Ouotes: Officials react as Biden moves to pull troops from Afghanistan by September 11

FILE PHOTO: Members of the U.S. Navy carry a comrade wounded by an explosion to a medevac helicopter in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan October 2, 2010. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he will begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan to end America's longest war, rejecting calls to keep forces in place to help resolve that nation's grinding internal conflict.

In a White House speech, Biden set a deadline for withdrawing all 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by Sept. 11, exactly 20 years after the al Qaeda attacks on the United States that triggered the war. "We went to war with clear goals," Biden said. "We achieved those objectives."