President Barack Obama on Tuesday reveals his plan for winning an unpopular 8-year-old war in Afghanistan, embarking on a mission to sell skeptical Americans on the need to put thousands more troops in harm's way and to spend additional billions of taxpayer dollars.

Obama formally ends a 92-day review of the war in Afghanistan Tuesday night with a nationally broadcast address in which he will lay out his revamped strategy at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York.

He began rolling out his decision Sunday night, informing key administration officials, military advisers and foreign allies in a series of private meetings and phone calls that stretched into Monday.

Obama is setting in motion a strategy that may represent a defining decision of his presidency. At least one group of US Marines will be in place by Christmas. Larger deployments wouldn't be able to follow until early in 2010.

Obama will try to sell a skeptical public on his bigger, costlier war plan by coupling the large new troop infusion with an emphasis on stepped-up training for Afghan forces that he says will allow the US to leave.

The president faces stiff opposition in Congress, where lawmakers control spending for the war effort and many fellow Democrats oppose expanding or even continuing the conflict. This displeasure was likely to be on display when hearings on Obama's strategy get under way later in the week on Capitol Hill. A briefing for dozens of key lawmakers was planned for Tuesday afternoon, just before Obama heads to West Point.

While specifics of the new policy have been closely guarded by the White House, others inside the administration have said that Obama has signed off on a step-by-step addition of as many as 35,000 more troops.

And comments Monday by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs indicated that Obama will be forward looking in his speech before an audience of cadets, many of whom will soon be headed to fight in Afghanistan.

He will focus on the need to protect Afghans from the brutal Taliban insurgency and to train the country's security forces for the day when they assume control of a land that has been at war for 30 years.

Obama is not expected to set a deadline for an American withdrawal, but Gibbs stressed, "This is not an open-ended commitment."

"I think there has to be a renewed emphasis on the training of Afghan national security forces," Gibbs said, explaining that the president's plan looked toward the day when the Afghan army and police would be "primarily responsible" for security.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States.

Osama bin Laden, leader of the group, and key members of the terrorist organization were headquartered in Afghanistan at the time, taking advantage of sanctuary afforded by the Taliban government that ran the mountainous and isolated country.

Taliban forces were quickly driven from power, while bin Laden and his top deputies were believed to have fled into neighboring Pakistan. While the al-Qaida leadership appears to be bottled up in the rugged mountains, the US military strategy of targeted missile attacks from unmanned drone aircraft has yet to flush bin Laden and his cohort from hiding.

That, the administration argues, means the US must continue fighting to prevent the Taliban from regaining control and reopening the country to al-Qaida.
"I think what the president will discuss ... is ensuring that we prevent the Taliban from being capable of controlling the government of Afghanistan, as well as incapable of providing safe haven from which al-Qaida can plot and undertake terrorist activities like we've seen happen previously in the United States," Gibbs said.

The escalation of US forces over the coming year would put more than 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan at an annual cost of about $75 billion.
Obama was spending much of Monday and Tuesday on the phone, outlining his plan - minus many specifics - for the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, India, Denmark, Poland and others. He also met in person Monday at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who said his country will stand by the US "for the long haul" in Afghanistan.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday announced that 500 extra U.K. troops would arrive in southern Afghanistan next month.

Britain has taken the lead in lobbying for extra reinforcements for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Last week, Brown said that NATO nations - not including the US - are prepared to offer about 5,000 more troops for Afghanistan. So far, Slovakia has offered 250 extra soldiers, Georgia has pledged between 700 and 1,000 soldiers, and South Korea has said it would send "several hundred" to protect its reconstruction teams.

Right now, there are about 71,000 US troops in Afghanistan. NATO and other allies collectively have an additional 36,000 troops in the country. The war has turned worse this year despite Obama's previous infusion of 21,000 US troops since he took office in January.

The quick addition of Marines would provide badly needed reinforcements to those fighting against Taliban gains in southern Helmand province.

Obama also was to call Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari - the two leaders on whom the success of the plan may depend the most.

In Afghanistan, rampant government corruption and inefficiency have made US success much harder. Obama was expected to place tough conditions on Karzai's government, along with endorsing a stepped-up training program for the Afghan armed forces along the outline recommended this fall by US trainers.

That schedule would expand the Afghan army to 134,000 troops by next fall, three years earlier than once envisioned.

While some congressional Democrats are lining up in opposition to an expanded US mission, Republicans have been pressing Obama to move more quickly to meet the request of Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal who has said the US was headed for defeat without the troop increase.

McChrystal issued his report on the Afghan mission in late summer, and - as administration deliberations dragged on - he publicly pressed Obama about the need for about 40,000 addition troops. His report was leaked to the Washington Post.

After that, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Obama of "dithering" over the decision.

Supporters, however, said Obama was taking the time and care that the former Bush administration should have employed before going to war in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.