"We will not allow individual incidents to undermine our resolve," Panetta said to Marines in Afghanistan.

“We ought to stick with the plan that’s been laid out by the administration,” Mitch McConnell said.

A House Democrat is pressing the Pentagon to provide details on whether the Army soldier accused of killing unarmed Afghan civilians earlier this week suffered from traumatic brain injury. 

The GOP senator told reporters the administration's plan to possibly withdraw troops before 2014 "discourages our friends and encourages our enemies."

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich said Monday that, given the current conditions in Afghanistan he doesn't "see a path ahead" for reform within the country.

The president said he's taking the deaths "as seriously as if it was our own citizens ... who were murdered."

Iranian-backed terror groups are strengthening their ties to transnational criminal groups in South America and are working to expand their influence in the region, according to a top U.S. general.

“Iran is very engaged in the region,” Southern Command chief Gen. Douglas Fraser told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Iranian terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are involved in a number of “illicit activities” likely tied to the regional drug trade, according to Fraser.

“We do see evidence of international terrorist groups benefitting from ... illicit trafficking and money laundering” in South America, he said in a written statement to the panel. Specifically, both groups regularly look to South America to finance their operations in the Middle East through “licit avenues such as charitable donations, and illicit means, including trafficking in drugs, counterfeit and pirated goods,” according to Fraser.

A new poll shows that U.S. public opinion is divided when it comes to how the United States should react to an Israeli attack on Iran.

The New York Times-CBS News poll released Monday evening found that 47 percent of respondents say the United States should support Israel if it were to attack Iran to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons, while 42 percent say Washington should not get involved.

“He said, ‘Go,’ knowing his presidency was on the line," the vice president said at a fundraiser in Georgetown.