Iraq Troop Withdrawal, Wars | featured news

President Obama's campaign is saluting his VFW speech today with a video promoting his policies toward veterans. The three-minute video emphasizes the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and testimonies from military members who back Obama. "Since day one, President Obama has made it a priority to keep the sacred trust we hold with those who wear the uniform of the United States and their families," says the campaign.

TV stations aligned with Sunni and Shiite extremist groups, many of whom attacked U.S. troops, have dubbed it the "Day of Defeating the Occupier."

Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are among several thousand being ordered to Afghanistan in six months as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal, officials said.

President Barack Obama welcomed home some of the last U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday, marking a symbolic end to the nearly nine-year war that strained America's armed forces and inflicted lasting damage to its standing worldwide.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry accused President Obama Saturday of endangering U.S. troops by announcing plans to end the nation's military role in Iraq by Christmas. "The last thing you want to do is put those men and women's lives in peril, and I think that's what the president's done by making a political statement to his base that he's going to be out of Iraq by a date certain," Perry said.

All US troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year, President Barack Obama has announced. He ordered a complete withdrawal from the country, nearly nine years after the invasion under President George W Bush. About 39,000 US troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 165,000 in 2008. The US and Iraq were in "full agreement" on how to move forward, Mr Obama said, adding: "The US leaves Iraq with our heads held high."

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned.

Baghdad's decision comes on the same day Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, visits Iraq and warns that the US needs to know soon whether a training mission will proceed.

The U.S. official in charge of overseeing reconstruction in Iraq says the country is more dangerous than it was a year ago, a blunt assessment that comes five months before American troops are scheduled to leave.

Iraqi leaders aim to decide within two weeks whether American troops should stay in the country past the end of the year, Iraq's president announced.