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"The U.S. has lost billions of dollars to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan and stands to repeat that in future wars without big changes in how the government awards and manages contracts for battlefield support and reconstruction projects, independent investigators said Wednesday. The Wartime Contracting Commission urged Congress and the Obama administration to quickly put in place its recommendations to overhaul the contracting process and increase accountability."

Trucking contractors pay off the Taliban, warlords and government officials to ensure safe passage for U.S. military goods in Afghanistan , a senior military official told a congressional oversight panel. "Some of that money, for sure, is going to the insurgency," Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend said. "I can't quantify how much is going to attacks against us. . . . I don't think you can completely stop it, but we've got to minimize it.""

"On May 20, 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, then the American commander in Afghanistan, referred to the operation in Marjah, Helmand-an operation earlier touted as a potential turning point for U.S. Afghan counterinsurgency (COIN)-as a "bleeding ulcer." [1] Immediately, we were reminded of a similar expression from an earlier Afghan War. On February 1986, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev speaking to the 27th General Congress of the Communist Party posited that the Soviet war in Afghanistan had become a "bleeding wound." Was McChrystal's comment just an unfortunate choice of words or a harbinger that the United States faced a Soviet-style disaster in Afghanistan?"

"The resolution that the United States Conference of Mayors passed on Monday calling on President Obama and Congress to "speed up the ending" of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was not nearly as strong as the one it passed 40 years ago, calling on President Richard M. Nixon to withdraw all American troops from Vietnam within six months. "

"President Obama plans to announce Wednesday evening that he will order the withdrawal of 10,000 American troops from Afghanistan this year, and another 20,000 troops, the remainder of the 2009 "surge," by the end of next summer, according to administration officials and diplomats briefed on the decision. These troop reductions are both deeper and faster than the recommendations made by Mr. Obama's military commanders, and they reflect mounting political and economic pressures at home, as the president faces relentless budget pressures and an increasingly restive Congress and American public."