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President Trump addressed the nation on Monday from Fort Myer military base in Arlington, Va., to lay out his military plans for Afghanistan. Following is the full transcript of those remarks, as released by the Federal News Service.

There are places in the world so potentially volatile that the U.S. cannot leave them to the ebb and flow of geopolitics. The Korean Peninsula and the Middle East come immediately to mind. Afghanistan also belongs on that list — something President Donald Trump has finally come to realize, seven months after taking office. The Los Angeles Times reports that Trump is poised to authorize sending roughly 4,000 more U.S. troops to the South Asian country, the site of the longest war in America's history. Like their countrymen already in Afghanistan, these Americans won't be a combat force. They'll carry...

CAMP MOREHEAD, Afghanistan (AP) — Signaling that the U.S. military expects its mission to continue, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Sunday hailed the launch of the Afghan Army’s new special operations corps, declaring that “we are with you and we will stay with you.”

President Trump has decided on a strategy for Afghanistan that also takes a broad approach toward tackling competing interests in South Asia, CBS News' Margaret Brennan reports. The White House released a statement on Sunday saying that Mr. Trump will address the nation's troops and the American people on Monday evening from Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, "to provide an update on the path forward for America's engagement in Afghanistan and South Asia." Officials expect Mr. Trump to announce a strategy that meets the requests of commanders in the field, allows for the deployment of around 4,000 more U.S. troops,...

President Trump will address the nation on his Afghanistan war strategy tomorrow at 9 p.m. from Fort Myer in Arlington, VA. It's one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, and it comes after Trump met with his national security team on Friday at Camp David . Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Sunday, per Reuters: "I am very comfortable that the strategic process was sufficiently rigorous and did not go in with a pre-set position." The stakes: Should Trump order a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, advisers believe he'd all but ensure the Taliban completes its takeover...

Sen. John McCain on Thursday unveiled a plan to increase U.S. air and ground forces in Afghanistan that would probably bring some American soldiers closer into harm’s way — a move that in effect rebukes President Trump, who has not yet decided on his preferred way forward in the war. McCain (R-Ariz.) promised to present his plan as an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, upon his return to Washington in September.

President Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Saturday defended President Trump's strategy on winning the war in Afghanistan. The president has not announced a comprehensive strategy on Afghanistan yet, but according to McMaster he has made “a number of decisions" on the military approach there. [snip] McMaster also added that the White House wants to see a "change in behavior" from interested groups in the region, particularly Pakistan. The top aide said that while Pakistan has taken "great losses" fighting the Taliban, they have done so "selectively." "This is Pakistan in particular that we want to really see a...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has become increasingly frustrated with his advisers tasked with crafting a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and recently suggested firing the war's top military commander during a tense meeting at the White House, according to senior administration officials. During the July 19 meeting, Trump repeatedly suggested that Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford replace Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, because he is not winning the war, the officials said. Trump has not met Nicholson, and the Pentagon has been considering extending...

GOP Sen. John McCain issued a statement Monday saying that he will produce a military strategy for Afghanistan in September, if President Donald Trump has no plan to offer. While McCain hasn’t yet proposed a solution, his statement indicates his intent to develop a legislative alternative in the absence of an actual plan from the Trump administration regarding U.S. interests in Afghanistan.

Continued use of the uniform could cost the Pentagon an extra $72 million in the next 10 years, the report said.The U.S. Department of Defense may have wasted nearly $30 million over the past decade on uniforms for the Afghan military that featured a forest-style camouflage pattern inappropriate for the country's desert landscapes, a top government fiscal watchdog said Wednesday. A 17-page report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction says $28 million has already been spent by the Pentagon on the uniforms -- and perhaps another $72 million will go toward them in the next decade. According to...

Three American service members were killed and another wounded Saturday when an Afghan soldier opened fire on them in the country's eastern Nangarhar province, U.S. officials said. In a statement, the Pentagon said the wounded soldier had been evacuated for treatment and the incident was under investigation. The so-called insider attack — the second of its kind this year — happened in Nangarhar, where Afghan troops and U.S. special operations forces have been locked in combat with an Islamic State-affiliated militant group for months. The shooter was killed immediately.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A day after a lethal Taliban assault on an army base in northern Afghanistan, an official said on Saturday that at least 140 soldiers had been killed, making it the single deadliest known attack on an Afghan military base in the course of the long war. “Today, there was even a shortage of coffins,” said the official, Ibrahim Khairandish, a member of the provincial council in Balkh Province, where the attack occurred. Citing information from army officials, Mr. Khairandish said 60 soldiers had also been wounded in the attack. The soldiers, most of them unarmed, were shot...

“John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), said the salaries of ‘ghost soldiers’ is just one of many ways Americans’ money is wasted in Afghanistan – all for rather modest gains.” What gains? As soon as the U.S. troops are finally gone from Afghanistan, the Taliban will take over again. The whole Afghan misadventure has been a fool’s errand, a massive, ghastly waste of American lives, money, and materiel. The U.S. government is paying the salaries of “tens of thousands” of non-existent Afghan soldiers, police, teachers and civil servants, a top Pentagon official said Wednesday in reporting on...

(CNN)Some time in May 2014, Paul Overby, an American writer in his 70's, disappeared as he was traveling between Khost in Afghanistan and North Waziristan in Pakistan -- a region rife with the Taliban and terror groups such as al Qaeda. He has not been heard from since. On Wednesday, his wife went public for the first time with his disappearance, providing a statement to CNN and other media outlets. . . Overby's wife, who asked not to be identified by name, last heard from her husband on May 16, 2014, as he was preparing to cross the border into...

For years the Obama administration has been accused of micromanaging the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from inside the White House. Now in an astonishing report from Fox News anchor Bret Baier, three former Obama Defense Secretaries are openly slamming him for his distrust of the military, his failure to lead and they're exposing his inexperienced and closest advisors for second guessing senior field commanders with phone calls to the battlefield. "President Obama, he's one of the youngest presidents we've ever had. One of the most inexperienced presidents we've ever had. He has a staff around him that is very...

The following is the text of a speech delivered August 21, 2016 at the American Freedom Alliance conference in Los Angeles entitled: “Islam and Western Civilization: Can They Co-Exist?” Col. Douglas MacGregor is a respected military strategist who was a heroic tank commander during the 1991 Iraq war. As the Gen McChrystal scandal broke in 2010, Col MacGregor, who attended West Point with McChrystal, and was angered by the US military’s disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan “nation building” efforts, commented accurately: The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is...

Women are so despised and devalued in Islamic culture that it leads to this sort of thing. And even though this article says that Muslim clerics and the Taliban object to the practice, the Qur’an says that in Paradise, the blessed will be attended not only by the famous virgins, but by boys like pearls as well: “Those are the ones brought near in the Gardens of Pleasure, a company of the former peoples and a few of the later peoples, on thrones woven, reclining on them, facing each other. There will circulate among them young boys made eternal with...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. After two American soldiers were murdered by an Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan while a crowd of protesters shouted “Death to Americans” and “Death to Infidels”, General Allen visited his men. “There will be moments like this when you’re searching for the meaning of this loss. There will be moments like this when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back,” Allen pleaded. “Now is not the time for revenge, now is not the time for vengeance.”...

Throughout the course of the long war in Afghanistan, Coalition troops have relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe, and make their jobs easier. The dogs are trained to detect explosives, to find illegal drugs, to search for missing comrades, or target enemy combatants. Not only are they active on the front lines, but behind the lines they serve as therapy dogs, service dogs, and loyal companions. They also share the same risks as the ground troops, suffering injuries and sometimes death on the battlefields. Gathered here are images of these dogs and their handlers...