WASHINGTON - An incoming adviser to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan predicted Thursday that the United States will see about two more years of heavy fighting and then either hand off to a much improved Afghan fighting force or "lose and go home."

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who will assume a role as a senior adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been highly critical of the war's management to date. He outlined a "best-case scenario" for a decade of further U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan during an appearance at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Under that timeline, the allied forces would turn the corner in those two years, followed by about three years of transition to a newly capable Afghan force and about five years of "overwatch."

"We'll fight for two years and then a successful transition, or we'll fight for two years and we'll lose and go home," Kilcullen said.

"I think we need to persist," he said, but with "some pretty significant limits on how much we're prepared to spend, how many troops we're prepared to send, how long we can do this for."

Kilcullen was speaking for himself, and it is not clear that McChrystal shares his dark assessment. McChrystal is assembling what aides describe as a blunt summing up of a war his predecessor called a stalemate. That review is due within weeks and may lead to a request for additional U.S. forces beyond those President Barack Obama has already sent to Afghanistan this year.

The report is expected recommend changes in the way the United States and NATO organize and manage the war. Ahead of those recommendations, the Pentagon set up a new command center, an ultra-secure war room where a people from a mix of services and disciplines sit together. The command post is supposed to quickly process information for McChrystal and bulldoze some of the pentagon's legendary bureaucracy.

Separately, the Obama administration is developing new measures of success in Afghanistan, something top military leaders promised Congress months ago. Some of the yardsticks would apply to the Afghan government, some to its armed forces and police and some to the United States.

Obama announced a retailored war strategy in March, with a streamlined focus on ensuring that Afghanistan cannot be used as a harbor for al-Qaida. He has committed 21,000 additional U.S. forces for Afghanistan this year, roughly doubling the U.S. footprint to 68,000 in a year.

FORT HOOD, Texas - A Fort Hood soldier was sentenced yesterday to a month in jail for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan because he says the war violates international law.

Specialist Victor Agosto, 24, of Miami, pleaded guilty to disobeying lawful orders and was sentenced at the central Texas Army post. The judge also reduced his rank to the Army’s lowest level, a private, which also was part of the maximum penalty he faced in his plea agreement with the military.

Also, Agosto cannot be discharged at a level lower than other-than-honorable conditions, an administrative discharge. A discharge was not mentioned in the hearing, but Agosto is expected to be released from the Army after completing his jail term.

Before he was sentenced, Agosto told the judge he should not be jailed because he posed no threat to anyone.

He said he had remained on post and went to work every day since refusing to deploy after learning a few months ago the Army was keeping him beyond his enlistment date.

He said he did not apply for conscientious objector status because that requires opposition to all wars, and he does not believe that all war is wrong.

“I really had no Army way of being consistent with my conscience,’’ Agosto said.

Agosto said he began to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after he served a 13-month tour in Iraq.

WASHINGTON - No criminal charges will be filed against military contractor KBR Inc. in connection with the electrocution of a Green Beret soldier who died while showering in his barracks in Iraq, the Defense Department said yesterday.

Investigators said there was “insufficient evidence to prove or disprove’’ that anyone was criminally culpable in the January 2008 death of Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth, 24, of Pittsburgh. The uproar over his death triggered a review of 17 other electrocution deaths in Iraq and widespread inspections.

Maseth’s death was at first ruled an accident. But later, an Army investigator called the death a “negligent homicide,’’ caused by Houston-based KBR and two of its supervisors, and said it had failed to ensure that qualified electricians and plumbers worked on the building where Maseth died, according to an internal document obtained by the Associated Press.

Yesterday, the Defense Department said that while both contractors and government employees “breached their respective duties of care,’’ the US Army Criminal Investigation Command determined that none of the breaches alone were “the proximate cause of his death.’’ Army criminal investigators also concurred that the manner of death was accidental.

Maseth’s mother, Cheryl Harris, said the findings were heartbreaking and disappointing.

“According to the CID, there were so many failures on KBR’s part that they couldn’t assign all of the blame to any one person and therefore told us they were not going to file charges, which tells me that the CID doesn’t know or is ignorant [of] the evidence I do know exists,’’ said Harris, who met with Army criminal investigators yesterday afternoon.

Last week, the Defense Department’s inspector general said that Maseth died when he came in contact with an energized metal shower and hose caused by the failure of an ungrounded water pump located on the roof of the building installed by KBR. The inspector general said KBR did not ground equipment during installation or report improperly grounded equipment during maintenance, nor did it have standard operating procedures for inspections.