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President Barack Obama's attempt to clarify his July 2011 deadline for a US departure from Afghanistan has resulted in more confusion and will dilute Pakistan's commitment to fighting the Taliban, Senator John McCain has told The Daily Telegraph. Sen McCain, who has led criticism in Washington over the President's most controversial element said that senior administration officials had only contradicted each other when trying to explain how the timeline for the beginning of a US troop withdrawal would work in practice. "Since the President made his speech we have not had further clarification, in fact we have had further contradiction,"...

Just-obtained excerpts of tonight's Afghanistan strategy speech by President Barack Obama seem to indicate the strategy is no strategy at all. As evidenced in the sentence below, it's both a withdrawal and an announcement of a timetable for beating feet out of the stone-age nation: "Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

Here is video of Charles Krauthammer on "Special Report" questioning if Obama is "committed to success" in Afghanistan. Krauthammer said a timetable for withdrawal sends a bad signal to our allies in Afghanistan by saying "in 18 months the Americans are going to start to leave, and you will be left naked against the Taliban, who will be angry if you help the Americans during the 18 months." (Video)

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama will announce Tuesday he'll deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan "at the fastest pace possible" with a goal of starting to withdraw forces from the country in July 2011. "The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 ... so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers," Obama will say, according to excerpts from his speech at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Obama will say that the additional U.S. forces "will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility...