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The leaders of the congressional committees said Sunday they believed that the Taliban had grown stronger since President Barack Obama sent 33,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in 2010. The pessimistic report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein , D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Rogers , R-Mich., challenges Obama's own assessment last week in his visit to Kabul that the "tide had turned" and that "we broke the Taliban's momentum." Feinstein and Rogers told CNN's "State of the Union" they aren't so sure. The two recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the region where they met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai . " President Karzai believes that the Taliban will not come back. I'm not so sure," Feinstein said. "The Taliban has a shadow system of governors in many provinces." When asked if the Taliban's capabilities have been degraded since Obama deployed the additional troops two years ago, Feinstein said: ...

US soldiers took pictures of themselves posing with the mangled remains of suspected Afghan suicide bombers on more than one occasion in 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday. The LA Times said the US Army had launched an investigation into the incident after the newspaper showed them some of the photos, which it had obtained from a soldier in the division. The first incident took place in February 2010, when paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were sent to an Afghan police station in Zabol province to inspect the remains of an alleged suicide bomber. The soldiers had intended to try to get fingerprints and possibly scan the irises of the corpse, but instead they posed for pictures next to the Afghan police, holding up or squatting beside the remains, the newspaper said. A few months later, the same platoon went to inspect the remains of three insurgents whom Afghan police said had blown themselves up by accident. Two soldiers posed holding up one of ...