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Sources told FoxNews.com that Obama's dissatisfaction with Hagel, as well as a desire to shake up the cabinet following the devastating midterm elections, played a role in the president seeking Hagel's ouster. “Make no mistake, Secretary Hagel was fired,” a senior U.S. official with close knowledge of the situation told Fox News. This same official discounted Pentagon claims it was a mutual decision claiming President Obama has lost confidence in Hagel and that the White House had been planning to announce his exit for weeks. “The president felt he had to fire someone. He fired the only Republican in his...

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Martha, let's keep our eye on the ball. The reason I've been in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq 20 times — I've been up in the Kunar — I've been throughout that whole country, mostly in a helicopter and sometimes in a vehicle. The fact is we went there for one reason: to get those people who killed Americans, al-Qaida. We've decimated al-Qaida central. We have eliminated Osama bin Laden. That was our purpose. And in fact, in the meantime, what we said we would do, we would help train the Afghan military. It's their responsibility...

A suicide bomber blew himself up Sunday amid a crowd at a volleyball tournament in eastern Afghanistan, killing 45 people and injuring dozens more in the deadliest attack since a new government took power, officials said. The evening explosion in Paktika province was a chilling reminder of the violence that insurgents continue to inflict on Afghanistan despite the inauguration of a national unity government two months ago and the impending withdrawal of most U.S.-led international troops. Mokhles Afghan, spokesman for the provincial governor, said the bomber was mingling with spectators at a local volleyball tournament when he detonated a vest...

Or, more accurately, while you were voting. Was Barack Obama conveniently waiting for after the midterm elections to add another year of combat duty to our tour in Afghanistan, or is this just a big coincidence? YMMV, but the New York Times suggests that the decision was made longer than just 17 days ago in this Friday night document dump: President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country...

President Obama has opened a new front in his hard line against the incoming Republican Congress by releasing more detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against lawmakers' objections. The Pentagon announced Thursday that four al Qaeda fighters from Yemen, including a senior figure who facilitated travel to Afghanistan for Arab extremists, and a Tunisian extremist would be transferred to Slovakia and Georgia. The transfers leave 143 detainees at Guantanamo, which Obama has vowed to close. Republican lawmakers, who have been pressing the administration to stop releasing detainees amid reports that some former prisoners had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- President Obama quietly signed a classified executive order authorizing a more expansive role for U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2015, ensuring American troops will be fighting in the country for at least one more year, The New York Times reported. The order allows American troops to take a direct role in missions against militant groups that include the Taliban.

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed a secret order in recent weeks authorizing a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year. Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision.

As bullets cracked around his head, Air Force Master Sgt. Thomas Case stayed cool and directed pinpoint airstrikes on Taliban positions less than a stone’s throw away. With two foreign fighters coming at the commander of the Army unit to which Case was assigned as a joint terminal attack controller, he shielded the officer with his body and took them down with his rifle. For his heroism fulfilling both the air and ground aspects of the JTAC’s job during a battle on July 16 and 17, 2009, Case on Thursday became just the third airman to be awarded a...

The Pentagon is under fire for making a ransom payment to an Afghan earlier this year as part of a failed bid to win the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, according to U.S. officials. Sgt. Bergdahl was released in May after nearly five years in captivity as part of a controversial exchange for five terrorists held at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The ransom payment was first disclosed by Rep. Duncan Hunter in a Nov. 5 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Mr. Hunter stated in the letter that Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) made...

The number of people killed by terrorists worldwide in 2013 rose by 60 percent compared to the previous year – from 11,133 to 17,958 – with four Sunni Muslim extremist groups responsible for two-thirds of all fatalities, according to a comprehensive annual study. Eighty-two percent of fatalities occurred in just five countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, although the number of countries that experienced more than 50 terror-related deaths also rose – to 24, compared with 15 the previous year. ... Four Sunni groups were responsible for 66 percent of all terror fatalities in 2013. In order of...

Critics said the M-14 was what happened when the U.S. government took many years and spent millions of dollars designing a rifle that was really just a glorified M-1 Garand from World War II. The M-14 was the U.S. military’s last battle rifle. It appeared in 1959—the contemporary of the Pentagon’s first jet fighters and ICBMs. With its heavy steel parts and walnut stock, the M-14 looked positively archaic. It was hardly a Space Age weapon. And it only endured as America’s battle rifle until 1970, when the M-16 completely superseded it—the shortest service record of any U.S. military rifle...

Iranian state TV has released video footage claiming the country has successfully replicated a highly sophisticated U.S. stealth drone that crashed over Iran in 2011. The video released Wednesday includes both aerial and ground footage, demonstrating a black pilotless aircraft closely resembling a RQ-170 sentinel stealth drone, flying over a mountainous area of Iran before touching down at an unmanned air base. Segments of the video appear to be genuine, David Cenciotti, founder of “The Aviatonist” a military aviation blog said, while some of the frames showing the drone landing appear to be computer generated, showing a smaller prototype model...

"Every day for the last six years, I ask my staff early in the morning to contact the Department of Defense to get a detailed report of the number of troops deployed, the number wounded, and the number killed.

A 21-year-old Army veteran was shot to death Sunday only months after his return from Afghanistan, police said. Francisco Garcia had left a party at his girlfriend’s house and was on a sidewalk in the San Fernando Valley around 2 a.m. Sunday when two cars pulled up. A man got out of one vehicle, smashed a beer bottle on the ground and yelled at Garcia before going back to the second car to grab a gun, police said. Garcia died at the scene. No one else was injured. …

The Queen was applauded today in an unprecedented mark of appreciation as she led millions of Britons in remembering the fallen. The monarch laid a wreath on the Cenotaph at the national Remembrance Day service alongside senior Royals, veterans and the Prime Minister despite heightened police checks, just days after officers thwarted an alleged terror plot. The spontaneous smattering of applause, as she left Whitehall in central London, was a rare sound for a remembrance service usually characterised by respectful silence, and may have been in tribute to her fortitude at turning out to the service despite terror fears. Hundreds...

- Each year, the U.S. State Department formally rebukes and imposes penalties on governments that protect and promote terrorists. But since 1996, when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the nation harboring Osama bin Laden has never made the department's list of terrorist-sponsoring countries. The omission reflects more than a decade of vexing relations between the United States and Afghanistan, a period that found the State Department more focused on U.S. oil interests and women's rights than on the growing terrorist threat, according to experts and current and former officials. It was not until 1998, when two U.S. embassy bombings ...

COLOGNE, Germany — With its wood-paneled piano bar and luxurious spa, the four-star Bonotel assures visitors paying up to $300 per night that it meets the "international standard of a first-class hotel." But starting next year, the hotel's marble-and-mirrored lobby and "quiet, peaceful ambience" will play host not to indulgent travelers but desperate asylum seekers. Germany's fourth-largest city spent almost $7 million to buy the Bonotel this summer. Its doors will soon be shut and its 93 opulent rooms filled with asylum seekers, a move underscoring how Europe's economic powerhouse has been overwhelmed by an influx of people seeking a...

The Taliban may be prepared to renounce terrorism and sever links with al Qaeda, accept a power sharing role in a new Afghan government and even tolerate American bases in their country, according to a new report. A panel of four experts from the Royal United Services Institute interviewed four senior figures - each one part of the "pragmatic" or "moderate" part of the Islamist movement - at a secret location in the Arabian Gulf. The four figures, among them two former Taliban ministers, a Mujahideen commander and a well-connected negotiator, surprised the experts by insisting that they had no...

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

Our Political Bureau NEW DELHI MANY functionaries of the United States State Department, who handled South Asia under the Clinton Administration, may have to face embarrassment when the Bush regime gets down to locating the factors that made it easier for terrorists to carry out the September 11 carnage. These functionaries, it is reliably learnt, ignored the warnings about the activities and intentions of the terrorist groups operating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of such reports had come from Michael Sheehan, the head of counter-terrorism wing of the State Department. Sheehan’s report also listed the measures that the ...