U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that when the Obama administration begins pulling troops from Afghanistan next month it will resist a rush to the exists, "and we expect the same from our allies."
Leon Panetta, President Barack Obama's choice to head the Pentagon, predicted on Thursday that Iraq will ask the United States to keep some American forces in that country beyond year's end, the current departure date.
A soon-to-begin U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan should leave combat power intact as long as possible to press an anti-Taliban offensive, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Sunday. He said support troops should go first.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates appealed for patience with an unpopular war and said Saturday that only modest U.S. troop reductions would make sense this summer in a still unstable Afghanistan.
The top NATO commander in Afghanistan pledged Thursday to reduce the loss of innocent lives in NATO attacks to an "absolute minimum."
NATO said Monday that it has significantly weakened the Taliban insurgency, capturing or killing thousands of militants in Afghanistan during the past three months.
The killing of Osama bin Laden may weaken al Qaeda's influence on the Afghan Taliban, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Sunday.
The liquidation of Osama bin Laden is a cause for full-throated national celebration. It must also be the occasion for a redirection of our efforts to wage and win what has been misnamed the war on terrorism. At last, we must recognize the struggle we are in for what it is - the war for the Free World - and begin taking all the steps necessary to win it, not just some of them.
President Obama has once again turned to an architect of President Bush's war strategy to fill a major civilian post in his administration - this time elevating Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversaw the Iraq surge, to be CIA chief, and tapping current agency head Leon E. Panetta to become the next defense secretary.
