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" ... It appears highly unlikely Obama will offer a specific troop withdrawal timetable, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president would stress that the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was not open-ended. "We are in year nine of our efforts in Afghanistan. We are not going to be there another eight or nine years," Gibbs told reporters. "Our time there will be limited and that is important for people to understand," he said.
He said Obama would use his prime-time televised speech to stress the "sheer cost" of the war, .... "The American people are going to want to know why we are here, they are going to want to know what our interests are," Gibbs said.....
Gibbs said Obama would meet with key lawmakers to brief them about his plan ahead of his Tuesday speech. Key committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate will hold back-to-back hearings next Wednesday and Thursday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen.
Gibbs said the financial cost of the conflict -- which reached $6.7 billion in June alone -- and the physical toll it had taken on the U.S. military made the war unsustainable in the long term. "It is very, very, very expensive," Gibbs said..."
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