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Obama Adviser Dismisses Reports of Afghanistan Troop Decision

By By Julianna Goldman and Viola Gienger

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s national security adviser dismissed reports that the administration has reached a decision to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan.

Obama hasn’t received final options that he has requested, neither has he reviewed those alternatives with his national security team, said National Security Adviser James Jones, responding to reports by the Associated Press and CBS News. The AP reported Obama would add “tens of thousands more forces,” while CBS said he plans to send four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops.

“Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false,” Jones said in a e-mailed statement today. “Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.”

Obama is under pressure to make a decision on whether to grant a request by his top commander in the field, General Stanley McChrystal, to send 40,000 more troops. That would expand the 68,000-strong U.S. force that will be in Afghanistan by the end of the year, including 21,000 that Obama authorized earlier this year.

Administration officials have indicated that Obama is unlikely to announce his new strategy before he leaves on an eight-day trip to Asia this week.

“We don’t have a rollout date set, because the president has yet to make the decision,” Ben Rhodes, National Security Council director for strategic communications, told reporters today on a conference call to preview the trip to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.

In an interview with ABC News today, Obama said his extensive and expansive strategy-review meetings have given him greater confidence in whatever his final decision will be.

“I have gained confidence that there’s not an important question out there that has not been asked, and that we haven’t asked -- that we haven’t answered to the best of our abilities,” Obama said.