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A US senator has said an estimated 4,700 people, including some civilians, have been killed in the contentious bombing raids of America's secretive drone war. It was the first time a politician or any government representative had referred to a total number of fatalities in the drone strikes, which have been condemned by rights groups as extrajudicial assassinations.

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night that he will end the war in Afghanistan by the end of next year, and that after that he will keep tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan to fight a war in Afghanistan. “And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” said Obama. For the period after 2014, he said, “We are negotiating an agreement with the Afghan government that focuses on two missions: training and equipping Afghan forces so that the country does not again...

A Justice Department white paper, obtained by NBC News, states that it is lawful to kill a United States citizen if “an informed, high-level” government official decides that the target is a ranking Al Qaeda figure who poses “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” What standards must be met for the government to assassinate an American citizen? And does this deprive U.S. citizens of their constitutionally protected due process rights?

Pakistani villagers offer funeral prayers for people who were reportedly killed by a U.S. drone attack in Miranshah, capital of Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border. UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. expert on Thursday launched a special investigation into drone warfare and targeted killings, which the United States relies on as a front-line weapon in its global war against al-Qaida. One of the three countries requesting the investigation was Pakistan, which officially opposes the use of U.S. drones on its territory as an infringement on its sovereignty but is believed to have tacitly approved some...

In light of our embassy bombing in Turkey this morning, John Bolton said that if we don’t face up to the reality that the war on terror isn’t over and that Al Qaeda hasn’t been defeated, we’ll see even more bombings from terrorists that are more successful in their eyes. The war on terror is not over. Al Qaeda has not been defeated. The struggle is spreading and if we don’t face up to that reality we’re going to have another attack on an American embassy that will be even more successful from the terrorist point of view. We have...

Fact check: Did Obama end hot breakfasts for troops in Afghanistan?..........

The United States has dispatched about 100 military trainers to six nations that will contribute troops to a pan-African force being prepared for deployment to Mali, the State Department said Friday. The initial U.S. trainers will “discuss training and equipping and deployment needs of those countries in the interest of getting them ready to go into Mali,” spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. The training mission in Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana is the largest U.S. involvement to date in preparations for the African force, which is being assembled by the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States, or...

President Francois Hollande says more French troops are to be deployed in Mali to support the 750 in the country countering an Islamist insurgency. Mr Hollande said new air strikes overnight had "achieved their goal". One target was the town of Diabaly, which rebels entered on Monday. West African military chiefs are meeting in Mali to discuss how an alliance with the French will work. France began its intervention on Friday to halt the Islamists' advance south. Late on Monday, the UN Security Council unanimously backed the intervention. Mr Hollande, on a visit to the French regional military base known...

A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists. The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and won't be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approval from the secretary of defense. The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.

The Obama administration is considering the possibility of removing all U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission officially finishes at the end of 2014, White House officials said Tuesday. The comments by Ben Rhodes, the White House's deputy national security adviser, come as the Pentagon and White House mull over the number of troops that could be left in Afghanistan after 2014 to fight insurgents and train Afghan security forces. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama are scheduled to meet on Friday in Washington. Rhodes said the administration is considering a range of options, with one scenario...

What if Hollywood made a high profile movie that carried an implicit message supporting George W. Bush's War on Terror policies and made Barack Obama look naïve? What if the movie were made by an acclaimed director, and was really, really good? Why, you'd have the amusing opportunity to read up on the critical reaction To Kathryn Bigelow's new blockbuster film, Zero Dark Thirty. I confess that when I learned that Hollywood was to enjoy very broad cooperation from the intelligence community for the production, I assumed that the Obama Administration would get a free pass, a semi-hagiographic treatment of...

New Army Manual Orders Soldiers Not To Criticize Taliban Or Anything Related To Islam Here is a strong indicator that the Obama Administration’s crusade to appease Islam has gone too far; a new U.S. military handbook for troops deployed to the Middle East orders soldiers not to make derogatory comments about the Taliban or criticize pedophilia, among other outrageous things. It gets better; the new manual, which is around 75 pages, suggests that Western ignorance of Afghan culture— not Taliban infiltration—is responsible for the increase in deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against the coalition forces. The soon-to-be-released Army handbook is...

Former CIA officer predicted Obama administration’s calamity, deception in LibyaBy: Christopher Collins October 28, 2012 **SNIP** Clizbe pointed out, ”Obama and his clique love covert operations. They've demonstrated that in the Global War on Terror (or “overseas contingency operations building bridges to Islamic extremists”). Instead of actually pursuing the war in Afghanistan with the tools in place—soldiers and Marines—they prefer Predator strikes in the hinterlands of Pakistan. The number of these covert action killings has soared from 2009 to 2011—with estimates of 5 dead in 2009 under Bush growing to several hundred dead in 2010 under Obama.” Clizbe stated, “No...

Regardless of who wins this election in a few years the final planes carrying the last soldiers will shake off Afghanistan's dust and take to the sky. They will leave behind a limited number of advisers, ex-military civilian contractors and a whole bunch of diplomats running out the clock in Kabul. A few years later when Islamist mobs are roaming the streets and rocket attacks on the US embassy have become routine, the helicopters on the roof will be back and the surviving diplomats will be on their way to new assignments in more peaceful parts of the world like...

Libyan al Qaeda ringleader Qumu, hired by Hillary Clinton to overthrow America-cooperative Muammar Qaddafi, in the Obama/Clinton version of the bipartisan-prepared Arab Spring, kills the U.S. field staff engaged in weapons tracking and (one would hope) recovery, on the job in Benghazi, on 9-11-2012...

Talk about chickens coming home to roost. Talk about the Mother of All Fiascos. It's the revenge of Osama bin Laden from the bottom of the ocean, and the message is plain: al-Qaeda is very much alive, and America is a paper tiger. The Middle East is beginning to fall apart -- Iran just sent a spy drone over Israel's sensitive defense installations, and the IDF waited hours to react; Turkey forced down a Syrian arms plane, and al-Qaeda's Al Zawahiri openly assaulted the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in a six-hour attack, working through al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), while...

This is unbelievable. The Obama Administration blamed the “friendly fire” attacks in Afghanistan on US troops. U.S. Army specialist Mabry Anders (L), who was killed in an attack by an Afghan army soldier in Afghanistan on August 27, 2012, is pictured with his mother Genevieve Woydziak (C) and his stepfather Troy Woydziak in this undated handout family photo obtained by Reuters September 26, 2012. The “insider attack” also took the life of another U.S. soldier, Sergeant Christopher Birdwell. (REUTERS/Anders Family) The New York Post reported, via Pat Dollard: Afghan security forces, our supposed allies, are slaughtering American troops. Thirty-three soldiers...

A moral question It doubtlessly is a damning report that the researchers of the American universities have delivered on America’s drone adventurism. It succinctly brings out what a horrendous toll it has been exacting on innocent civilian lives and keeping the whole lot of populace in the targeted areas in constant dread of drones and their fatal assaults. The psychological impact on the people is just terrible, it underlines. But will this report have any impact on the American strategists at all? Not even an outside chance. Over these times, the civil society worldwide is up in protest against...

The sheer incompetence of our State Department and the Obama administration is once again being trotted out for the world to see. The tip of the iceberg was exposed last week when CNN reported on the journal of slain US Ambassador Christopher Stevens that one of its news crews had recovered from the smoking rubble of the former US consulate in Benghazi. One had to wonder what possessed a US ambassador to carry a paper journal outside the US embassy in this day and age and how in the name of heaven such a document was left unattended after the...

Four American service members were killed by an Afghan policeman early today, the third attack on coalition forces in three days, bringing the death toll in the recent violence to eight. The attacks -- two "green on blue" incidents and an assault on a coalition base by 15 Taliban fighters -- come as tensions flared across the Muslim world over an anti-Islam film that was produced in the United States. In the latest attack, an Afghan police officer turned his gun on NATO troops at a remote checkpoint in southern Afghanistan before dawn. Four U.S. soldiers were killed before the...