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"From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 70 miles From the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border From Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers."

"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 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. "

"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."

"Now comes a decidedly contrary point of view. It's from Douglas A. Wissing, author of the just-published Funding the Enemy: How U.S. Taxpayers Bankroll the Taliban. After spending time with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, he's come to the conclusion that the U.S.-led effort there is flagging, if not already doomed. "

"Another lucrative source of income has been the foreign funding of aid and development projects. Estimates of Taliban income from contracts funded by the United States and other overseas donors range from 10 to 20 per cent of the total, usually by the Taliban agreeing protection money with the contractor or demanding a cut," the report said.

"Afghanistan policy, like Vietnam policy before it, has taken on a life of its own, impervious to ground truth. The simple reality is that "peace talks" with the Taliban have no chance whatever of a positive outcome from the perspective of U.S. policy. Just as it did in Vietnam, the United States has been fighting the wrong war in Afghanistan with the wrong strategy from the very beginning. "

"Tonight, I can tell you that we are fulfilling that commitment. Thanks to our extraordinary men and women in uniform, our civilian personnel, and our many coalition partners, we are meeting our goals. As a result, starting next month, we will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the surge I announced at West Point. After this initial reduction, our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security. "

"Nearly two dozen generals have commanded troops from the United States and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, since the American invasion in late 2001 - with five U.S. generals running both commands in the past five years alone."

"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."

"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."

"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. "

"When it comes to corruption in Afghanistan, the time may be now for the United States to look in the mirror and see what lessons can be learned from contracting out parts of that war."

"As the media frantically investigates the alleged improprieties of the U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, generals Petraeus and Allen, is this brouhaha distracting us from the real question: Have these generals been effective? Have any of the eleven U.S. commanders over the last eleven years been effective?"

"An evaluation of the former general's record, however, shows that he made far more than one mistake, and that the consequences for the nation and thousands of individuals have been profound. It's time for the shroud of popular myth to be removed from Petraeus' war record."

"A close look at Mr. Karzai's growing alienation from the U.S. helps to explain why so many of America's war objectives in Afghanistan remain unfulfilled. It seems increasingly likely that the U.S. will leave behind both an undefeated Taliban insurgency and a dysfunctional government mired in corruption and utterly dependent on foreign aid."

"JALALABAD, Afghanistan-One of Afghanistan's top power brokers has been freeing suspected insurgents, running an open extortion scheme and traveling with suitcases of undeclared cash earned from criminal activity, according to internal U.S. documents. "

"Here's what some of the foremost experts on the conflict -- from former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick W. Kagan -- identified as the biggest mistakes of the long war."

"The American-led military coalition in Afghanistan backed off Tuesday from its claim that Taliban attacks dropped off in 2012, tacitly acknowledging a hole in its widely repeated argument that violence is easing and that the insurgency is in steep decline."

""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."