Nearing a critical benchmark in the Afghanistan war, President Barack Obama is considering both how many U.S.... (Associated Press) 
 
 The president is likely to pull out 10,000 troops by the end of this year, administration and Pentagon officials said, and aims to bring another 20,000 home by the end of next year. Publicly, the Taliban say there will be no negotiations until foreign troops leave Afghanistan. He and other military commanders argued that the 18 months since Mr. Obama announced the troop increase did not allow for enough time for the Americans to consolidate the fragile gains that they had made in Helmand and other provinces. Today he is a candidate for reelection at the head of a party deeply opposed to the war, and he emphasized his push to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq to “reclaim the American dream that is at the center of our story.” 
 
 “Over the last decade, we have spent $1 trillion on war, at a time of rising debt and hard economic times,” he said in a 13-minute address that sounded at times like a campaign speech. In a statement, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called the plan a “positive development, although in my view the conditions on the ground justify an even larger drawdown of U.S. troops.” 
 
 Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement that he is “concerned that the withdrawal plan that President Obama announced tonight poses an unnecessary risk to the hard-won gains that our troops have made thus far in Afghanistan and to the decisive progress that must still be made.” 
 
 He added: “This is not the ‘modest’ withdrawal that I and others had hoped for and advocated.” 
 
 Obama’s plan will also influence U.S. allies in Afghanistan, which supply about 40,000 troops — about 30 percent of the international forces there. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who along with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and European leaders was briefed by Obama in advance of the speech, also cheered Obama’s announcement, saying “today is a very happy day” for Afghanistan. “We thank the international communities for their help and services to our country, and Afghanistan will always be thankful to them,” Karzai told reporters. If Obama were to leave the bulk of the 30,000 surge contingent in Afghanistan through 2012, he would be giving the military another fighting season _ in addition to the one now under way _ to further damage Taliban forces before a larger withdrawal got started. “But when that force can be targeted, we need not deploy large armies overseas.” 
 
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 The pace of the withdrawal is a setback for the president’s top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus , who has been named director of the Central Intelligence Agency . Petraeus presented Obama with a range of withdrawal proposals — some, administration officials acknowledged, that would keep the surge forces in Afghanistan far longer than Obama had envisioned. The withdrawals would begin winding down the military’s counterinsurgency strategy, which Mr. Obama adopted 18 months ago. Administration officials said Vice President Biden, who led a faction of civilian advisers who argued against a large troop surge in 2009, is pleased with Obama’s withdrawal schedule, even though it is not as quick as Biden had hoped it would be. Obama informed his senior national security advisers, including outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, of his plans during a White House meeting Tuesday. That camp believes the slow yet steady improvements in security, combined with the killing of Osama bin Laden and U.S. success in dismantling much of the al-Qaida network in the country, give the president an opportunity to make larger reductions this year. “The threat has come from Pakistan over the past half-dozen years or so, and longer.” 
 
 Special correspondents Sayed Salahuddin and Javed Hamdard in Kabul and staff writer Felicia Sonmez and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
– A few hours ahead of President Obama's prime-time address on Afghanistan, administration officials are leaking some main points to the AP, Washington Post, and the New York Times: Obama will bring home 10,000 troops this year and another 20,000 or so by the end of next summer. Those combined withdrawals will effectively mean the return home of all the "surge" troops Obama sent to Afghanistan in 2009. Another 70,000 US troops would remain in the country heading into 2013. The timeline does not please Gen. David Petraeus, who wants the surge troops to remain through the end of 2012—long enough for another season of fighting. (The Times says Petraeus did not endorse the decision, though Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton did with reluctance.) Though generals think it's too much, too fast, Obama will likely face criticism from the growing number of critics who say the US should bring home more troops even quicker. The president gives his 10-minute address at 8pm ET.