The Cable points to a report in Roll Call quoting the new ranking Republican on HASC, Buck McKeon:
This would explain why Jim Jones was running all over Afghanistan telling commanders that any further troop requests would prompt a “whiskey tango foxtrot” moment at the White House. Jones wasn’t speaking out of school, he was just carrying the president’s message forward in the most inapporpriate and and impolitic manner (much as Clinton took the president’s private demand for a settlement freeze and broadcast it live on Al Jazeera). Of course, McChrystal is asking for troops anyway, because they are necessary, and I suspect he will get them. At this point, there are two factions engaged on the issue of additional U.S. forces for the war in Afghanistan. One faction is led by General McChrystal, who has the support of CENTCOM commander General Petraeus and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen as well as the entire Republican establishment. On the other side…Joe Biden, Carl Levin, Nancy Pelosi, and John Murtha. Barack Obama is a weak and naive president, but he can’t possibly imagine that the generals who brought security and stability to Iraq are wrong while the politicians who would have abandoned Iraq at the height of the violence there — and who insisted that the surge
could never work — are right about military strategy in Afghanistan. But, with this president, obviously anything is possible.
