Biden draws on long history with the war in Afghanistan as he prepares to announce troop withdrawal
CNN
It's an image President Joe Biden kept returning to: the sight of helicopters evacuating Americans from Saigon during the last major battle of the Vietnam War.
In the United States, the image has come to reflect the humiliating end to a prolonged and unpopular foreign conflict. The prospect of overseeing a similar fate in Kabul weighed on Biden as he debated how and when to finally remove the remaining 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan, a person who spoke to him said. On Wednesday, Biden will formally announce his decision to withdraw all American troops before September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that led the US into its longest war.The US began pulling military equipment and additional personnel out of Niger on Friday after waiting months for the ruling military junta to approve US military flights into the country, two sources familiar with the matter said Saturday, ahead of a September 15 withdrawal deadline agreed to by the two countries.
The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York on Friday informed the former president’s defense team and prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office that a comment was posted on the New York State Unified Court Systems’ public Facebook page last week by a poster who claimed to be a cousin of a juror, saying that Trump would be convicted.