On Capitol Hill, it's senior Democratic lawmakers who have the harshest words for General Stanley McChrystal, the Afghanistan commander who is racing back to Washington to meet with President Obama in the wake of the embarrassing profile of him coming out in Rolling Stone magazine.

"I thought his comments were inappropriate... the problem is that personality differences effect the successful implementation of policy," said Carl Levin, D-MI, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "That's why you can't allow these things to happen."

Levin said it was President Obama's decision whether of not to sack McChrystal and argued "there don't seem to be differences in terms of policy" in the article, but said "it doesn't help the war effort." A change in military leadership in Kabul could be done smoothly, if the President chooses someone who has broad based support, he said.

According to Levin, McChrystal will first meet with Defense Secretary Robert Gates before facing the entire Afghanistan team at the White House on Wednesday. Gates' statement on the article showed that he is playing an important role in the McChrystal flap.

"I have recalled Gen. McChrystal to Washington to discuss this in person," Gates said, showing that it is his job, not the president's, to order McChrystal to come home. "I believe that Gen. McChrystal made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment in this case."

House appropriations chairman David Obey, D-WI, who holds the keys to the war money McChrystal badly needs, openly called for his ouster. "If he actually said half of what is being reported, he shouldn't be in the position he is in," he said in a statement.

"This clearly is bad judgment," said Senate Armed Services member and former Navy Secretary Jim Webb, D-VA, who added that he had problems with McChrystal's behavior all along and this was just another in a string of incidents. He referred to McChrystal's role in the cover up of the death of football star Pat Tilman in Afghanistan.

An official investigation said McChrystal made "inaccurate and misleading assertions" when putting up Tilman for a silver star. "He was in the middle of that process, he knew it was a friendly fire incident," Webb said.

Webb also pointed to the last time McChrystal seemingly got ahead of the president in talking about the war strategy, when he spoke to the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the media in London late last year and then was summoned for a private scolding from Obama.

"Last October, I raised the question about him being in London making a speech and doing 60 minutes while there was a careful evaluation of the policy going on," Webb remembered. "I thought that was inappropriate."

"Anybody, including a U.S. Army General, is entitled to making a damn fool of themselves once.  But General McChrystal hasn't appeared to learn from his mistakes," said Obey.

Meanwhile, Republicans are holding their fire, for now. A joint statement by Senate Armed Services ranking Republican John McCain, R-AZ, and committee member Joe Lieberman, I-CT, made no judgment on his future and said, "We have the highest respect for General McChrystal and honor his brave service and sacrifice to our nation."

Senate Foreign Relations committee ranking Republican Richard Lugar, R-IN, said, "I'm very hopeful that the General and the president have a good meeting tomorrow."

The disruption of the war effort that both Democrats and Republicans fear would come from McChrystal's firing was at the top of the mind of one senior lawmaker who spoke to McChrystal this morning.

"What's most important is the 94,000 American troops serving in harm's way in Afghanistan.  Their safety and their mission should be the priority we stay focused on above all else," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-MA. "Now is not the time for Washington to be sidetracked by chatter. Everyone needs to take a deep breath."

When the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the $58.8 billion supplemental war-funding bill last week, it included $174,000 to be paid to the wife of deceased House defense spending cardinal John Murtha.

So is Murtha appropriating funds from beyond the grave? Nope. The money, equal to one year's salary, is a standard death benefit, aides from both parties confirmed. Murtha's next of kin are entitled to get the money in the next funding bill following his unfortunate and untimely passing. It's just a coincidence that the money will be in an "emergency" war funding bill.

Before his death in February, Murtha had been the man in charge of war-funding bills ever since the Democrats retook the House in 2006. As chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, he was famous for larding up supplemental legislation with billions each year in pet projects for the military services, defense contractors, and his hometown of Johnston, PA. The House leadership, also seeking to take advantage of the off-budget spending opportunity, would then come in and add billions more in items that had nothing to do with the military or national security at all. Your humble Cable guy, in a previous life, documented these add-ons in excruciating detail, and this year will be no different.

We can confirm reports today that the House is planning to bring up the war-funding bill as early as next week, hoping to somehow make the administration's Memorial Day deadline. Democratic lawmakers are planning to add a $23 billion fund for states to stave off teacher layoffs (and sway wayward left-leaning members of the caucus), which Republicans oppose.

But without GOP votes and knowing that as many as 100 or so anti-war Democrats will always vote against war spending, how will the House leadership get it passed? Our Hill sources are saying that the leadership is weighing splitting the bill into two parts, one with the war funding and another with the other stuff. The war funding would pass, with the entire Republicans caucus and some Democrats voting for it. The add-ons would pass with almost all Democrats voting yes and no GOP support whatsoever.

That's the current thinking, but things could change between now and Memorial Day, our sources warn. But if all goes ahead as planned, the two passed sections would then be joined through some procedural gymnastics and sent to the Senate as one bill. It's been done before, and always evokes cries of process corruption from Republicans. But it tends to work, and billions will go out in the "war-funding emergency" bill that have nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan.

It's Afghanistan week in Washington, and yesterday at the State Department, dozens of officials met for a host of working-group meetings on the country and the U.S.-led war effort there throughout the day. But the real action, where the tough issues were really tackled, took place at the end of the day in a much more private session with only key people inside, sources told The Cable.

The 90-minute evening meeting was billed as a bilateral session between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but several other key officials were in the room: Special Representative Richard Holbrooke, his deputy Paul Jones, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, National Security Council Special Assistant Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, and Clinton's deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan. On the Afghan side, other than Karzai, only National Security AdvisorRangin Dadfar Spanta and Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul attended.

The format matched almost exactly the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, where a high-level private meeting also was the forum for key differences to be aired and key decisions to be made. Yesterday's meeting was the chance to discuss "all those things that both sides don't want to discuss out in the open," reported one diplomatic source who was briefed on the session.

A State Department official told The Cable that inside the "business-like" meeting, "they went into significant depth on the core issues of the visit," including reconciliation, reintegration, security, the upcoming peace jirga, and the handover of U.S.-run detention centers such as the one in Bagram.

Karzai came to Washington with several demands, including that night raids and civilian casualties be reduced and that the detention centers be handed over to Afghan control at a date certain. The Obama administration hadn't publicly announced when it would relinquish control of the Bagram prison, but then today President Obama announced it would be done by January.

The U.S. side delved deep to try to "understand what the Afghan plans were for the key events coming up including the peace jirga and Kabul conference," the State Department official said. State is looking hard to figure out when and how Karzai's government can play a larger role and take the burden off of the U.S. military and civilians in Afghanistan.

"The overall context is: How do we begin to transfer civic responsibilities to the Afghans?," said the official.

At the reception immediately following the meeting in the State Department's ornate Ben Franklin room, Clinton said the meeting was "an excellent exchange of views."

Much like the Obama team, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his vast entourage want this week's visit to Washington to go well. But that won't stop them from highlighting the disagreements they have with the U.S. administration and pressing the president for movement on several issues important to Afghans.

One request that Karzai and friends brought to town is that the Obama team confirm and then speed up their promise to hand over control of the Bagram prison to the Afghan government. Bagram, sometimes called "Obama's Guantanamo" because of the secretive procedures use to detain and interrogate prisoners there, held 645 prisoners captured on the battlefield as of September 2009.

The Obama administration has never announced exactly when it would transfer Bagram prison back to Afghan control, although it has been reported that the end of 2010 is the deadline. Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omar, said Monday that Karzai would press Obama to move that date up when he meets with the president on Wednesday. He also said that Karzai wished to confirm that the plan to transfer control was still operative in the first place.

As for the fate of several dozen the non-Afghan prisoners there, whom the Karzai government does not want to be in charge of, Omar said, "That discussion is ongoing." U.S. military officials say the U.S. has started negotiations to move those prisoners back to their home countries ahead of the transfer, as both the Bush and Obama administrations have done with Guantanamo prisoners, with mixed results.

Overall, Karzai's message when he gets to Washington will be "We'll be looking to the future, not to the past," Omar said, echoing the Obama teams' desire to paper over the recent strains in the relationship that led to Karzai to lash out at the international community, at one point threatening to join the Taliban.

But, "however nice we can be, we will still raise issues where there have been disagreements," Omar said, and Karzai wants to talk about civilian casualties in Afghanistan, detention center policies, military night raids, and other concerns of ordinary Afghans.

Reconciliation is going to be a big theme of the week, and Karzai's message to Washington on that front is that he will agree to "no compromises" on fundamental issues such as women's rights and basic freedoms in any forthcoming deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban, Omar said.

The Obama team will want to talk (quietly) about corruption in the Afghan system, and Omar said the Karzai's line on that is, "Corruption is not something that's only connected to the Afghan government."

Omar was speaking to an audience at the Washington office of Radio Free Europe - Radio Liberty, which held a session to unveil Freedom House's new report on press freedom. That survey labeled Afghanistan's media environment as "not free."

Omar argued that the survey wasn't fair because it uses the same index to measure countries that are at various stages in their media development. He also pointed out that the Freedom House rating had risen considerably within the "not free" designation since the Taliban were overthrown in 2002.

Amid reports that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad may have traveled to Pakistan's North Waziristan, the U.S. and Pakistani governments are still working out details on a new agreement that would expand intelligence and military operations in that very region.

The basic tenets of the agreement, according to diplomatic sources, were hashed out during the inaugural session of the U.S.-Pakistani strategic dialogue in March. Neither side has completely signed off and our sources caution that implementation is another matter, but the provisional agreement shows the growing cooperation between the two countries in the military and intelligence spheres as well as growing coordination on the way forward in neighboring Afghanistan.

The Times Square bombing attempt comes at a very bad time for U.S.-Pakistan relations, said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at The Atlantic Council.

"The U.S. and Pakistan have been doing very well at increasing their cooperation and joint efforts in combating terrorism in that area recently," he said, referring to North Waziristan. "This is the kind of incident that can kind of derail some of those efforts and I hope it doesn't."

Nearly two years after the unhappy exit of Pervez Musharraf, the former Army chief and president, U.S.-Pakistani relationship is still very much a military- and intelligence-based interaction, with the key figures on the U.S. side being Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Advisor Jim Jones, and CIA Director Leon Panetta. On the Pakistani side, all roads go through Musharraf's successor as Army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was given red-carpet treatment when he came to Washington for the March talks.

Kayani is increasingly seen as both an interlocutor for U.S. officials as well as a constructive link between the Pakistani military structure and the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari, who has been steadily losing power to Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani. Meanwhile, the day-to-day relationship is still managed in Washington by Amb. Husain Haqqani, who despite being a Zardari ally, doesn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon.

And the relationship is getting very close attention from senior Obama administration officials, with a flurry of high-level visits there in recent weeks. On the sidelines of the strategic dialogue, there was a private session that involved Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Mullen. From the Pakistani side, only Kayani, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, and Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar attended.

That's where the new agreement on military and intelligence cooperation was discussed. Here is a readout that Sourabh Gupta, a senior researcher with Samuels International Associates (SIA), published in the Nelson Report, a daily Washington insider's newsletter published by SIA's Chris Nelson. Our sources say this readout is "almost exactly right."

Key Pakistani political demands: Non-negotiable requirement for friendly successor regime in Kabul; significant downgrading of Indian presence and influence in Afghanistan, including New Delhi's training of Afghan military; preference for extended-term American presence in Afghanistan/strategic neighborhood, notwithstanding drawdown of forces next year.

Secondary set of political-military demands: faster delivery of upgraded weapons package; expedited payment for outstanding dues related to AfPak support operations and assistance with civil infrastructure rebuilding in frontier territories; U.S. to lay-off from Islamabad's nuclear program (given latter's need to ramp-up fissile material production in absence of bestowal of India-equivalent civil nuclear deal); U.S. to intensify diplomatic effort to facilitate productive Islamabad-New Delhi dialogue on 'core' issues - Kashmir and water (upper riparian/lower riparian) issues.

Key U.S. demands:  Islamabad to re-direct primary counter-insurgency energies against key Islamist groups based/operating out of North Waziristan (Al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban Haqqani network, local talibanized tribal warlords); unfettered drone strikes in N. Waziristan/other tribal territories to continue; expanded CIA intel. operations/listening posts in Pakistani cities - Islamabad to subsequently allow access to Taliban leaders arrested by way of real-time communication intercepts;  Islamabad to rein-in larger infrastructure of jihad that it has casually tolerated, even supported. 

Gupta goes on to say that Islamabad is also arguing for a seat at the table for any discussions about a successor regime in Kabul and that if the current U.S. ground offensive in Afghanistan doesn't produce results, the momentum will shift back to the Pakistani Army and intelligence services, which could upset the balance of the current U.S.-Pakistan negotiations.

Multiple sources confirm to The Cable that Shamila Chaudhary from the State Department's Policy Planning Office will start this week as a new Pakistan director at the National Security Council.

Chaudhary will report to Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who has largely taken over the Afghanistan and Pakistan portfolios at the NSC, especially since the departure of Donald Camp, another former State Department South Asia expert who left after Lute was put in charge of his issues.

Our sources see the appointment as adding some more Pakistan expertise to the team, which already includes names like Jeff Hayes, a detailee from the Office of the Director for National Intelligence who is seen as more of an Afghanistan guy, and fellow Pakistan director Eric Lebson.

Chaudhary is relatively young but is seen as a fast riser, having been appointed to the Policy Planning staff after impressing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a meeting last year. Here's how the Washington Post tells the tale:

Shamila Chaudary -- a self-described "backbencher" -- had toiled for years as a faceless expert on the Pakistan desk when one day she found herself invited to brief Clinton. Chaudary, 32, said the two sparred over whether it was prudent to engage non-governmental power centers in Pakistan, with Clinton expressing skepticism.

Chaudary held her ground, making the point that "we've been seen as not engaging with them, and it's hurt us a lot." She said that although she and Clinton "didn't necessarily agree ... she said that it's very important for us to debate like this. ... This is how she said she wants to do business."

Within 48 hours of their meeting, Chaudary was promoted to a front-line job in the office of policy planning.

Chaudhary is the latest State expert to find a home at the NSC. Senior Director Anish Goel was a science and economics officer at State before moving to the NSC and eventually being promoted to take charge of the India portfolio.

India and Af-Pak are almost completely separate bureaucratically at the NSC, our sources report, as they are at the State Department (India is particularly sensitive about being linked in tandem with Pakistan).

NSC spokesman Mike Hammer declined to comment on the move.

Special Representative Richard Holbrooke has received a clean bill of health after having his heart valves checked today and will go with General David Petraeus to Afghanistan next week after all.

New America Foundation's Steve Clemons has the news on the Washington Note.

I have learned just an hour ago that the angiogram showed the best possible results. There was no significant obstruction that required intervention.

Richard Holbrooke has been cleared to travel with General Petraeus to Afghanistan.

In fact, Holbrooke spoke to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directly and she cleared the trip.

I can also report that Holbrooke is in excellent spirits -- though he seemed in excellent spirits when he presided over an all staff meeting Tuesday this week and had not yet informed his team of this potential health challenge.

So good news on the Holbrooke health front.

If the Kyrgyz opposition is able to maintain control after toppling the government, the Pentagon and State Department may have to renegotiate the U.S.-Kyrgyz agreement on a crucial U.S. air base there, experts warn.

It's only been a few months since the now-deposed Kyrgyz president, Kurmanbak Bakiyev, signed a new deal upping the rent on the Air Force Transit Center at Manas, which the U.S. depends on for critical supplies en route to Afghanistan.

Last February, there was a vote in the Kyrgyz parliament to end the arrangement, egged on by a Russia wary of the growing U.S. military presence in its near abroad. The man who led the opposition to the base in the legislature was former parliamentary speaker and opposition leader Omurbek Tekebaev, who now seems to be in control of the country, after being arrested and then released on Wednesday.

"We have to probably renegotiate the Manas basing agreement, because it was the opposition that pressured Bakiyev into renegotiating in the first place," said Alexandros Petersen, senior fellow with the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. "The leading opposition figures are not anti-American or more pro-Russian than anyone else in Kyrgyzstan, but because they led the drive to raise the rents they might have to reopen negotiations for political reasons."

And where there is a negotiation in Central Asia, there is a U.S.-Russia angle to worry about as well.

"This could be a relatively friendly negotiation, but the Russians could very well take the opportunity to meddle again," Petersen said.

Although Russia would have an interest in getting back at Bakiyev for finally striking a deal with the U.S., Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has condemned the violence and denied any Russian role in today's events.

Meanwhile, it's still "business as usual" at Manas, according to a U.S. military spokesman.

"As of right now the air base is still open, the unrest has not impact operations on the base," said Shawn Turner, Pentagon public affairs officer. "It's getting a little tense."

Turner said he had no information that Bakiyev, who took over from Askar Akayev during the 2005 "Tulip Revolution," was holing up at the U.S. base, despite some rumors in the capital city of Bishkek to that effect.

"Folks at Manas tell us that business as usual and if he was there, that would be something that we would be aware of," Turner said.

Petersen said he was hearing Bakiyev has taken refuge in his home turf of Osh, a city in southern Kyrgyzstan where he still has a power base. If he hasn't actually left the country, that could indicate the power struggle isn't over, he added.

The broader implication for the international community is the realization that the era of popular revolutions in Eurasia toppling unpopular government is still ongoing, and even democratic governments that don't live up to their ideals are vulnerable.

Although this latest unrest was sparked by the government's decision to raise utility prices by 200 percent, Bakiyev has been moving toward cronyism and corruption for some time, Petersen said.

"Color revolutions are not dead in this part of the world," he said, noting that what's going on in Kyrgyzstan has implications for Ukraine and Georgia. "If a color revolution goes authoritarian, you can have another revolution right on top of it."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is claiming he was surprised at the reaction to last week's comments about a conspiracy by the West to interfere in last August's election.

When he called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last Friday, he told her that had no idea his statements, which blamed the United Nations for the "massive fraud" he now admits helped keep him in power, would run afoul of the U.S. and NATO allies pouring blood and treasure into Afghanistan to prop up his own government against a fierce Taliban onslaught.

"Karzai, during the course of the conversation, expressed surprise his comments had ‘caused a stir,'" State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told The Cable, adding that Karzai did not actually go as far as to apologize or retract the comments.

"He clarified what he meant. He assured us that his comments were not directed at the United States," Crowley said.

Some of those comments, however, were directed at American diplomat Peter Galbraith, who was the U.N.'s No. 2 official at the time of the election and was later sacked for complaining about the fraud.

And the Karzai-Obama dispute over who should control a key Afghan electoral oversight commission is far from over. Karzai escaped the ruling of the Afghan Parlaiment's lower house, which said he couldn't choose all five commission members, when then upper house neglected to ratify that decision.

Meanwhile, there are signs the Obama administration remains concerned about Karzai's remarks as it works with the Afghan president to move forward on a host of issues, not the least of which is the impending military campaign in and around Kandahar.

U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry also spoke with Karzai prior to the Clinton call, and Clinton had conversations about Karzai's comments with members of her Afghanistan team as well as White House officials about how to respond.

Clinton, who feels she has a rapport that allows her to speak candidly with the Afghan leader, was chosen to handle the issue. She told him to concentrate on the upcoming "peace jirga," the reconciliation conference Karzai is organizing for early May.

"Our message to Karzai was to focus on the future and not the past," Crowley said.

So is it all resolved then? Depends on whom you ask.

"We reached a good understanding by the time the conversation was over," Crowley said. "We understood that this had the potential to have this spiral in a negative direction and we're satisfied that we've moved on."

But Karzai reportedly told a meeting of tribal leaders this weekend that if the international community continues to pressure him, he might just join the Taliban or halt the ongoing military offensive. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Monday morning called those comments "genuinely troubling."Crowley declined to directly address Karzai's latest comments in his Tuesday press conferece, but did issue this warning.

"His comments do have an impact in the United States and he should be aware of that," said Crowley.

Retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, the former top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, has been under investigation for over a year amid allegations he grossly mismanaged a Pentagon-funded research center.

Barno currently runs the National Defense University's Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, which was established in 2000 and brings together thinkers from 25 countries across the broader Middle East for dialogue and education. NESA is the youngest of five such regional centers at NDU, and lists 21 faculty members and four senior leaders on its website.

According to four current and former NESA Center employees, all of whom asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, Barno has been investigated by a special unit of the Defense Department's Inspector General's office that focuses on senior officials. The allegations are that he created an office that misspent taxpayer funds, abused contractor employees under threat of termination, awarded jobs based on favoritism rather than merit, and created an overall atmosphere of fear and intimidation at the center.

"I've never seen a situation in which such a small agency is mismanaged so badly," said one NESA employee with decades of government experience, who lamented that no official action has yet been taken. "It is to me incredible that you can have, on one hand, such mismanagement and that no one is prepared, evidently, to do anything about it."

In one example cited by all four employees, a senior staffer close to Barno discouraged the use of Arabic at the center, despite its mandate to engage people from Arabic-speaking countries. In a 2008 email sent to the center's lone Arabic-speaking contractor at the time, obtained by The Cable, Barno's chief of operations Rosaline Cardarelli wrote the following:

"I often hear you speaking in languages other than English on the phone in the office. Are these conversations official in nature and can English be used instead?"

That contractor was fired shortly thereafter without explanation after only four months on the job. A Muslim, she was let go just as the Ramadan celebration was beginning.

Cardarelli and another top NDU staffer, Wendie White, were the subject of many of the investigator's questions, said the employees, who told The Cable that the DOD inspector general's office conducted multiple rounds of interviews over the last year with several NESA employees. It's not clear if the investigation is still active, although no public report has been issued and Barno remains in his post.

One focus of the investigator, according to the employees, was Barno's appointment of Cardarelli's husband, John Ballard, a former professor of strategic studies at the National War College, as the center's academic dean. An independent committee had recommended another candidate, NESA professor William Olson, but Barno ignored that recommendation and chose Ballard, in what some saw as favoritism. He was then compelled to rework the organizational chart at the center to avoid a conflict of interest whereby Cardarelli would be directly supervising her own husband.

Another focus of the investigation was the NESA Center's 2008 alumni symposium, which was held in Prague. The employees estimated that more than $250,000 of NESA funds were spent on the trip, but few alumni attended and the reasons for choosing the Czech capital to host alumni from the Near East and South Asia were never clear. Moreover, the employees said last-minute changes to the schedule and general disorganization resulted in tens of thousands of dollars being wasted.

"No one had been to Prague before so they picked Prague," one employee explained. "People tried to say ‘Well wait a minute, maybe this is not the best place to have this,' and then they couldn't get many alumni to come."

Overall, all four employees reported an atmosphere at the center that was intimidating and unfriendly, where contractors were unable to collect money for overtime hours worked and feared termination if they complained, and where Barno's top staffers monitored email and phone calls of employees to the point of harassment.

Before joining NDU, Barno had been rumored to be seeking a more prominent position in the Bush administration, and was said to be lobbying for the job of ambassador to Afghanistan. After being part of Obama's transition team, sources said, Barno was offered a deputy assistant secretary-level position in the Pentagon, but viewed that as below his station and so turned it down.

A military source told The Cable that the current custom of appointing military officials to lead academic centers at NDU is fairly recent phenomenon, put in place during the waning years of George W. Bush's administration by Pentagon officials who wanted to reassert control over the centers and give out plush assignments to their three- and four-star friends.

"The idea of the regional centers was to have an academic, non-military focus for outreach to foreign military," one former employee said. "But what Barno did was turn it into an Army outpost, populated with ex-colonels who didn't have a whole lot of respect for the civilians who'd been there and just made it a hostile work environment."

A spokesman for the DOD inspector general's office said that they don't comment on ongoing investigations. Barno, after initially telling The Cable that he wanted to discuss the allegations, stopped returning emails late last week.

Barno is slated to move to the Center for a New American Security in May. The NESA Center is funded and controlled by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, led by Michèle Flournoy. Before joining the administration, Flournoy was the founding president of CNAS.

"CNAS was unaware this investigation was taking place," said current CEO Nathaniel Fick, who added that Flournoy had no involvement whatsoever in the announced movement of Barno from NDU to CNAS.

Ballard, Cardarelli, and White also did not respond to requests for comment. Flournoy's office also declined to comment.

Despite his decisions to surge troops to Afghanistan, delay the closure of the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, and perhaps reverse himself by endorsing military commissions for terror suspects, President Obama is still losing ground in polls related to national security.

Such is the finding of a new major survey released Monday by leading Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, top party operative James Carville, and the folks at the progressive national security think tank Third Way, which they are framing as "a wake-up call for President Obama, his party, and progressives on national security."

"Although the public continues to give the president strong ratings on a range of national security issues -- indeed, above his overall approval rating -- there is evidence of rising public concern about the president's handing of these issues," the group said Monday, arguing that Republicans are winning ground by portraying the administration's handling of terror suspects as lenient or risky.

Obama's ratings on key national security issues were still high, according to the poll; his handling of Afghanistan (58 percent), national security (57 percent), "leading America's military" (57 percent), "improving America's standing in the world" (55 percent), fighting terrorism (54 percent), and Iraq (54 percent), were all higher than his 47 percent overall approval rating.

But those numbers were down from levels in the 60s that were recorded by the same group last May. Fewer respondents now say they view Obama's handling of national-security issues as better than that of his predecessor George W. Bush -- Obama's margin here has shrunk from 22 to just 5 percent.

The pollsters warn that Obama's declining numbers could re-open the Democratic Party's traditional vulnerability on national security, a problem dating back to the Vietnam era.

"When the questions move beyond the president to Democrats generally, we see that the public once again has real and rising doubts about the Democrats' handling of national security issues, as compared to their faith in Republicans," the survey explained.

 Regardless, the report argues that "the public resists accusations by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans that President Obama and his policies have made the country less secure." Although the report offers little to support that assertion, recent developments indicate that some leading Republicans are uncomfortable with the harshest criticisms launched by some on the right.

Several former Justice Department officials have criticized the group Keep America Safe, which is led by Liz Cheney and William Kristol, for its attacks on the department for hiring lawyers who have defended terror suspects in the past, including one particularly controversial ad calling some of them the "al Qaeda 7."

"The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams's representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre," reads a letter organized by the Brookings Institution's Benjamin Wittes and signed by David Rivkin, Lee Casey, and Philip Zelikow, among other prominent Republican lawyers.

"To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit."

In a speech Monday at Washington's Ritz-Carlton hotel, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended NATO's shift from a defensive alliance aimed at countering the Soviet Union to a forward-deployed multilateral force carrying out counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. NATO's new "strategic concept," a document representing the consensus view of where the alliance is headed and slated for agreement in late 2010, is the subject of a conference she and the organization's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, are attending in Washington this week.

"For too long, our alliance has been hamstrung by those who argue that NATO is an exclusively military organization and oppose attempts to develop -- or in some cases even to discuss -- the alliance's capacity to take on civilian responsibilities," she said in her speech, which was delivered under the auspices of the Atlantic Council. "Our common experience in Afghanistan has shown that the alliance cannot accomplish its missions using purely military tools. If we are going to succeed in counterinsurgency warfare, NATO must continue developing mechanisms to draw on the existing security-oriented civilian capacities of its member states."

In his own address at Georgetown University Monday, Rasmussen described the transatlantic alliance as "an essential part of this country's security for a long time to come."

In response to questions from The Cable following his speech, Rasmussen also praised the ongoing NATO offensive in Afghanistan and defended the contributions of NATO allies in the wake of the recent collapse of the Dutch government, which was related to growing public concerns over that country's Afghanistan deployment. That is an isolated incident, in Rasmussen's view.

"I don't think the situation in the Netherlands will have an impact on the decision making in other allied nations," he said.

The NATO commitment of almost 10,000 new troops to complement the American troop surge in Afghanistan will be fulfilled by the end of 2010, Rasmussen said. NATO countries are also adjusting the "caveats" under which some of them operate in order to allow them to take a more active and equal role in the fight, he said.

Rasmussen also commented briefly on the French sale of the Mistral amphibious assault ship to Russia, saying the sale is not a NATO issue.

 "This is not NATO business, this is a bilateral question between France and Russia," he said, "So as such, NATO is not engaged in this."

As the first major arms sale from a NATO country to Russia, many feel the deal could set a dangerous precedent and further tip the balance of military might between Russia and Georgia. The Georgians, as well as the Baltic states, have raised repeated objections.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates conveyed U.S. concerns about the deal when traveling in Paris this month.

GOP senate aides have warned that Congress could resist an exemption for France in the Iran sanctions legislation currently moving on Capitol Hill, but the State Department has said it will resist any attempts to join the two issues.

"I take it for granted that the sale of this equipment takes place in full accordance with international rules and regulations," Rasmussen said, although many argue that the sale violates the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls  or the European Union Code of Conduct for Arms Exports.

"France has stated that this sale of military equipment will not be accompanied by the transfer of sensitive technology to Russia," he added, although the details of what technologies the sale will include have not been announced.

"I take it for granted that Russia ... will not use this equipment against any of its neighbors or any NATO ally," Rasmussen said. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, for one, has made clear he will not foreswear using the Mistral wherever his government pleases.

The State Department was awarded a big slice of the foreign military assistance pie in the President's new fiscal 2011 budget request, $1.2 billion for Pakistani military training that was previously in the hands of the Pentagon.

The Cable has reported extensively on the turf wars between State and Defense over authorities for a range of foreign assistance funding, money that should logically go through State but has been controlled by the Pentagon for a variety of reasons. The movement of the Pakistani Counterinsurgency Capability Funding from DOD to State represents a test of the State Department's ability to manage these types of new, large scale foreign military assistance programs.

Some senior lawmakers have wanted the PCCF money to be given to State for a while. Appropriators wanted to make the change in the fiscal 2009 supplemental bill, but relented after Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both testified that State wasn't ready to take on the mission at that time.

"I know there's been some concern here on the Hill about whether this money ought to be in the State Department or it ought to be in the Defense Department," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee last April, "Part of the problem is authorities and capacity in the State Department to be able to apply this money with the agility Secretary Clinton was talking about."

PCCF received $400 million in the first tranche of fiscal 2009 war funding. House Foreign Affairs chairman Howard Berman had directed in his bill that the money should go to State but he eventually relented after the administration made it clear that this wasn't wise.

This money is separate from the Kerry-Lugar Pakistan aid bill, which authorized $1.5 billion in varied assistance to Pakistan over 5 years.

As we reported earlier, the State Department did not receive the so-called "1206" money, which is also called "Global Train and Equip," but sources said that if State does well with the PCCF fund, 1206 will be back on the table for fiscal 2012.

As for the "1207" funds, that did transfer over to State. That $100 million will now be called the Complex Crises Fund, which is meant "to prevent or respond to emerging or unforeseen crises that address reconstruction, security, or stabilization needs."

Over at FP's newest blog Turtle Bay, Column Lynch reports that Steffan di Mistura has turned down the job of U.N. mission chief in Afghanistan. The Cable first reported that di Mistura had been offered the job, based on an interview with Richard Holbrooke.

From Lynch's post:

The decision by Staffan di Mistura, a veteran U.N. envoy who headed the U.N. mission in Baghdad, complicates the U.N.'s effort to ensure a smooth leadership transition when Kai Eide, the U.N.'s current chief in Kabul, steps down in March.

Eide said that he had informed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of his decision to step down months before his scheduled departure to avoid a leadership vacuum.

U.N. diplomats said that the U.N. has reopened its consideration of a short list of potential candidates, including Jean-Marie Guehénno, the former U.N. peacekeeping chief, Knut Vollebaek, Norway's foreign minister, and Atonio Gutteres of Portugal, the head of the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Jan Koubis, the director of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe, is also under consideration.