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Remember Afghanistan? The longest war in American history? Ever? When it comes to wars, we Americans have a selective memory. The Afghan war, dating from October 2001, has earned the distinction of having been forgotten while still underway. President Trump’s Inaugural Address included no mention of Afghanistan. Nor did his remarks last month at a joint session of Congress. For the new commander in chief, the war there qualifies at best as an afterthought — assuming, that is, he has thought about it all. A similar attitude prevails on Capitol Hill. Congressional oversight has become pro forma. Last week Gen....

Saying soldiers killed in assault in Afghanistan....

Outgunned, outmanoeuvred, hopelessly outnumbered and besieged in the Afghan desert, a small band of British soldiers chose to save a final bullet for themselves rather than fall into Taliban hands. For nearly two months, the 88 men of Easy Company – a mix of Paratroopers and the Royal Irish – had faced the overwhelming force and firepower of up to 500 Taliban determined to over-run the remote Helmand outpost of Musa Qala.

In remembrance ... today marks the 5th anniversary of the shoot down of Extortion 17. On August 6, 2011, the U.S. Navy SEALs and the Special Ops community suffered a huge loss when their CH-47 Chinook was shot down in Afghanistan. The 30 American deaths represent the greatest loss of U.S. military lives in a single incident in the decade-long war in Afghanistan that began in 2001. The Fallen: •SGT Alexander J. Bennett •SPC Spencer Duncan •CWO Bryan J. Nichols •CWO David R. Carter •SSG Patrick D. Hamburger •TSgt John W. Brown •SSgt Andrew W. Harvell •TSgt Daniel L. Zerbe...

The remains of the six Americans killed by a Taliban attacker in Afghanistan Monday were due to arrive back in the U.S. on Wednesday after an emotional ceremony at Bagram Air Field. Some U.S. servicemembers kneeled in front of the victims' photos, guns and helmets. Others saluted. Service members from several units at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, pay their respects during a fallen comrade ceremony held in honor of six Airmen Dec. 23, 2015. The six Airmen lost their lives in an improvised explosive attack near Bagram Dec. 21, 2015. (DVIDS) The six soldiers, one woman and five men, died...

audio, first 20 minutes or so. Very interesting observations by people who are paying close attention.

At least five personnel of the NATO-led Resolute Support (RS) mission lost their lives in a helicopter crash in capital Kabul this afternoon. A statement by the alliance said “A coalition helicopter assigned to the Resolute Support Mission crashed due to a non-hostile incident Oct. 11 at approximately 4:15 p.m. at Camp Resolute Support, Kabul, Afghanistan.” The statement further added “The incident resulted in the death of five Resolute Support personnel and the injury of five others.”

KABUL, Afghanistan — A United States airstrike appeared to have badly damaged a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan city of Kunduz early Saturday, killing at least nine hospital staff members and wounding dozens, including patients and staff. The United States military, in a statement, confirmed the 2:15 a.m. airstrike, saying that it had been targeting individuals “who were threatening the force” and that “there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Accounts differed as to whether there had been fighting around the hospital that might have precipitated the strike. Two hospital employees, an...

Three doctors of a Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) hospital were killed as an air strike targeted the MSF medical facility in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz city on Saturday, the MSF said in a statement. "Three MSF staff are confirmed dead and more than 30 are unaccounted after (MSF) trauma center in Kunduz was hit at 2:10 a. m. local time on Saturday (2140 GMT Friday) several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged," the statement said. The medical team was working around the clock to do everything possible for the safety of patients and hospital staff, the statement said....

A U.S. C-130 transport plane crashed near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, early Friday, two defense officials told NBC News. The crash happened shortly after midnight local time near Jalalabad Airport.

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base. “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s...

Pizzas — 5,500 of them — were delivered this Fourth of July to servicemen and women in Afghanistan and Kuwait, thanks to an initiative that was born at a kitchen table in Elk Grove Village. "It's raining pizza in Afghanistan," said Pizza 4 Patriots founder Mark Evans. "We air-drop it." Eight years ago, Evans and his son Kent were eating pizza and watching coverage of the Iraq war on television. Kent asked his dad, a retired Air Force master sergeant, if the troops got to eat pizza. Evans answered that they got MREs — meals ready to eat in a...

Adam Gadahn, the Al-Qaeda spokesman believed killed in a US operation, was a teenage rock music fan who grew up on a Californian goat farm before he was drawn into radical Islam. The White House announced Thursday that US intelligence thinks Gadahn died in January in a "counterterrorism operation" in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. The 36-year-old was apparently not deliberately targeted in the raid, but he has long been one of the most wanted jihadist figures on the US hit list, with a $1 million bounty on his head. As an English speaker and senior Al-Qaeda propagandist, he was one...

A helicopter pilot and Britney Spears ex-boyfriend — who helped the pop princess quit booze — has been killed by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. John Sundahl, 44, was shot down during a flight from Kabul, where he’d been working as a private contractor transporting officials across the war-torn nation, according to the Daily Mirror. “She is devastated,” a source close to Spears told the UK paper. “Britney thought he was a lovely man.” A former real estate whiz, Sundahl dated Spears, 33, in 2007 after they met at Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles. He spoke openly about her alcohol abuse.

The Department of Defense says an Army sergeant from New York City has been killed in Afghanistan. A soldier from Arizona was also killed. Military officials say Sgt. Ramon Morris, 37, and Spc. Wyatt Martin, 22, died Dec. 12 in Parwan province. The men died from wounds suffered when their vehicle was attacked with an improvised explosive device.

The Afghan soldier who killed US Major General Harold Greene had spent three years in the army before he squeezed off two to three bursts of gunfire from a first-floor window at a senior military delegation in Kabul, officials said on Wednesday. As details emerged about Tuesday’s attack at a military complex in the Afghan capital, a picture was forming of a rogue Afghan soldier who may have been difficult to spot before he killed Greene and wounded 14 coalition troops. Greene was the most senior US military official killed in action overseas since the war in Vietnam. His father described him to Reuters as...

Nineteen soldiers and over 50 heavily-loaded planes are on their way back to Denmark a week earlier than planned. The last Danish soldiers have left Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan, the Army Operational Command (Hærens Operative Kommando - HOK) said on Friday. The withdrawal is taking place a week earlier than originally scheduled. The last 19 Danish soldiers will be flown back to Denmark on Friday after having left Camp Bastion on July 27th. HOK said a total of 54 heavy-loaded planes carrying 2,348 tonnes of material is being transported back to Denmark by way of Dubai. “That’s the equivalent...

Bleeding from both legs and his arm, Ryan Pitts kept firing at about 200 Taliban fighters, even holding onto his grenades an extra moment to ensure the enemy couldn't heave them back. On Monday, President Barack Obama draped the Medal of Honor around his neck, in a White House ceremony that also paid tribute to his nine platoon comrades who died that summer day in Afghanistan. Pitts, a 28-year-old former Army staff sergeant from Nashua, New Hampshire, is the ninth living veteran of America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to receive the nation's highest decoration for battlefield valor. In a...

President Barack Obama has tapped the vice chief of the Army to take over the U.S. command in Afghanistan later this year as America pulls out its combat troops and leaves a force of about 10,000 to train and advise the Afghan military. …

As the White House ponders its next moves in Iraq, it also faces the question of how to best prevent the precarious security order it has established in Afghanistan from unraveling once U.S. troops withdraw at the end of 2016. That question was put to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey when the pair appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday to discuss the Defense Department’s budget. “First, Afghanistan is not Iraq, internally, historically, ethnically, religiously,” Hagel responded. “Second, there is strong support in Afghanistan today for America’s continued [presence] as well...