A couple of things about this morning’s coverage:

1) The full-on counter-terrorism option is a non-starter (suggesting that McChrystal wasn’t so out of line in pointing out its flaws in London). Obama won’t fully pull out and rely on drones etc., per the Washington Post:

Obama told congressional leaders that he is not contemplating reducing troop levels in the near term under any scenario, according to several participants, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs reiterated Tuesday that withdrawing from Afghanistan is “not an option.” A complete U.S. troop withdrawal is one of the straw men to which Kerry — and the president, in the meeting — referred.

2) The Biden plan apparently isn’t for only counter-terrorism. From the New York Times:

Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden made it clear that the option Mr. Biden had proposed was not a pure counterterrorism alternative, relying only on drones and Special Forces to track down leaders of Al Qaeda. Instead, Mr. Biden’s approach would increase the use of such surgical strikes while leaving the overall size of the American force in Afghanistan roughly at the 68,000 troops currently authorized.

3) As you would have predicted if you were looking at this through an entirely political lens, Obama wants to split the difference. That way he avoids looking embarrassingly weak on his own war at the same time he avoids making a total commitment to the war with its attendant risks.

Meeting with leaders from both parties at the White House, Mr. Obama seemed to be searching for some sort of middle ground, saying he wanted to “dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan,” as White House officials later described his remarks.

But this looks wise only to a political consultant. Waging a war on the cheap is almost always more expensive in the long run, as we learned in Iraq. McCain is right:

After the meeting, Mr. McCain warned against any middle ground. “Half measures is what I worry about,” he said. Citing the Bush administration’s experience in Iraq, he added that half measures “lead to failure over time and an erosion of American public support.”