We reported on the growing use of prescription drugs by troops in Afghanistan and Iraq more than three years ago. The Pentagon is finally catching up. It wants to spend $23 million next year for drug testing to make sure troops aren’t illicitly taking legal drugs like Valium and Vicodin.
But the House Appropriations Committee has …
A senior White House official was eager Thursday night to hear from a reporter on just how President Obama’s decision to pull 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan by year’s end was playing. “How do you think he did?” he asked at the fringe of Pakistani ambassador Husain Haqanni’s annual barbeque. “Well, Mullen and Petraeus were pretty …
The always impertinent Tony Karon, over on our Global Spin blog, has some questions he wants President Obama to answer:
1. What will Obama tell the loved ones of Americans killed in Afghanistan in the next three years?
2. How does the U.S. persuade Afghan civilians or neighboring countries to do its bidding when it acknowledges its …
During his confirmation hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Gen. David Petraeus whether he supported President Obama’s timetable to withdraw over 30,000 troops from Afghanistan. Rather than say “No,” he delivered this impenetrable monologue.
That’s the title of a sour but thoughtful piece now up on Small Wars Journal:
As in Vietnam, the war in Afghanistan was lost before it was begun: it is lost because it cannot be won. Again our massive and superior military force is losing a campaign to a tough insurgent force. Again we are spending tens of billions overseas, and
…
As Washington debates the fate of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the 30,000 troops and others assigned to its main base — Bagram — north of Kabul are tending to more mundane matters. They’re leading the same sort of dreary lives, punctuated by horror and farce, that have defined soldiers’ lives in these parts since Alexander the Great …
The President’s decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept.
— Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in his prepared statement to the House Armed Services Committee Thursday morning, on the Afghan troop withdrawal announced by President Obama Wednesday evening
Are the use of targeted drone strikes by the CIA and U.S. military legal?
The U.S. troop presence has peaked in Afghanistan at 101,000 and from here on out the Afghans will increasingly be on their own, President Obama made clear Wednesday night. The military challenge going forward is easy to describe, but tough to execute: can the fledgling Afghan national security forces — salted with corruption, …
After a decade of war in Afghanistan, the battle lines — at least among the activists — are clearly drawn. The usual suspects have been rolling out their voice boxes atop soapboxes to explain, in advance of President Obama’s speech Wednesday night, why we must keep fighting, or come home. Few fall in-between.
This is what …
President Obama traveled to West Point 18 months ago to redefine the American strategy in Afghanistan and explain why he would dispatch an additional 30,000 troops there, to a total of 100,000. “These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of …
The White House has announced that President Obama on June 22 is going to reveal the way forward in Afghanistan — which, boiled down, means how many of the 100,000 U.S. troops now there will be coming home in short order. Then, some 24 hours later, the Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold a confirmation hearing for General …
The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, is apparently open to the idea of withdrawing of 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
Marc Ambinder is reporting that Petraeus has “formally” endorsed bringing out 5,000 troops now and another 5,000 next spring. But Congress is increasingly hostile to the …
