WASHINGTON — After President Barack Obama laid out his new strategic plans for the war in Afghanistan in a meeting Tuesday afternoon with congressional leaders, Pennsylvania’s Rep. John Murtha approached the president’s chief of staff.
“He was real good,” Mr. Murtha, , D-Johnstown, told Rahm Emanuel. “But he didn’t convince me.”
“You’ve got to be with us,” Mr. Obama’s top aide responded.
“Maybe we will be with you, but I’m still not convinced,” Mr. Murtha replied.
The 19-term congressman’s support is critical because he chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee, which holds the purse strings for the war effort. Mr. Murtha addressed reporters yesterday in advance of a hearing next week at which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, will testify about the plan and seek, what the chairman expects, will become a $40 billion supplemental funding bill.
In his globally broadcast speech Tuesday night to Army cadets at West Point, N.Y., Mr. Obama outlined a plan for a 30,000-troop “surge” early next year, followed by an expected start to a U.S. pullout in the summer of 2011, if conditions improve and the Afghan government is ready to take the reins.
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