The thin veil of legitimacy Karzai enjoyed before the August elections is now gone.

Patrick Doherty
Special to CNN

Before President Obama releases his strategy for Afghanistan, he should think twice about fully re-embracing Hamid Karzai.

By rigging the first round of elections with more than a million fraudulent votes, rigging the second round of elections with more than 500 'ghost' polling places to generate another flood of fake ballots and refusing to reform the electoral system, incumbent President Hamid Karzai abused his office to steal a democratic election from the people of Afghanistan.

Despite noises in Washington to the contrary, the thin veil of legitimacy Karzai enjoyed before the August elections is now gone, and the damage to any counterinsurgency strategy is immense. True counterinsurgency operations require the building of confidence and trust among ordinary citizens and their government - trust that it will deliver on whatever small expectations the Afghan people have of Kabul. To the extent that confidence was ever present, it is certainly now shattered.

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President Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal aboard Air Force One

Suzanne Malveaux and Mike Mount
CNN

President Obama is considering four scenarios to move forward in Afghanistan and is expected to discuss them at his eighth meeting with his war council on Wednesday afternoon, sources told CNN.

Though the options are not being spelled out, one is fairly well-defined.

That option, a senior administration official and U.S. military official independently confirmed, calls for sending about 34,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

A military official said the plan would send three Army brigades, totaling about 15,000 troops; a Marine brigade, about 8,000 troops; a headquarters element, about 7,000 troops; and 4,000 to 5,000 support troops.

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President Obama made an unannounced visit to the Dover Air Force Base late last month to honor 18 Americans killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan.

CNN/Opinion Research Corp. Poll

Americans are split over whether President Barack Obama is taking too long to make a decision on whether to send more U.S. troops to the war in Afghanistan, according to a new national poll.

But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey also indicates that by a narrow margin, Americans think that in making his decision, the president should listen to the recommendations of the generals in charge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan rather than taking other matters into account as well.

The poll's Wednesday morning release comes just hours before the president is scheduled to hold another meeting with his national security advisers to discuss policy in Afghanistan.

Go here to see the full results of the poll.

Candy Crowley | BIO
CNN Senior Political Correspondent

On that unusually balmy Chicago night a year ago, the candidate who campaigned on what he called the "fierce urgency of now" became the president-elect who needed time.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term," Barack Obama told the crowd in Grant Park. And he still needs time to turn a myriad of campaign promises into policy.

The list of the undones is long, varied and mostly difficult - immigration reform, new financial market regulations and a game-changing energy bill.

And compounding problems on the president's lengthy to-do list is that 2010 is an election year, generally an inefficient time for lawmaking.

Obama can put down several major campaign promises as "in the works."

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Fareed Zakaria | BIO
CNN Anchor, “Fareed Zakaria – GPS”

President Hamid Karzai was declared the winner of another term in office as Afghanistan's leader Monday, after his opponent in a planned runoff election withdrew.

President Obama called Monday for a "new chapter" of improved governance in Afghanistan now that Karzai's re-election as president is complete. Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission announced Karzai's victory Monday after it canceled Saturday's presidential runoff because of the withdrawal of candidate Abdullah Abdullah.

Fareed Zakaria, author and host of "Fareed Zakaria: GPS" spoke to CNN Monday about Karzai's election.

CNN: What do you make of today's developments?

Fareed Zakaria: In a sense, it adds to the drama and tension surrounding the politics of Afghanistan, but it doesn't materially change very much because Abdullah was not going to win. Karzai was going to be the next president of Afghanistan. Imagine there had been a runoff and Karzai had won. We would have been roughly where we are today. The big problem is that it has not rebuilt Hamid Karzai's legitimacy. What he needs right now is not power or position, it's legitimacy.

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Ed Henry
CNN Senior White House Correspondent

Apparently you can take the vice president out of the Senate, but you just can't take the Senate out of the vice president, and that might be the secret to Joe Biden's influence in President Obama's inner circle.

As I waited Friday in the ornate rooms of the old Department of War near Biden's office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, I kept wondering which Biden was going to show up for our exclusive interview.

Would it be the old Joe that I used to cover as the Senate correspondent for Roll Call newspaper many years ago, who would throw an arm around me in a Capitol hallway and be happy to give a - let's face it - fairly long answer about any subject I'd throw at him?

Biden had this habit of dropping flattery as well as a reporter's name into the answers for familiarity in his gosh-darn-it manner: "Look Ed, I'm literally not just blowing smoke, but you know as much about the Bush tax cuts as I do. ..."

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Afghan police officers use tractors to destroy poppy crops in Helmand province earlier this year.

Ivan Sanchez
Author, Youth Advocate and Public Speaker

I recall sitting down with my young daughters after the tragic events of September 11th 2001, to speak to them about my desire to join the military.

There was a war on terror being launched, and it was fittingly called Operation Enduring Freedom.

With an inexplicable coldness in my heart and an intensity for justice running through my veins, I envisioned myself making someone pay for the attack on my country… on my home.

Coalition forces from America, Europe, Canada, Australia and later NATO troops were all headed to Afghanistan with the mission of capturing Osama Bin Laden.

It was a mission that to this day has never been completed.

As I sat on the sofa watching the tears fall from my daughters' faces – in fear that their father would leave and never return home, I realized that my destiny wasn’t to follow that age-old adage of; “an eye for an eye,” for the truth is that always ends up leaving everyone blind in the end.

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Abdullah Abdullah was at times emotional on Sunday in announcing in Kabul that he was dropping out of a runoff.

David E. Sanger
The New York Times

With the White House’s reluctant embrace on Sunday of Hamid Karzai as the winner of Afghanistan’s suddenly moot presidential runoff, President Obama now faces a new complication: enabling a badly tarnished partner to regain enough legitimacy to help the United States find the way out of an eight-year-old war.

It will not be easy. As the evidence mounted in late summer that Mr. Karzai’s forces had sought to win re-election through widespread fraud to defeat his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, administration officials made no secret of their disgust. How do you consider sending tens of thousands of additional American troops, they asked in meetings in the White House, to prop up an Afghan government regarded as illegitimate by many of its own people?

The answer was supposed to be a runoff election. Now, administration officials argue that Mr. Karzai will have to regain that legitimacy by changing the way he governs, at a moment when he is politically weaker than at any time since 2001.

“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior aides said. He insisted on anonymity because of the confidentiality surrounding the Obama administration’s own debate on a new strategy, and the request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, for upward of 44,000 more troops.

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Elise Miller
AC360° Associate Producer

Tonight we’re talking to four successful women who have at least this much in common; they’ve risen to the very top in traditionally male dominated fields.

Our panel of experts will be tackling issues that working women face and sharing how they’ve overcome obstacles to make a name for themselves. The panelists are financial powerhouse Suze Orman, first female White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, neurosurgeon and author Dr. Katrina Firlik and professional poker player Maria Ho.

We’re also focusing on the Tuesday elections. Many of you will be voting, so we’re breaking down the races and the issues. Members of the best political team on television will also look the changed landscape for Democratic and Republican candidates – exactly one year after the general election.

And Afghan electoral officials have declared incumbent President Hamid Karzai the winner of the 2009 presidential election. The announcement was made after opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah withdrew saying he believed a second round of voting would be fraudulent. We’ll dig deeper tonight on the implications of Karzai’s presidency on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

What else are you following? Let us know and see you at 10 p.m. ET

Incumbent President Hamid Karzai had agreed to a presidential runoff against his opposition rival.

Jonathan Wald
CNN

Afghan electoral officials declared incumbent President Hamid Karzai the winner of the 2009 presidential election Monday, after canceling this weekend's second round of voting.

Observers say Karzai's real test will be whether he can form a government that is seen as legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people and the international community.

The Independent Electoral Commission made the announcement after they canceled Saturday's presidential runoff following the withdrawal of opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah.

A runoff could have been held with just one candidate, but commission president Azizullah Lodin said electoral officials decided to cancel the second round of voting for several reasons, including security and money.

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