Middle East, Afghan War | featured news

A NATO helicopter crashed during an operation against the Taliban near the Afghan capital late Friday night, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said 31 U.S. troops and seven Afghan soldiers were killed.
A second coalition helicopter was forced to make a precautionary landing in another part of Afghanistan, local officials and a spokesman for the multinational forces said Saturday.

For months officials in Pakistan have been demanding an end to CIA drone strikes in the country, and the brokering of a new relationship that would make them equal partners in the pursuit of terrorist groups. Now they have an unlikely ally in their demands: the former director of U.S. intelligence agencies, Dennis C. Blair.

General David Petraeus, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, handed over command of U.S. and NATO-led troops in Afghanistan on Monday, a day after a gradual process of transferring security to Afghan forces began.

The first U.S. troops have left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's planned drawdown of about a third of the 100,000 U.S. forces there during the next year.

It may have started as a bet, but Sgt. Scott Moore's YouTube video will end with a famous date.

At a White House ceremony later today, Sgt. 1st Class Leroy Petry, an Army Ranger, will become only the second living recipient of the Medal of Honor for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sen. John McCain said Sunday the Obama administration is taking an unnecessary risk in drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Amid a growing debate over how to bring down the government’s debt, a new study has concluded that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan has cost up to $4 trillion over the past decade.

The Afghan government Tuesday lashed out at its former central bank president, who fled to Virginia and announced there Monday that he had resigned in fear for his life. Officials here blamed him for involvement in a major bank scandal and said he had no reason to fear anything but the law.

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he will withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by year's end and a total of 33,000 by the summer of 2012.