10,000 U.S. troops leave Afghanistan
President Obama's order to withdraw 10,000 American troops from Afghanistan this year has been accomplished, a little more than a week before the year-end deadline, military officials said Thursday.
The drawdown is the first step in the plan to wind down the war, transition security to Afghan forces and end the combat role for international troops by the end of 2014.
I wouldn't bet on all the military personnel from this drawdown winding up home with their families any time soon.
The situation with Syria, and the potential for outside intervention here, is starting to escalate.
In Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of “Al-Mafraq”, which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border. According to one Jordanian military officer who asked to remain anonymous, hundreds of soldiers who speak languages other than Arabic were seen during the past two days in those areas moving back and forth in military vehicles between the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq (10 km from the Syrian border), and the vicinity of Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border, such as village Albaej (5 km from the border),
Given that the above-referenced activities have already taken place, and that Iran is the real prize here (with which Syria has a mutual defense pact, making it treaty-bound to respond to any potential outside intervention), it appears that a strike against Syria is absolutely in the works, with a strike against Iran as the logical consequence here.
One has to wonder just how many of these 10,000 troops formerly deployed in Afghanistan will wind up in a military attack against Syria, and later, Iran.

TORTURE SCANDAL
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