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"WASHINGTON - Reflecting a war-weary nation, the Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday for an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan after more than a decade of fighting."

"Increasingly frustrated by his dealings with President Hamid Karzai, President Obama is giving serious consideration to speeding up the withdrawal of United States forces from Afghanistan and to a "zero option" that would leave no American troops there after next year, according to American and European officials. "

"WASHINGTON - The debate over how many U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014 comes down to risky business."

""I've often worried that the lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan - and especially Afghanistan - is that we don't know how to do foreign aid, and therefore we shouldn't continue to provide aid at the levels we have been," said Ms. Wadhams of the Center for American Progress. "

I detailed aid failure in "Funding the Enemy."

"NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, but the withdrawal poses a massive logistical challenge. The US and its allies are dependent on air hubs in Russia and authoritarian Central Asian republics to transport its troops and equipment home -- and getting those countries to play along is not always easy."

"President Obama plans to announce his decision on the scale and pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in a speech from the White House at 8 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday evening. "

" The United States and Afghanistan faced potentially divisive issues such as immunity for U.S. troops as the two sides began talks Thursday on a security agreement that will shape America's military presence in the country after the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops in two years."

"Afghanistan's Fiscal Cliff Kabul-watchers are rightly worried about what the withdrawal of Western aid money will mean for one of the most impoverished countries on the planet. "

"KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday said he wanted "at least $2 billion" a year from the United States after it withdraws its troops in 2014."

"A series of contradictory statements about a possible earlier start to the (mainly US) foreign troop drawdown and a quicker handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces, as well as debate over the likely form of NATO's post-ISAF mission in Afghanistan has caused confusion in the media(1) and wider public sphere recently."

"Senior American military figures have warned Britain that a hasty exit from Afghanistan could strain relations between the two countries. The Daily Telegraph last week revealed that David Cameron has ordered British commanders to draw up plans to start pulling hundreds of British troops out of Afghanistan within weeks. "

"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."

"WASHINGTON - The U.S. intends to wage a counterterrorism campaign inside Afghanistan even after the main U.S. combat force leaves in 2014 in order to prevent al-Qaida from fulfilling its ambition to re-establish a sanctuary there, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday."

"The United States has two vital interests in that part of the world: preventing terrorist attacks on this country and its allies, and preventing nuclear weapons or materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. Protecting these interests after 2014 will require the United States to be able to launch precision military strikes from this region. But it will not require tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. "

The only people thinking long-term appear to be the Taliban. "The Americans are going and the Taliban need the people's support, so they are trying to avoid attacks that result in civilian casualties," said Noor Agha Mujahid, a member of the Taliban shadow government for Kandahar province, where he oversees operations in a rural district. "After 2014 ... it will not take a month to take every place back.""

"President Obama's decision to remove 34,000 American troops in Afghanistan by this time next year represents a careful balancing of political interests and military requirements. "

"Why Karzai is fed up with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan: For a decade, American troops have fought and died defending Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government. On Thursday, with the U.S. defense secretary looking on from Kabul, Karzai demanded that those troops stop fighting for him."

"After months of internal deliberations, the Obama administration has decided to limit the expansion of Afghanistan's army and police forces over the next 18 months, largely to hold down the costs of training, equipping and paying them. The White House decision...also appears to signal that President Obama may approve only a modest reduction of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer...."