Obama likely to cut 10K troops in Afghanistan

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Facing a war-weary public, President Barack Obama is expected to call for a major withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan tonight, with roughly 10,000 coming home to the U.S. in less than a year.

The phased drawdown is likely to start with 5,000 troops recalled this summer and an additional 5,000 by winter or spring 2012, according to a senior U.S. defense official. Obama also is weighing a timetable for bringing home the 20,000 other troops he ordered to Afghanistan as part of his December 2009 decision to send reinforcements to reverse the Taliban’s battlefield momentum.

The withdrawals would put the U.S. on a path toward giving Afghans control of their security by 2014 and ultimately shifting the U.S. military from a combat role to a mission focused on training and supporting Afghan forces.

Obama is to address the nation from the White House at 8 p.m.

The president reached his decision a week after receiving a range of options from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Obama informed his senior national-security advisers, including outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, of his plans during a White House meeting Tuesday.

The Obama administration has said its goal in continuing the Afghan war, now in its 10th year, is to blunt the Taliban insurgency and dismantle and defeat al-Qaida, the terror network that used Afghanistan as a training ground for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As of Tuesday, at least 1,522 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.