Abdullah Abdullah Backs McChrystal

In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah endorsed General Stanley McChrystal's recommended troop surge, saying "the future of the country is at risk" otherwise. Abdullah, the opposition candidate to current Afghan President Hamid Karzai, appeared on both Fox and CNN's State of the Union, discussing the Nov. 7 runoff election in Afghanistan and the future of his country: "The security situation is deteriorating unfortunately," he told CNN, saying that "it can be reversed" given a "dramatic increase in the number of troops." Abdullah blamed the deterioration in part on his opponent, who he says "has not been able to deliver" a stable security partnership with the U.S., and who leads an "incompetent system that cannot deliver to the people." The opposition candidate said he was under "a lot of pressure" to boycott the upcoming elections for fear of fraud and lack of transparency, and though he had not ruled out the possibility, he didn't want to "give a message... so that momentum to campaign is lost." Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI), speaking on Fox, said a boycott would be a "mistake."