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I’ll ask again… how’s that nomination working out for you Mr. President? Here are a few more knives in your back from Ms. Perino. Dana doesn’t think we should have a tax to pay for Afghanistan because then people really won’t like the war. Heaven forbid anyone would expect someone to pay for the military industrial complex instead of putting it on the credit card for the grandkids.

Wallace: If the leaks are correct and if the President announces somewhere between 30-35,000 more troops and trying to ask NATO for another 5000 and gets pretty close, maybe not all the way but pretty close to McChrystal’s initial request of 40,000, will conservatives declare victory and say look, the President has the right strategy?

Perino: I don’t know if they’ll declare victory but I do think they’ll rally behind the President and the Commander in Chief. I think they’ll have to set aside the fact that they think there was a really sloppy process; that he undermined President Karzai; that he alienated Gen. McChrystal and say this is the right thing to do. We wish he wouldn’t talk about exit ramps so soon, but this is the right thing to do and providing the generals what they need.

I think on the jobs issue though and on the cost one of the House Democrats, a leading House Democrat suggested that we increase taxes in order to pay for this. And I think tying taxes to this war, one is a bad thing to do in a recession, two it even more unpopular and one of the things that President Obama will need to do is rally the nation and say that he’s fully behind this.

Wallace: Yeah, wait a minute, you said he alienated or the process alienated President Karzai. There are an awful lot of people who say Karzai has been a bad actor, a weak actor and it’s important for the President in the course of this to make it clear to Karzai either you clean up your act or we’re not going to be there.

Perino: All of those things may be true. He might not have done enough, but he is the guy that you have to go into battle with in order to try to win this war and so alienating him so publicly was a bad idea. I think they probably thought that the other guy was going to win; Abdullah Abdullah was going to win. He didn’t and then we had another delay waiting to get McChrystal the troops that he needed. President Karzai is the president that they’re going to have to work with.

As we noted before, Perino still has to be confirmed by the Senate, so contact your Senators and ask them to vote against her nomination to the Board of Broadcasting Governors.

I'm so glad someone who has been there has finally said it:

(I)n a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, (former Marine Corps Captain Matthew) Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.

U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him."

While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?"

Hoh is quick to say he's not some hippie peace-nik. Sigh. Why does he make that sound like a bad thing? But Hoh does feel that our presence does nothing but escalate violence and turmoil with the Afghans.

(M)any Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there -- a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.

As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops, Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "

"I realize what I'm getting into . . . what people are going to say about me," he said. "I never thought I would be doing this."

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