A U.S. soldier watches a broadcast of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama during a post-election event at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

Peter Bergen
CNN National Security Analyst

Even before the election results are known, the Bush administration is making plans for the transition of management of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars to the next president.

A review of Afghan policy has been under way for many weeks, led by Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the senior National Security Council official responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq. The classified strategic review is expected to be completed this week, according to a staffer involved in preparing it.

Military and administration sources say the review was commissioned after growing alarm in the Bush White House about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has recently seen more U.S. military deaths than in Iraq. The country has experienced a sharp spike in violence along its eastern border with Pakistan since the summer. Those officials say the Bush administration felt that the review of Afghan policy could not wait months for a new administration to get up to speed.

Since mid-October, senior Bush administration officials have taken pains to brief advisors of both campaigns on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, according to participants in the meetings. One meeting, with advisors to both John McCain and Barack Obama, was held at the private Army and Navy Club and was organized, in part, by Barnett Rubin, a professor at New York University and one of the country’s leading experts on Afghanistan. The tone of the meeting was described by one participant as “realistic” and “certainly NOT upbeat.”

U.S. Camp Phoenix in Kabul, Afghanistan after a ceremony marking the 7th anniverisary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Peter Bergen & Katherine Tiedemann Peter Bergen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and Katherine Tiedemann is a program associate there. Peter Bergen is also an AC360° Contributor and CNN National Security Analyst

Editor’s Note:

This week, as we remember the nearly 3,000 American citizens who died in the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or in a remote field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, we also should think about the civilians who are still dying in Afghanistan.

Consider, for instance, the recent American airstrikes on Azizabad, a village in western Afghanistan, on Aug. 22. The United Nations, Afghan government officials and independent witnesses all say that the United States killed about 90 civilians in these strikes, most of them women and children. Cellphone videos of the scene show motionless children lying under checkered shawls and veiled women shrieking alongside them.

According to a report by Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, dozens of freshly dug graves are scattered in the village’s cemeteries, some so small they could fit only children. The U.S. initially said that many fewer civilians had died, but it has now promised a thorough investigation.

It’s a grisly story but hardly an isolated one. The month before the Azizabad incident, Afghan officials say that American airstrikes near Kabul killed 27 civilians at a wedding party — including the bride. In another incident, on March 4, 2007, nine civilians died when their mud home north of Kabul was hit by two 2,000-pound bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft. American officials said they were aiming for two insurgents seen entering the house after firing a rocket at a U.S. military outpost, according to Human Rights Watch.

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Watch Reza Sayah's report on Senator Barack Obama's trip to Afghanistan

Saturday in Kabul a grungy little boy with big brown eyes chased me for a block, begging me to buy a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. He could not have been more than four years old.

In downtown Kabul women in burqas begged along the streets as monster size U.S. armored vehicles rumbled by. That same day a NATO air strike that was supposed to take out militants killed nine Afghan soldiers instead. Sunday in southeastern Afghanistan two NATO mortar shells missed their targets and killed four civilians.

Man, does Afghanistan need help.

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Australia Minister of Defense Joel Fitzgibbon and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert entering the Pentagon on July 16 to discuss a possible troop surge in Afghanistan

Nic Robertson
Senior International Correspondent

Every time I go to Afghanistan I hear the same thing.
We are short of troops, we are short of helicopters, we are short of money to put things right.

No surprise when I embedded with the 24th MEU in southern Helmand province I heard the same complaints again. Only this time, a very big difference. The comments were made by a General on camera not privately in a back room briefing. Every time in the past, apart from a few constructive comments about more money nobody was willing to rock the boat publicly and call it like it was, undermanned.

Gen Dan McNeill, the four star who was until a few months ago in charge of NATO forces in Afghanistan and who is a genuinely nice guy to boot, talked around the subject with me in an almost hour long interview last year. He just didn’t want to say he was short of what he needed most, troops. Sure he said the Afghan army needed to train more men with greater speed, and that the Afghan police we woefully underprepared for their task. But on troops, he said he had all those he needed to do the job he’d been told to do.

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At least 40 people were killed and 141 injured from a deadly blast this morning in Kabul, Afghanistan. Despite hallmarks of a Taliban attack, the group is denying responsibilty for the bombing. At this point, there is no clear evidence which group carried it out. CNN’s Nic Robertson reports.

-CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr

The rifle has always been a soldier’s best friend, but these days it was never more true for the thousands of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who may round a corner and suddenly find themselves in a firefight. That brings us to news over the weekend about the M4 carbine, the workhorse of military rifles. The military and Congress are beginning to look at alternatives.

But guess what? The US Special Operations Command is already on the case.
SOCOM is home to the nations’ most covert troops, the commandos who hunt Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists around the world from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq.  SOCOM is about to put a new assault rifle in the hands of its operatives that the military says is more reliable than the M4. And while most troops have never even seen the new rifle, I got to fire it…  

Before we get into what that was like, a couple highlights: SOCOM says the new gun won’t jam in the desert dust, is more reliable overall, and most importantly has interchangeable components. For example you can put a shorter barrel on the front if you are about to kick down a door, enter a building and go around tight corners. And with greater accuracy than older rifles, a soldier can stand further away from the enemy and stay out of range.

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I enjoyed Harry more when he was stumbling out of a bar, vomiting and assaulting paparazzi.  At least then both he and the camera wielding parasites were the only ones who suffered the consequences of the prince’s self indulgence.  

His latest bit of self indulgence is just plain asinine.  Sure, you can make the argument that going to the frontlines in Afghanistan is certainly brave and heroic.  That’s if you’re not a prince.  If you are, it’s just plain stupid and selfish. 

Why endanger your fellow soldiers?   The media is just as guilty (including our own show).  Media outlets made a deal that if they kept his deployment secret they would be rewarded with pool footage of Harry serving his country that they could use once he had left Afghanistan.  Within minutes after the secret got out though, there it was. 

That’s Harry holding a rifle!  Wow!  Watch Harry shoot a machine gun!  That’s Harry calling in an airstrike!  Doesn’t Harry look so rugged and handsome with his sand-encrusted hair and snug fatigues? 

Such a brave and strapping man Princess Diana’s son has turned out to be.  Don’t you think? 

And don’t think for a second that Harry isn’t in any real danger as all the correspondents so dutifully pointed out.  He really is on the front lines.  Our Michael Ware said so. 

But so are about 150,000 brave Americans who for the last several months have all but disappeared from the TV screens because viewers have grown tired of hearing about the war.  The ratings always dip when we cover it. 

Never mind the countless families who sit home praying their loved ones will return home safely after serving year long tours of duty for the second or third time. 

Never mind the extreme financial hardship these families are suffering. 

Never mind the kids who joined the reserves just as a way to pay for college but instead were sent to the battlefield. 

Never mind the “other” war, the forgotten war in Afghanistan. 

Well, forgotten at least until the hunky Prince showed up.

- Joey Gardner, Executive Administrative Assistant