Thursday, Dempsey -- now chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff -- sat alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as both men signed a directive that will open front-line posts to the roughly 200, 000 women now serving in the active-duty military.
By late last year, uprising leaders said they had no choice but to accept government supervision and enroll the area's men into the Afghan Local Police, a self-defense force that is under the command of the Ministry of Interior in Kabul and mentored by U.S. special-operations forces.