon wouldn't be able to get new troops to Afghanistan that quickly.
Asked to explain that seeming contradiction, a White House official told CNN: "The president is saying this has to happen, so the military will make it happen."
The officials also said the president in his speech Tuesday night will give the American people some sort of "time frame" for getting out of Afghanistan, even though White House aides previously said this week there would not be a timetable in the speech.
"He will talk about specific dates" to withdraw from the war, according to the officials.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recently said the president's speech also will explain why the United States is involved in Afghanistan, the new American mission in the war-torn country and the process that led to Obama's decision.
Obama also will emphasize the limit on U.S. resources in manpower and budget, Gibbs added.
He said Obama has been briefing top aides, military officials and foreign leaders about this decision. The president previously ordered more than 20,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
The decision to send another 30,000 carries significant political risk for Obama, who will announce it nine days before he travels to Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
His liberal base, which helped him win last year's presidential election, opposes another troop deployment to Afghanistan.
"I think he's made up his mind that there needs to be a troop increase and I have to say I'm very skeptical about that as a solution," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Illinois, a longtime Obama ally who now worries Afghanistan will become what she calls another quagmire.
In addition, the deployment, expected to cost $30 billion a year, comes amid high unemployment as the economy emerges from a recession. That concerns Democrats and Republicans faced with competing domestic priorities such as health care reform and job creation.
Republican leaders, however, have been pressuring Obama to fulfill the request made more than three months ago by his commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for 40,000 additional troops to carry out a counterinsurgency strategy.
In Afghanistan, reaction to the possibility of more U.S. troops ranges from outright opposition to a willingness to see what happens.
"We welcome their arrival if they really expel the Taliban, terrorists, and al Qaeda from the borders of Afghanistan," said Mohammad Zia, 40, in Kabul, the capital. "But if they come and kill more civilians and destroy villages, then they shouldn't come."
Back home, Obama's allies said the president must convince the American public that sending more troops will help achieve the goals of the mission.
"The president needs to explain how more combat troops will speed up training of Afghan forces," Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, said Sunday on the CBS program "Face the Nation."
The deployment won't work if the mission is for the United States to take on the Taliban on its own, Levin said.
There also is concern about the dollar cost of the war. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, recently proposed a special war surtax to finance the conflict.
"If we're concerned about our future and the need for a shared sacrifice, then this is just simply a common sense approach," Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut, said Monday on CNN's "American Morning." "The only people we're asking to sacrifice in this war effort have been the men and women who serve our armed services and do so valiantly. They deserve the same kind of commitment here at home from citizens."
Other Democrats -- as well as Republicans -- dismissed the idea.
"In the middle of this recession, I don't think you're going to be able successfully or fairly to add a tax burden to middle-income people," Levin said Sunday.
Gibbs told reporters Monday that he had "not heard extensive discussion" at the White House about a possible surtax.
"I know the president will touch on costs" during Tuesday's address, he said, but "I don't expect to get overly detailed (about that issue) in the speech."
As for why the president chose West Point as the venue, the White House officials noted the Army has borne an extremely heavy burden in the Afghan war, so the school is an important symbol.
The officials said West Point not only is where cadets train, but also where they study counterinsurgency principles at the heart of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
The decision to send 30,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan could delay the Army's promise of ensuring all troops get at least two years home between deployments, a senior Army official told CNN.
The Army's goal was to implement such a policy by 2011, the official noted.
U.S.-led troops first invaded Afghanistan in response to the al Qaeda terrorist network's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The invasion overthrew the ruling Taliban, which had allowed al Qaeda to operate from its territory -- but most of the top al Qaeda and Taliban leadership escaped the onslaught.
Taliban fighters have since regrouped in the mountainous region along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, battling U.S. and Afghan government forces on one side and Pakistani troops on the other. Al Qaeda's top leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large and are suspected to be hiding in the same region.
The conflict has so far claimed the lives of more than 900 Americans and nearly 600 allied troops.
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