WASHINGTON — President Obama began his Wednesday, Veterans Day, by paying solemn tribute to Americans who have died in past and present wars, before preparing to shift focus and resume charting the way forward in the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.þþThe day began officially for the president and his wife, Michelle, in the East Room — the largest room in the White House, often used for ceremonial occasions — as hosts for a Veterans Day breakfast. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill, also attended, but the White House released no guest list to the closed event.þþBoth couples were then to travel across the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony, part of a long-standing tradition and one that holds special poignance for a president overseeing two wars. Mr. Obama is then scheduled to speak at the Memorial Amphitheater at 11:25 a.m. þþAt 2:30 p.m., President Obama is to meet in the White House with more than a dozen of his top national security advisers to weigh options for moving forward with the Afghan war and dealing with the threat posed by the presence of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan.þþMr. Obama will be considering four options for Afghanistan, his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Monday. Other officials said that three of the four options call for levels ranging from 20,000 additional troops at the low end to about 40,000 more — essentially embracing the request of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American commander of forces in Afghanistan — at the high end. It was unclear what the fourth option, added recently, would entail.þþThe president was not expected to make a decision on Wednesday, but continue to mull the options during a week-long trip to Asia that begins Thursday, officials said; a decision is said to be likely no later than the first week of December. þþThis is Mr. Obama’s first Veterans Day as president. A year ago, when he was the freshly minted president-elect, it was President George W. Bush who traveled to New York for solemn ceremonies where other speakers praised him for the absence of another terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.þþThe scene was somewhat more grim on Veterans Day seven years earlier, when President Bush was joined in New York by United Nations Secretary General Kofi A. Annan, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and other dignitaries including Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was a senator from New York at the time. þþThe memorial service was held at the site of the World Trade Center collapse on the two month anniversary of the attacks. Only days earlier, another body had been found in the rubble.þ
Source: NY Times
