By Rajiv Chandraskaren / The Washington Post Two days before announcing the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, President Obama informed Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal that he was not granting McChrystal’s request to double the size of the Afghan army and police. Cost was a factor, as were questions about whether the capacity exists […]

By Helene Cooper / New York Times American military commanders with the NATO mission in Afghanistan told President Obama’s chief envoy to the region this weekend that they did not have enough troops to do their job, pushed past their limit by Taliban rebels who operate across borders. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in a village […]

From FOX News In an effort to address the mental health problems of some combat troops, the U.S. Army wants all of its 1.1 million soldiers to start taking emotional resiliency classes. The new $117 million dollar program is based on the research of Dr. Martin Seligman, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology […]

By Greg Jaffe & Karen DeYoung / Washington Post Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that the Afghan security forces will have to be far larger than currently planned if President Obama’s strategy for winning the war is to succeed, according to senior military officials. Such an expansion […]

By Golnar Motevalli / Reuters The majority of the 17,000 extra U.S. troops being sent to fight a growing Taliban-led insurgency in southern and western Afghanistan should be on the ground by mid-July, the U.S. military said on Sunday. A further 4,000 troops are arriving to train Afghan security forces and they will be deployed […]

From the Associated Press: The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the […]