Petraeus Apologizes for Deaths of Afghan Boys

Participants at a recent meeting say comments offended Karzai

(NEWSER) - US officials were already skeptical of claims that a military operation last week killed 65 Afghan civilians , but now Gen. David Petraeus has apparently taken things a step further: During a Sunday meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Petraeus reportedly suggested Afghans burned their own children in an effort to exaggerate the casualty claims. Two participants at the meeting tell the Washington Post that Karzai and others at the meeting were shocked and offended at the remarks. Seven civilians, including five children, were found with minor injuries on an initial fact-finding mission arranged by the provincial governor. More»

Details surface about staff sergeant, but identity not revealed

(NEWSER) - Details are beginning to emerge about the still-unnamed soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians yesterday. An official who spoke to the New York Times says the Army staff sergeant was part of a village stabilization operation in the rural Panjwai district of Kandahar, in which Green Berets forge close ties with communities in an attempt to track down Taliban leaders. Other soldiers support the Green Berets in such operations, and an official says the suspect himself was not a Green Beret. Another official tells the Times the suspect has been in the Army 11 years; a third says he is 38, married with two children, and served three tours in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December. More»

That's faster than the military would like in Afghanistan

(NEWSER) - A few hours ahead of President Obama's prime-time address on Afghanistan, administration officials are leaking some main points to the AP , Washington Post , and the New York Times :

• Obama will bring home 10,000 troops this year and another 20,000 or so by the end of next summer.
• Those combined withdrawals will effectively mean the return home of all the "surge" troops Obama sent to Afghanistan in 2009. Another 70,000 US troops would remain in the country heading into 2013.

NATO, US officials cast doubt on claim

(NEWSER) - A US military operation in the desolate, mountainous lands of northeastern Afghanistan last week killed 65 civilians, among them 22 women and 30 children, Afghan officials tell the Washington Post . US officials have launched an emergency probe into the situation, seeking to minimize damage to American-Afghan relations—while some cast doubt on the allegations. “It's just the challenging situation that goes on with these type of incidents: an isolated area, a tough area, tough terrain,” said a US military official, who noted the dead were wearing civilian clothing. “But civilians involved in hostilities, I think that was the majority of them." More»

As expected, he'll be running the war in Afghanistan

(AP) - The Senate has unanimously confirmed Gen. David Petraeus as the next commander of the Afghanistan war. The vote was 99-0. Petraeus replaces Gen. Stanley McChrystal, whose career spanned three decades before ending in disgrace because of inflammatory remarks he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine. Petraeus spent much of yesterday's congressional hearing telling lawmakers that he's already working to improve the rocky relations between military and civilian commanders. More»