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Obama arrives in Afghanistan on surprise visit to sign pullout deal
[Dawn] US President Barack ObamaBecause I won... arrived in Afghanistan late Tuesday on a surprise visit a year after American elite Navy SEALs killed Al Qaeda chief the late Osama bin Laden ... who used to be alive but now he's not... in a raid inside Pakistain. Obama was expected to sign a strategic partnership on future US-Afghan ties once American troops have pulled out of Afghanistan in 2014, with Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... , White House officials told AFP. The US president, making only his third trip to Afghanistan since taking over as commander-in-chief in 2009, arrived at 10:20 pm and was also to address the American people from Bagram airbase at 2330 GMT, an official said. Obama's last trip in December 2010 lasted only a few hours when he flew into Bagram air base, outside Kabul, to meet US troops but he did not meet with Karzai. Ties between Kabul and Washington have strained since last May amid a series of bloody massacres and incidents by US troops against Afghan civilians as a 130,000-strong US-led NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... force fights a fierce Taliban insurgency. The last of the remaining 87,000 American troops in the country are due to pull out by the end of 2014, some 13 years after a US-led campaign in late 2001 to oust the Taliban regime accused of harbouring bin Laden. Relations between Pakistain and the United States also plunged over the May 2, 2011 raid that killed bin Laden, tracked down to a compound in the Pak military town of Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... after a decade-long global manhunt. Obama's campaign last week released a video to mark the anniversary and suggested bin Laden might be alive today had Romney been in the White House. US Senator  John MaverickMcCain ... the Senator-for-Life from Arizona, former presidential candidate and even more former foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution... , who lost to Obama in the 2008 elections and who remains one of his most dogged critics, has said the advertisement politicised an issue that should not be fodder for November's presidential campaign. "Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad," he said. Posted by: Fred 2012-05-02 |
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