Free Talk Live

"I think we should remove ourselves from Afghanistan as quickly as we can," Young told the Tampa Bay Times this week. "I just think we're killing kids that don't need to die."

On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as members of Afghans for Peace, led a peace march of thousands of people. Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. We hear the soldiers’ voices as they return their medals one by one from the stage. "I’m here to return my Global War on Terror Service Medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan," said Jason Hurd, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army.

Two International Security Assistance Force troops were killed in one of two helicopter crashes Monday in eastern Afghanistan, officials said. Separately, three police and four tribal elders were killed in a roadside bombing, police said. The first helicopter crash, during a routine operation, did not result in any fatalities, said ISAF spokesman Capt. Justin Brockhoff. Two died in the second crash, ISAF said.

KABUL, Afghanistan — After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.

In autumn 2001, America’s initial purpose in Afghanistan—which made perfect sense—was to destroy or incapacitate al Qaeda and punish the Taliban government that hosted it. This was accomplished 11 years ago. Today, the purpose of the U.S. mission is ill-defined, but clearly involves nation building. What the coalition desperately needs is an achievable, realistic endgame, not an indefinite timeline that commits thousands of U.S. troops to Afghanistan until or beyond 2024.

The now infamous Wikileaks recently released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment.

The U.S. military is supposed to turn its massive jail on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field over to the Afghan government this year. But the U.S. is going to keep holding detainees in Afghanistan for a long, looooong time to come — as new military construction contracts reveal.

Nearly 18 billion dollars earmarked for reconstruction in Afghanistan remain unaccounted for, snagged in a "labyrinth" of contract bureaucracy, a sweeping US government audit has shown.

The Army said Wednesday it has filed criminal charges against a single-mom soldier who refused to deploy to Afghanistan last year, arguing she had no family able to care for her infant son.