Free Republic

Then-Vice President Joe Biden was right when he urged then-President Barack Obama to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday, adding that the US could have left Afghanistan earlier. "I thought we could turn it around, obviously, I was wrong," Mullen, who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, told ABC News on "This Week." Mullen also said that the US should have withdrawn its troops after the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011. "I think in retrospect, yeah we should have (left) ... I...

A Pentagon official tells The Associated Press that transgender people can enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, despite President Donald Trump's opposition. The new policy reflects growing legal pressure on the issue and the difficult hurdles the federal government would have to cross to enforce Trump's demand to ban transgender individuals from the military. Two federal courts already have ruled against the ban. Potential transgender recruits will have to overcome a lengthy and strict set of physical, medical and mental conditions that make it possible, though difficult, for them to join the armed services. Maj. David Eastburn says the...