U.S. doubles special forces in Afghanistan: report

The Pentagon has more than doubled the number of highly trained special forces in Afghanistan to hunt down Taliban leaders, a newspaper report said on Thursday. "The secretive buildup reflects the view of the Obama administration and senior military leaders that the U.S. has only a limited amount of time to degrade the capabilities of the Taliban," the Los Angeles Times noted. With the new buildup, there will be more of the special operations forces in Afghanistan than there were in Iraq at the height of the U.S. troop buildup there in 2007, the paper quoted a defense official as saying. The move came as the U.S. military was gearing up for an expected offensive this summer in Kandahar, the southern Afghan city that is the Taliban's spiritual heartland, according to the paper.U.S. forces are in the midst of an overall increase that will add 30,000 troops this year, and plan to begin reducing the force in mid-2011.