Officially President Barack Obama is still considering his options for the future strategy of the military campaign in Afghanistan. But despite the fact that he is yet to announce his decision the respected British nightly BBC news program Newsnight last night made the suprise announcement that a decision had already been made, and that within the next week Obama will tell the world that America is to send an extra 40-45,000 troops in a new surge to bolster the forces already fighting in Afghanistan.

President Obama is clearly being pulled in two very different and oposite directions on this issue. Vice President Joe Bidden has made it clear that he does not believe in sending extra troops to bolster the current strategy. He wants to completely rethink what the army should and should not be doing, and ultimately he would like to see a pull back from 'nation building', and from defending the current administration in Kabul which many people see as illegitimate and corrupt. Instead, he would like to see a more specific focus on counter-terrorism operations, whilst leaving the government to fend for itself and to run the country as best it can. On the other side of the argument the military itself has made it clear that they would like to have a new surge of troops into he country to bolster those already fighting there. Requests have been made for many thousands, and it is these military requests that have prompted the current presidential deliberations.

So can you believe the British press assertions that the decision is already made and that an announcement of 40,000 or more new soldiers will be made over the next few days? On its own there would be little reason to believe the BBC's 'journalistic sources' - and when asked about this story US government sources made the obvious point that when a decision had been made it would not be the BBC that would announce it. But there are some god reasons to think that this story might be true. Firstly, when asked whether this was true the Afghan ambassador in Washington (interviewed live on Newsnight yesterday) said that he believed that it was true and that he had been led to believe that the new troops would be sent to his country. Senior British military commanders involved in the Afghan compaign also said when interviewed that it was 'highly likely' that this story would prove to be true. And although the British government itself could obviously not comment on this, it is true that in the last couple of days Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced new British troops to be sent across - something which couldn't actually happen unless the American military were also commited to this strategy.

It could be a real embarassment for President Obama for this story to have been broken in the UK days before he officially made the decision, especially given the heavy criticism he has come under from some quarters for 'dithering' over this issue. But it may simply be that, despite Obamas reticence and wish to find an alternative, there simply is no alternative - and everyone else involved (such as senior US military commanders, who are the most likely source for this story if it turns out to be true) already knows that this is the case, and that the outcome of Obama's long considered decision is innevitable.