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The German government is mediating secret talks on German soil between the US government and representatives of the Taliban. Berlin is cautiously optimistic that the negotiations will deliver progress, but observers warn that the insurgents' morale remains high. It's still unknown where exactly in Germany the American and Afghan negotiators met, but when they met can be pinpointed fairly exactly: at the turn of the year and on the second weekend in May. It's also fairly clear who attends these talks on peace in the Hindu Kush. On the American side, representatives of the State Department and the CIA are...

Suspected militants in southern Pakistan have destroyed at least 27 tankers carrying fuel for Nato forces in Afghanistan, officials said. The attack in Sindh province comes a day after three Pakistani soldiers died in a cross-border air strike by Nato. Pakistan has blocked supply routes for US and Nato troops in Afghanistan following the raid. ... No-one has claimed responsibility for Friday morning's attack in the southern town of Shikarpur.

9 killed, 3 hurt in Afghanistan chopper crash KABUL, Afghanistan – All nine troops killed in the worst helicopter crash for the coalition in Afghanistan in four years were Americans, the Pentagon has confirmed without providing further information on why the aircraft carrying Navy special forces went down.

In the scandal involving the theft and release of classified military information that could cost the lives of U.S. military personnel, the British Telegraph newspaper is reporting that the American soldier at the center of the scandal was "openly homosexual" and apparently held a grudge against the U.S. because of the military's anti-gay policy. In another bizarre twist, reliable reports suggest that Private First Class Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army Intelligence analyst accused of leaking the classified information to the WikiLeaks.org website, was not only a homosexual but was considering a sex change. Manning was arrested at the end of...

As of July 31, almost half of all U.S. fatalities in Afghanistan have happened on President Barack Obama’s watch. Since Obama took office in January 2009, 558 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, out of 1,127 since the war began nine years ago, according to CNSNews.com’s tally. And the violence is escalating. July 2010 was the deadliest month for U.S forces in Afghanistan, with 66 combat and non-combat fatalities. Counting for both combat and non-combat deaths, the top three bloodiest months for U.S. forces all happened during Obama’s term: July 2010 (66 dead), June 2010 (60 dead), and October 2009...

US authorities have known for weeks that they have suffered a haemorrhage of secret information on a scale which makes even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war look limited by comparison. The Afghan war logs, from which the Guardian reports today, consist of 92,201 internal records of actions by the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009 – threat reports from intelligence agencies, plans and accounts of coalition operations, descriptions of enemy attacks and roadside bombs, records of meetings with local politicians, most of them classified secret. The Guardian's source for these is...

loose network of Mexican-American women, some of whom may be illegal immigrants, have been responsible for helping numerous Afghan military deserters go AWOL from an Air Force Base in Texas, FoxNews.com has learned. Many of the Afghans, with the women's assistance, have made their way to Canada; the whereabouts of others remain unknown. Some of the men have been schooled by the women in how to move around the U.S. without any documentation. The Afghan deserters refer to the women as "BMWs" — Big Mexican Women — and they often are the first step in the Afghans' journey from Lackland...

Republicans still have time to transform their concern about the explosion in the size of our government into a directed political force that sweeps elections this November. The single person who can now do the most to make this happen is RNC Chairman Michael Steele. How? By resigning. The latest mark against Steele is the apparent exposure of a personal belief deeply at odds with Republican philosophy. Yesterday, Mr. Steele said of the war in Afghanistan that “this was a war of Obama’s choosing.” ... Indeed, major donors have deserted the RNC. The DNC has led the RNC in fundraising....

In confiding to Rolling Stone their unflattering opinions of the military acumen of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, Dick Holbrooke and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff were guilty of colossal stupidity. And President Obama had cause to cashier them. Yet his decision to fire McChrystal may prove both unwise and costly. For McChrystal, unlike Gen. MacArthur, never challenged the war policy -- he is carrying it out -- and Barack Obama is no Harry Truman. Moreover, the war strategy Obama is pursuing is the McChrystal Plan, devised by the general and...

President Obama announced Wednesday that he has accepted Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan following a scathing article in which he and his aides were quoted criticizing the administration for its handling of the war. In doing so, Obama nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and the former commanding general in Iraq, to replace him. The president stressed that while the decision was a difficult one, it does not represent a change in the course of the war. "This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change...

Leadership: The summoning of the president's hand-picked Afghan commander to the White House to explain a critical magazine profile does not bode well. Are we looking for scapegoats or victory? To some, it evokes President Truman's meeting with Gen. Douglas MacArthur on Wake Island during the Korean War, shortly before Truman sacked the general who believed that in war there's no substitute for victory, a word that doesn't appear on administration teleprompters these days. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been summoned to the White House to explain a profile to be published in Rolling Stone on Friday. The piece contains unflattering...

1,000th GI killed in Afghan war was on 2nd tour May 30, 4:41 AM (ET) By PAUL J. WEBER KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) - The 1,000th American serviceman killed in Afghanistan was born on the Fourth of July. He died several days before Americans honor fallen troops on Memorial Day. Marine Cpl. Jacob C. Leicht was killed Thursday when he stepped on a land mine in Helmand province that ripped off his right arm. It was the 24-year-old Texan's second deployment overseas. Leicht had begged to return to the battlefield after a bomb took out his Humvee in Iraq. He spent...

GENEVA (AP) -- The international Red Cross said Wednesday it would continue giving first aid training and kits to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, despite drawing angry e-mails from around the world and criticism from an Afghan official after the practice was publicized. The International Committee of the Red Cross trained "over 70 members of the armed opposition" in first aid last month, along with more than 100 Afghan police and civilians, including taxi drivers.

Hillary Clinton, and General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command. War commander General Stanley McChrystal and US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry were due to take part in the meeting by video conference, the White House said. US and other media reported on Tuesday that Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi several days ago. The White House refused to confirm the arrest, which would mark a watershed in the US campaign against the Taliban. US, NATO and Afghan troops meanwhile pressed on with a major assault against the Taliban bastion...

Democrat Martha Coakley dodged a pointed question Tuesday about her claim during a Massachusetts Senate debate the night before that terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan. During Monday's debate with Republican Scott Brown, Coakley questioned why the United States still has troops in Afghanistan. She claimed that the al Qaeda terrorists who were originally targeted by American military action have migrated elsewhere, rendering the mission moot. "They're gone," she said. "They're not there anymore. They're in, apparently Yemen, they're in Pakistan." A reporter asked Coakley about that claim after a Capitol Hill fundraiser on Tuesday. "Do you stand by that...

WASHINGTON – The CIA said Thursday that seven of its employees were killed and six others wounded in a suicide bombing at a base in Afghanistan. The Associated Press has learned that one of them was the chief of the CIA's post in Afghanistan's southeastern Khost Province. CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a message to agency staff that the casualties sustained in Wednesday's strike at Forward Operating Base Chapman were the result of a terrorist attack. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing. Initial reports indicated that eight American civilians had been killed. There was no explanation for...

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A suicide bomber struck a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, causing an unknown number of American casualties, a U.S. military official said.

"...It’s suddenly about the economy!For his entire Presidency, it’s all been about health reform! Now, in a sudden change, he claims the big issue is the economy. He said the American people are focused on rebuilding the economy. And he said we simply can’t afford the price tag of these wars! What an outrageous claim! We can’t afford the war, but we can afford the trillion he said the wars cost for health care?! This is nuts!! He is being dishonest with the American people to suddenly claim its all about the economy and that we just can’t afford the...

WASHINGTON – The White House says President Barack Obama is placing heavy emphasis on how the United States eventually will withdraw from Afghanistan even as he plans to announce a troop increase next week. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that the United States is in its ninth year of military involvement in Afghanistan and "we are not going to be there another eight or nine years." Gibbs says Obama's recent meetings with military advisers have often focused on how to train Afghanistan's police and army so they can secure and hold areas taken from the Taliban after...

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - More than 25 NATO and Afghan troops were wounded during a search Friday for two missing U.S. paratroopers in western Afghanistan, the NATO-led force said. The Taliban said the missing two missing soldiers were dead and it had recovered their bodies.

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

Here we go again the insistent blaming of the former president. President Barry Hussein Soetoro just can’t help himself. He has pointed the finger of blame at the previous president and the administration that preceded him more than all of the previous presidents combined have blamed a predecessor. President Soetoro undoubtedly is a sufferer of Bush derangement syndrome. Charles Krauthammer takes president Soetoro to task for his puerile need to finger point at the Bush administration. (see 2:32 min. video)

President Barack Obama traveled overnight to receive the remains of fallen soldiers whose bodies were returning from Afghanistan. Obama made a midnight trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the first stop back in the U.S. for soldiers who are killed in combat, where he awaited an Air Force C-17 transporting the remains of 15 U.S. soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Agency agents killed in Afghanistan this week. Obama met at a chapel on-base with family members of the fallen Americans, and boarded the C-17 for a short ceremony to witness the "dignified transfer" of the soldiers' remains. The...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

United States feels that Taliban poses a lesser threat to American security than al-Qaeda, the White House said here today, as media reported that the Obama administration has concluded that Taliban cannot be eliminated in Afghanistan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sought to make a clear differentiation between Taliban and al-Qaeda as he said al-Qaeda was an "entity that, through a global jihadist network would seek to strike the US homeland". "I think the Taliban are, obviously, exceedingly bad people that have done awful things," Gibbs said. "Their capability is somewhat different, though, on that continuum of transnational threats," he...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

Hiding Behind Synonyms: Obama Begins Campaign to Throw Gen. McChrystal Under the Bus Erick Erickson Monday, October 5th at 11:33AM EDT If they had gone to the New York Times, the nation would see it as just another example of the Gray Lady’s unrepentant sixties bra burning hysteria against war. Instead, the Obama administration has gone to the Washington Post to begin the process of getting rid of their troublesome General who dares to think winning in Afghanistan is possible.To understand why and how, we must refer to Jonah Goldberg and his important work Liberal Fascism. This book is necessary...

Here is video of Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying in a speech that whatever decision President Obama makes about what to do in Afghanistan, the military will "salute" and fall in line to implement his decision. Gates said Obama's decision will be one of the most important of his Presidency. . . . (VIDEO)

The role of traumatic brain injury -- blamed for symptoms plaguing thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq -- might be overstated, contends a provocative military study that offers hope for successful treatment. In many cases, post-traumatic stress and depression may be driving the symptoms, doctors reported Wednesday. And that's good news because those are treatable. The study by U.S. military doctors was praised by outside experts who found the conclusions convincing. Returning soldiers have struggled with memory loss, irritability, trouble sleeping and other problems. Many have suffered mild blast-related concussions, but there is no easy way to separate which symptoms...

Master Cpl. Collin Fitzgerald, who was awarded a Medal of Valour for heroic actions in Afghanistan by Governor General Michaëlle Jean on Feb. 19, had his foot broken in three places and needed 10 stitches to close a cut above his right eye. The 27-year-old soldier also suffered a broken nose and two black eyes in the attack, which occurred after midnight Saturday morning. A Canadian soldier awarded a medal of valour for braving enemy fire in Afghanistan is angry after he says was jumped from behind and taunted by four men who beat him up in an Ontario bar...