Military Deployment

President Obama plans to send 30,000 to 35,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Monday, the largest single U.S. deployment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The additional troops, Obama's second major escalation of the conflict this year, will bring the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to about 100,000. But even as he dramatically escalates the war, Obama is expected to emphasize that there are limits to the length of U.S. military involvement in the region, White House officials said, though he is not prepared to set concrete deadlines for withdrawal.

The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army involuntarily under the military's controversial "stop-loss" program has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year, officials said Thursday. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed about the program by Army officials who said that thousands of new stop-loss orders were issued to keep soldiers from leaving the service after Gates ordered combat tours extended from 12 to 15 months last spring.

The government here has sent NATO headquarters a draft agreement that would give Afghanistan more control over future NATO deployments in the country -- including the positioning of some U.S. troops, officials said. The draft technical agreement would establish rules of conduct for NATO-led troops and require that additional NATO troops and their locations be approved by the Afghan government. The agreement also would prohibit NATO troops from searching Afghan homes.

Anticipating progress toward curbing insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army may cut in half the yearlong tours of duty in the two nations that have strained an already stretched service, a senior Army general said Thursday. Top Army strategists have largely ruled out shortening combat duty since Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked the heads of the military services on June 14 to reexamine their tours of duty.

After several days of public nail biting and second thoughts, it's official: Prince Harry will be deployed to Iraq this month. Britain's senior army commander said Monday that he had personally decided to go ahead with the first royal assignment to active combat since the Falklands War in 1982 but was prepared to keep the matter open for review. "The decision has been taken he will deploy," Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, the army chief of staff, told the BBC.

Someday soon Shannon Lester's boyfriend, a staff sergeant in the Army National Guard, will leave for Iraq. There will be a hasty wedding, a teary goodbye and some financial belt-tightening for the couple already struggling to support the five children they're raising together. The 29-year-old homemaker's voice strains with stress when she talks about the war.

A number of soldiers at this Army base near Colorado Springs say they are being pressured to reenlist or be sent to Iraq. The allegations, which the Army denies, have sparked calls for a congressional investigation and have left the military scrambling to fend off accusations that they were trying to make up for troop shortages through coercion. "Soldiers are being told if they don't reenlist they will be reassigned to divisions going to Iraq," said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.

As they prepare to roll out a new Afghanistan policy to a skeptical U.S. audience, Obama administration officials are starting to replace their grim public assessments of the battered country with praise for the skills and idealism of its officials and its progress in important areas. The message is aimed in part, officials say, at trying to build domestic support for a troop increase that President Obama is expected to announce Tuesday. Obama's decision comes at a time when most Americans have turned against the mission, and some Democratic leaders in Congress have concluded that it is hopeless.

As the most powerful Afghan official in the troubled southern province of Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai says he knows just how to tame the shadowy Taliban campaign of suicide bombs and assassinations that have raised the specter of a country sliding toward anarchy. He wants more American soldiers on the ground.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that he would like to send more American forces to the war in Afghanistan before national elections scheduled for next year, and that grim depictions of the 7-year-old war are "far too pessimistic." Gates said additional forces would provide greater security and predicted that conditions would "be under enough control to allow the elections to take place" in the fall.