Afghanistan: News Analysis: Karzai’s Bet: U.S. Is Bluffing in Warning on Security Pact --- In the face of a warning delivered in person on Monday by the national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, that the United States would consider leaving no troops at all in Afghanistan past 2014 if Mr. Karzai did not promptly sign a long-term security agreement, he has made it clear that he considers it a bluff. Not only did he refuse to sign, he added conditions, including the release of all inmates from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. -- Some Afghan officials worried that their president, who has made brinkmanship with the Americans his defining trait, had finally gone too far. -- “Mark my words, if we do not sign this security agreement with the Americans, things will get worse than Iraq and the 1990s Afghan civil war,” said Sayed Ishaq Gailani, a member of Parliament from Paktika Province. He urged the Americans to remember that “Karzai is not Afghanistan, he is just another individual, with illogical and illegal demands that are against all diplomatic norms.” -- “We don’t want the Americans to burn down the entire house to exterminate one louse,” he added. --- Stephen Biddle, a political science professor at George Washington University, compared it to a game of chicken, when two cars are driving head on at each other to see which one will swerve first. -- “Neither driver wants a wreck,” he said, “but they are both willing to risk something they don’t want in order to get something they do want, and that creates car wrecks occasionally.” --- Mr. Karzai did say he would sign, but suggested not until after the presidential elections, next April. Many close to him still think he might still sign earlier, taking political cover by bowing to the loya jirga’s decision. -- “President Karzai hasn’t gone crazy,” said Jamal Naser Osoli, a pro-Karzai member of Parliament from Khost Province. “Americans intervened in previous elections, which nearly led the country to a crisis.”