WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama’s pledge that he’d begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy. (more)
This whole reinvention thing hasn’t started well for CNN. (more)
A candid former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stands by his and the Bush administration’s decision to pursue the Iraq war, even as he expresses regret for the lives lost in the conflict. (more)
The U.S. military is banning personnel from visiting the WikiLeaks website, which recently released more than 70,000 classified diplomatic and military messages on the long war in Afghanistan. (more)
SWAT VALLEY, Pakistan (AP) — The painting is disturbing: raindrops shaped like bullets and branches intended to look like blood-soaked necks. The artist was a boy recruited by the Taliban to help kill Pakistani soldiers. (more)
The new host of ABC’s Sunday morning news program, renamed “This Week With Christiane Amanpour,” tried to get a rise out of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. (more)
WikiLeaks put its own interests above those on the front lines in Afghanistan, the Secretary of Defense said on Sunday. (more)
The platoon sergeant was inspecting the gaping crater left by a roadside bomb in northern Afghanistan when a second thunderous blast went off just 20 feet away. (more)
MAHMUD-E RAQI, Afghanistan — Women’s precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls’ schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home. (more)
KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO announced Friday that six more U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll for July to at least 66 and surpassing the previous month’s record as the deadliest for American forces in the nearly 9-year-old war. (more)
Taliban would like to send Wikileaks founder some flowers — Charlie Rangel’s luck just ran out — NYT editorial board doesn’t understand why Obama is doing this — Deficit anxieties freeze Congress —
Weird assemblage of freaks and geeks run Charlie Crist’s campaign — Fifteen years from now, China could own everything (more)
The battle for hearts and minds in Afghanistan has taken a new turn in the past two months. The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar, has ordered his forces to kill or capture any civilians, including Afghan women, who cooperate with Coalition forces. Omar’s latest directive contradicts his marching orders from just one year ago, when he told his Taliban commanders to refrain from harming civilians working with the Coalition. (more)
The House on Tuesday approved spending an additional $37 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, overcoming the opposition of some Democrats who have concluded that the Afghan conflict is unwinnable. (more)
The leak of tens of thousands of classified U.S. military documents on the Afghan war, while illegal, has little significance for policymaking, Sen. John Kerry said Tuesday. (more)
The vehement denials by Pakistan that its spy service and military have maintained close ties with the Taliban insurgency since 9/11 appear to be one of the biggest casualties of the leak of 92,000 U.S. military documents. (more)
Documents released today by WikiLeaks have cast fresh doubts on the United States’ ability to win the War in Afghanistan. The documents, believed to be have been released at least in part by Pfc. Bradley Manning of Potomac, Md., according to Fox. Despite avoiding naming Manning as its source explicitly, WikiLeaks has offered to help fund his defense. Adrian Lamo, a former hacker who Manning allegedly attempted to enlist in the publication of the documents before turning to WikiLeaks, said this morning on Good Morning America that he believes Manning is the source, but that the computer analyst lacked the technical knowledge to have acted alone. (more)
Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are teaming up to force a debate on the House floor next week aimed at compelling the Obama administration to pull U.S. military forces from Pakistan. (more)
WASHINGTON — When President Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan in December, he argued that by setting a deadline of next summer to begin drawing down troops he would create a sense of urgency for the Afghan government to take the lead in the fight, while acknowledging the limits of America’s patience with the longest war in its history. (more)
Nearly a year before his infamous resignation several weeks ago, Gen. Stanley McChrystal tightened the rules of engagement (ROE) for soldiers serving in Afghanistan to restrict troops from firing unless fired upon and prohibiting bombing or launching artillery attacks with civilians nearby. (more)
