Obama Will Announce 34K Troops to Come Home from Afghanistan [VIDEO]
A person who's familiar with President Barack Obama's State of the Union address said he will announce that 34,000 U.S. troops will be home from Afghanistan one year from Tuesday, according to MSN.
The source provided the information on condition of his or her anonymity about the reduction of U.S. troops before the president's announcement on Tuesday. The figure comes to about half the U.S. troops currently serving in Afghanistan.
The decision marks the next step in President Obama's plans to end the war in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. His drawdown plan of U.S. troops will be just one of my topics in the president's State of the Union address. The economy, education and gun control laws are also slated to be discussed on Tuesday.
The mass shootings that occurred in Newtown, Conn., in December of 2012 made gun control a top priority in the president's agenda, pushing guns onto his long to-do list that also includes a push for an overhaul of current immigration laws.
Obama proposed a ban on certain weapons and also on high-capacity ammunition magazines. He called for stronger universal background checks on gun purchasers.
White House aides said that the economy will be President Obama's central theme in his address on Tuesday.
"You've seen the president act aggressively on comprehensive immigration reform. You've seen the president put forward a series of comprehensive proposals to reduce gun violence in this country in the recent weeks," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday. "These are important priorities of the president and of the nation. But what remains his No. 1 priority is what it has been since he took office, which is to get this economy growing.
"Get it creating jobs, strengthening the middle class and expanding the middle class - allowing those who seek and aspire to the middle class to get there, giving them the tools to do that."
