WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s national security adviser did not rule out adding U.S. forces in Afghanistan to help turn around a war that he said Sunday is not in crisis.
James Jones, a retired Marine general, said the United States will know “by the end of next year” whether the revamped war plan Obama announced in March is taking hold.
The administration is redefining how it will measure progress, with new benchmarks that reflect a redrawn strategy. An outline is expected next month.
Jones, who made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, also said:
• The Obama administration is willing to hold direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons if it first resumes international negotiations. Despite reports of his declining health, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il seems fully in charge of the reclusive communist country.
• The United States is nearly certain the Pakistani Taliban’s leader is dead, and there now is a leadership struggle within the terrorist group. “(Baitullah) Mehsud was a very bad individual, a real thug,” Jones said, adding the U.S. “put it in the 90 percent category” that Mehsud was killed. “This is a big deal,” he said.
