WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. announced an agreement with the Iraqi government Friday to wrap up the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by next year, with U.S. troops departing some bases that they have long occupied during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.

But the Biden administration refused to provide details on how many of the approximately 2,500 U.S. troops still serving in Iraq will remain there or acknowledge it will mark a full withdrawal from the country.

“I think it’s fair to say that, you know, our footprint is going to be changing within the country,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Friday without providing specifics.

The announcement comes at a particularly contentious time for the Middle East, with escalating conflict between Israel and two Iranian-backed militant groups — Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — threatening a broader regional war. Bases housing U.S. forces and contractors have been regularly targeted by Iran-backed militias over the last several years, and those attacks intensified late last year and early this spring after the Israel-Hamas war broke out nearly a year ago

You can find @hanke@feddit.nu's post here

And we get blown awaaaaaaaay....

You can find @runjun@lemmy.world's post here

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear banned the use of “conversion therapy” on minors in Kentucky on Wednesday, calling his executive order a necessary step to protect children from a widely discredited practice that tries to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling.

The governor took action using his executive powers after efforts to enact a law banning the practice repeatedly failed in the state’s Republican-dominated legislature. Beshear signed the executive order during a statehouse ceremony attended by activists for LGBTQ+ rights.

“Let’s be clear: conversion therapy has no basis in medicine or science, and it has been shown to increase rates of suicide and depression,” Beshear said in a statement. “This is about doing what is right and protecting our children. Hate is not who we are as Kentuckians.”

The executive order signed by Beshear bans the practice and makes it illegal to use state or federal funds to provide the therapy on minors. It also gives the state’s board of licensure the authority to take action against anyone found to have practiced conversion therapy on minors and gives the board the authority to bring disciplinary action against anyone found in violation of the order.

You can find @setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world post here

Retired military generals have described Donald Trump as a “danger” to America’s security as they endorsed Kamala Harris.

On the eve of a critical debate between Ms Harris and her Republican rival, 10 former top US military chiefs released a letter calling the vice-president the only candidate “who is fit to serve” in the country’s highest office.

While Ms Harris had “demonstrated her ability to take on the most difficult national security challenges in the Situation Room and on the international stage”, they wrote, Trump posed “a danger to our national security and democracy”.

The letter, signed by retired General Larry Ellis and retired Rear Admiral Michael Smith, among others, accused Trump of disparaging service members and putting them in “harm’s way”, including with his deal to free 5,000 Taliban fighters.

It coincided with a new Harris campaign advert placed in Palm Beach featuring Trump’s most senior former officials warning of the risks of his White House return.

The attack advert shows a montage of scathing comments about the Republican ex-president by some of his most senior former cabinet officials in what appears to be an effort to goad him ahead of their televised live showdown on Tuesday night.

“In 2016, Donald Trump said he would choose only the best people to work in his White House,” the attack advert’s narrator said. “Now those people have a warning for America: Trump is not fit to be president again.”

What a difference two-and-a-half months make.

It was just late June when Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the first presidential debate of the season. As it turns out, thanks to his disastrous performance, it was Biden’s last presidential debate ever.

Tomorrow is the second presidential debate, but it might as well be the first. Kamala Harris will be making her debate debut as a presidential candidate. She and Trump have never faced off before. Indeed, the two have never even met because Trump skipped the 2021 inauguration festivities after his failed coup attempt.

Debates are all about expectations and spin. The expectation for the June debate was that Biden would show Trump up for the blowhard he is, which is why the Biden campaign pushed for a debate so early in the election cycle. We all know how that worked out.

However, it’s hard to imagine that Harris isn’t in a much better position going into the debate than Trump is. For one thing, Trump can’t stop himself from vomiting his inner dialogue, which rightly disgusts a lot of voters. He digresses, he rambles, he struggles to put a coherent thought together. Biden’s poor performance was the spectacle at the last debate. This time out Trump won’t have that foil.

At the same time, Harris is used to arguing her case. After all, she was a prosecutor, where her job was to convince a jury. She knows how to lay out her argument and draw people into it. She knows that this time the voting public is her jury, and she will argue accordingly.

You can find @Nooodel@lemmy.world post here

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Georgia that the massacres are sadly a “fact of life” and offered ways to fortify schools to make them safer against gun violence.

Kamala Harris put out a statement with Vance’s comments and called for “action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”

And it appeared to strike a nerve with team Trump that she used Vance’s comments against them.

“Kamala’s interns just released a statement pushing FAKE NEWS,” Trump War Room posted to X with its more than 2 million followers. “Watch the full video and you’ll clearly see that JD Vance does not say what they claim he said. These morons do nothing but lie every single day.”

Except Harris’ campaign shared the same video.

Here’s what Vance had to say:

“I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” he said. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”

Vance said he doesn’t like the idea of his own kids going to a school with hardened security, “but that’s increasingly the reality that we live in.”

All of that was in what Harris’ campaign shared with her joint statement on the shooting with running mate Tim Walz. Vance said what team Trump said Vance didn’t say and accused the Harris campaign of distorting.