Free Republic

After signing a 10-year lease and spending more than $80 million on a site envisioned as the United States’ diplomatic hub in northern Afghanistan, American officials say they have abandoned their plans, deeming the location for the proposed compound too dangerous. Eager to raise an American flag and open a consulate in a bustling downtown district of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, officials in 2009 sought waivers to stringent State Department building rules and overlooked significant security problems at the site, documents show. The problems included relying on local building techniques that made the compound vulnerable to a...

President Barack Obama has promised not to attack Pakistan-based al-Qaida leaders or fighters from bases inside Afghanistan. The surprising commitment effectively bars Obama and his successors from launching another nighttime helicopter raid like the one that that killed Osama bin Laden. That raid has proven to be Obama’s primary foreign-policy success because it killed bin Laden, scooped up much intelligence data and shocked Pakistan. Obama’s commitment will also end the use of secretive drone-attacks from Afghanistan. Those attacks have killed hundreds of al-Qaida leaders since the mid-2000s. They’ve also been very popular with U.S voters, and usually have had tacit...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 10-year security compact that President Barack Obama signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai contains promises the United States and Afghanistan cannot guarantee they will keep, and loopholes for both nations. The deal signed Tuesday also allows either nation to walk away on a year's notice. That could allow the next U.S. president, or the next Afghan leader, to scuttle a deal negotiated by his or her predecessor.

As usual with this president, Obama's trip to and speech from Afghanistan had way more to do with politics than any real substance. Seven thousand miles, one way, is a long journey to share war remarks with countrymen that he should have and could have shared back home many months ago. Despite the administration's best backgrounding sales efforts, the document he signed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a meaningless basic agreement to talk later about forging a real agreement. Nothing was essentially changed by what the media lovingly called his "secret trip" to the war zone, which was simply...

President Barack Obama talks with Ambassador Ryan Crocker aboard Marine One en route to the Afghan Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 1, 2012. Seated next to the President, from left, are Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and Chief of Staff Jack Lew.  

White House says Afghanistan trip not political politicalmugshot Posted by CNN Political Unit Washington (CNN) – The White House strongly denied Tuesday that President Barack Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan was executed for political motives, saying the visit was more than a year in the making. On a conference call with reporters, a senior administration official speaking from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan was asked if the trip – made on the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden – was opening the president to charges of "craven politics." "I think what could not be clearer is...

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (AP) -- On a swift, secretive trip to the war zone, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday night that after years of sacrifice the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan is winding down just as the war in Iraq has ended. "There's a light on the horizon," he told U.S. troops on the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. After signing an agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai setting post-war promises and expectations, Obama addressed Americans back home in the midst of his endeavor to win re-election as U.S. president and commander in chief.

President Obama zipped through Afghanistan Tuesday on a previously unannounced visit, signing a key partnership document with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as he prepared to deliver an address to the nation on the anniversary of Usama bin Laden's death.  In excerpts released in advance of the address, the president made sweeping statements about the course and eventual conclusion of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.  "We have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon," he plans...

KABUL, May 1 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday for an unannounced visit, Afghan officials said. During his trip here, the U.S. president is expected to sign a strategic agreement with Afghanistan, unnamed Afghan government officials were quoted as saying by local TV channels.

"That report is not accurate and the president is not in Kabul," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told NewsCore. ISAF would only confirm that a "high-level delegation" had arrived in the Afghan capital while the US Embassy said reports that Obama was there were "false." The president's official schedule for Tuesday listed no public events, just meetings with senior advisors and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in the Oval Office.