War on Terror

The Supreme Court took no action Tuesday on a controversial appeal asking the justices to keep under wraps classified photographs of War on Terror detainees that have been likened to the infamous pictures at Abu Ghraib prison.

The court's consideration of the case coincides with congressional efforts to pass a law giving the secretary of defense the authority to exempt the photographs from Freedom of Information Act disclosures. A measure to do that passed a joint conference committee of the House and Senate last week.

The justices were scheduled to discuss the matter in their closed-door meeting Friday but may have been persuaded to postpone judgment by the government, which last week sent a letter to the court asking them not to move on the case...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's top defense and diplomacy advisers said the United States retains the Afghanistan war goal that he outlined just two months into his presidency — to sideline al-Qaida — but changing circumstances require a reassessment of how to get there.

A "snap decision" on whether to add more U.S troops would be counterproductive, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday.

Whatever the president decides, the military will salute, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said...

President George W. Bush got a firsthand look Monday at the situation in the seven-year-old Afghanistan war, as his administration prepares to hand over a strategy overhaul to his successor including significantly increasing the U.S. troop presence.

Bush spoke to U.S. soldiers and Marines stationed in Afghanistan at a hangar on the tarmac at Bagram Air Base. The rally for over a thousand military personnel took place in the dark, cold pre-dawn hours -- it was about 5:30 a.m. local time when the president strode into the hangar to loud cheers...

A top U.S officer says the military is beginning a massive building effort in
Afghanistan to house the roughly 20,000 additional
troops, including an undetermined increase in Marines, that are expected to
begin pouring in early next year...

Former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Hamdan is being transferred from the U.S.
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to his home country of Yemen, a
senior defense official said Monday.

Hamdan was convicted of aiding al-Qaeda in August and
sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison. He would be eligible for release in January
with credit for time served...

President Bush says the War on
Terror cannot be treated primarily as a matter of law enforcement — a remark
seemingly at odds with an approach taken by Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama...

A split decision Wednesday in the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver for a war crime eased some concerns about whether terrorism suspects would get fair trials in the military tribunals at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The jury of six military officers acquitted Salim Hamdan of conspiracy charges but convicted him of the lesser charge of providing material support for terrorism, which could send him to prison for life.

Republican John McCain said Tuesday that he knows "how to win wars" and the strategy of increasing troop levels in Iraq should also be applied to Afghanistan.

"Sen. Obama will tell you we can't win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards," McCain told a town hall meeting. "It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan."

Bowing to President Bush's demands, the Senate approved and sent the White House a bill Wednesday to overhaul bitterly disputed rules on secret government eavesdropping and shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits complaining they helped the U.S. spy on Americans.

Page 12 of a Government Accountability Office report published on June 23 features data about the war in Iraq -- drawn from the Defense Intelligence Agency -- that must be central to the debate about what the United States does next in that country.

It indicates we have started to win a war we cannot afford to lose.