War In Afghanistan, Afghan War | featured news

It was once President Barack Obama's "war of necessity." Now, it's America's forgotten war. The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It's not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress - even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day.

New Zealand’s government said on Monday that it would probably speed up the withdrawal of its small contingent of troops from Afghanistan.

A gunman wearing an Afghan uniform has shot to death three American troops in the southern Helmand province, according to the U.S.-led international military coalition in the country, known as ISAF. U.S. officials told CBS News correspondent David Martin that the three slain troops were members of a Marine special operations force. Afghan sources in Helmand told CBS News Kabul bureau chief Fazul Rahim that they were part of a team overseeing the training and recruitment of Afghan local police. The sources said it was one of the police officers who opened fire on his mentors during dinner on Thursday evening. ISAF has not yet confirmed these details.

A spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States told The State that Michael Haley may be the first spouse of a sitting governor to be deployed into a combat zone. Nikki Haley, 40, is a Republican who assumed office in 2011. She has been discussed as a potential vice presidential pick for Mitt Romney and hit the campaign trail days ago for the presumptive GOP nominee.

A military jury on Monday acquitted a sergeant on the most serious charges in the death of Pvt. Danny Chen, a Chinese-American from Manhattan who killed himself last year while deployed in Afghanistan, but found him guilty on lesser charges... The jury determined that the sergeant, Adam M. Holcomb, was not guilty of negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, communicating a threat and hazing. Sergeant Holcomb was convicted on two counts of maltreatment and one count of assault consummated by battery.

The interior minister says the initial investigation into a bombing at a wedding hall suggests the Taliban and terrorists were responsible.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a wedding reception in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 22 people including a prominent politician, and wounding 40 others, police said.

Moving the mountain of U.S. military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year's withdrawal from Iraq, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Tuesday.

Denounced by some as propaganda and hailed by others as art, the anthology of poems by militants in Afghanistan reveals at times a surprisingly emotional tone. War is an ageless poetic wellspring, yielding wrenching odes to the white heat of combat, the longing for lost loved ones, the dust of graveyards.

The U.S. designation Saturday of Afghanistan as its newest "major non-NATO ally" amounts to a political statement of support for the country's long-term stability and solidifies close defense cooperation after American combat troops withdraw in 2014....