U.s. Military, Afghan Troop Withdrawal | featured news

President Barack Obama will announce in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that 34,000 troops will return from Afghanistan by early 2014, a source familiar with the speech told Reuters.

Moving the mountain of U.S. military gear out of Afghanistan after more than a decade of war will cost billions of dollars and prove far more difficult than last year's withdrawal from Iraq, the Pentagon's No. 2 official said Tuesday.

The U.S. designation Saturday of Afghanistan as its newest "major non-NATO ally" amounts to a political statement of support for the country's long-term stability and solidifies close defense cooperation after American combat troops withdraw in 2014....

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 said on Wednesday he will withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by year's end and a total of 33,000 by the summer of 2012.