What were armed services chiefs and politicians talking about in the margins of the Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Whitehall yesterday? I am told two words kept coming up. "President" and "Obama." Labour ministers and the military do not  always see eye to eye (and some service chiefs think Gordon Brown does not "get" defence). But I am told they are now at one in their common frustration at the US President's apparent dithering over whether to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan.
"Everyone is tearing their hair out," one Whitehall source told me today. "It is all in limbo because we are still waiting for Obama." The delay has put on hold Britain's plans to send another 500 troops to Afghanistan. Ministers hope the passage of Obama's health reforms through Congress will enable him to get a move on. But the latest signs from Washington are that we might have to wait another two weeks or so for his decision. The sense of drift will hardly help Brown in his mission to explain the operation to the British public, which looks increasingly like mission impossible.