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Articles found 1 October 2006
Josh Klukie becomes latest casualty of war from region
By CHEN CHEKKI Oct 1, 2006, 00:02
http://66.244.236.251/article_8933.php
The Thunder Bay region lost an “amazing” man and soldier in Afghanistan on Friday, a person who trained hard for his mission while remaining dutiful to his widowed mother, say friends and neighbours.
Canadian Forces member, Pte. Josh Klukie, 23, became the third Thunder Bay-area casualty in the war in Afghanistan this year, killed while on a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar City by an insurgent’s explosive booby trap that was big enough to be an anti-tank mine, The Canadian Press reported Saturday.
The Shuniah resident became Canada’s 37th soldier to die in the war since 2002, the media service said. Departing some time in August, Klukie was supposed to return in February.
Klukie, who graduated from Hillcrest High School, was known for having a tight circle of friends, athleticism and enthusiasm for military life, said his Thunder Bay friend, Craig Loverin.
Loverin, a reservist who served in Afghanistan in 2004, said Klukie always wanted to serve on an overseas mission and Afghanistan turned out to be his first tour.
“He gave his life for what he loved doing,” said Loverin, who belongs to the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment in Thunder Bay. “He was a great guy and a good soldier. He will be missed, that’s for sure.”
Loverin, 25, said Klukie joined the army in 2004 and has spent most of the last few years with First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, at CFB Petawawa, Ont. He completed all his training there.
He returned for about a month to live with his mother Carol in their family home along the picturesque, lake-fronted Cedar Bay Road in the Township of Shuniah, just northeast of Thunder Bay, in about July.
Described as a “goal-oriented” guy by Loverin, Klukie was seen training for his Afghanistan mission by running along the road, wearing his uniform and a 40-kilogram pack.
“He was ready for the action, I guess,” Loverin said.
Loverin knew Klukie through Klukie’s older brother Dan, as the group maintained close ties in Thunder Bay. Josh also leaves behind another older brother named Dave, who lives in Western Canada. Both are staying to comfort mother Carol, whose husband died about six or seven years ago.
Many cars could be seen parked in front of the residence Saturday. The family also received a call of condolence from National Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor. Canada’s government says it is sending troops to Afghanistan to stabilize and rebuild the nation.
Loverin said he remembers how sportsman Klukie came over to his home in Thunder Bay to play paintball, and his “extremely good” athleticism in high school and how he enjoyed basketball and weightlifting.
Klukie, believed by Loverin to be the only member of his immediate family to serve in the army, won army medals for his physical prowess, even placing tops in a fitness course at Petawawa.
The man was always “approachable” and “respectful toward everyone,” Loverin said.
“He was really kind,” he said.
A nearby neighbour of the Klukie family, who asked to remain anonymous, said the “amazing” Klukie helped his widowed mother Carol.
They said Carol and her husband were in the process of planning a retirement home on Cedar Bay Road, just before the husband’s death, so Carol had to build it on her own.
“Oh that poor lady, to lose her husband, and now to lose her son,” the close neighbour said with a sombre sigh. “. . . They shouldn’t allow Thunder Bay boys to go (to Afghanistan) any more. The city has had enough.”
Brian Buday, another nearby neighbour on the quiet 17-home tree-lined street, said Klukie was a “really nice” and honest guy.
The family was assigned Jim Davis from the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment as its military assisting officer to cope with the ordeal. Davis said the family, known to be an already private bunch, wishes to remain left alone by the media until a family spokesman makes a statement some time next week.
“(Carol) is a strong woman and she’s managing,” Davis said.
Klukie was the second Thunder-Bay area friend of Loverin to die in Afghanistan and the third from the region this year.
Loverin also knew Cpl. Anthony Boneca, who was a reservist killed during a firefight the morning of July 9 outside Kandahar.
Regular forces member Pte. Robert Costall was killed in Afghanistan in March, leaving behind a wife and toddler-aged son, among other family members.
Meanwhile, Cpl. Kory Ozerkevich, was shot through the right shoulder during a firefight in June. He survived.
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Betrayed: How we have failed our troops in Afghanistan
By Francis Elliott, Marie Woolf and Raymond Whitaker Published: 01 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1777868.ece
Britain's most senior military chiefs warned John Reid not to commit UK troops to "a war on two fronts" in Iraq and Afghanistan more than 18 months ago, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Despite clear advice that a "significant" withdrawal of troops from Iraq was needed before a new mission, Mr Reid went ahead with the Afghan deployment after coming under pressure from Tony Blair. The advice, prepared by military planners and endorsed by the Chiefs of the Defence Staff, was given to Mr Reid on his arrival as Secretary of State for Defence in May last year. Despite the warnings, he went ahead with the deployment in January.
Mr Reid was accused last night of having taken "a gamble" by the Conservative spokesman on foreign affairs as the political and military fall-out from the conflict continues to grow. The present Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, has been forced to deny persistent reports that military chiefs are pressing for significant withdrawals from Iraq in order to shore up the Afghanistan operation.
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the war this Saturday, stark new evidence of the suffering being endured by British troops on the ground emerged in a series of leaked emails published in The Mail on Sunday. They amount to a harrowing account of terrified soldiers tormented by heat and sandflies engaged in brutal combat with Taliban fighters. One soldier wrote: "You see the Taliban cutting around on dirtbikes, their weapons in one hand, their kids in the other. They think we will not shoot them. There have been some terrible incidents. It is horrible to kill a kid, nothing could prepare you for it."
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Blood & guts: At the front with the poor bloody infantry
tell a terrifyng story. By Raymond Whitaker Published: 01 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1777869.ece
This is the war they do not want you to see: but while the media are kept from the action, emails and videophone images from the troops
"We headed off to what can only be described as the Wild West." Those are the words, not of a beleaguered British squaddie, but of a Canadian officer in a unit sent to help rescue our troops in the lawless Afghan province of Helmand. His account, emailed to family and friends back in Canada, is the most detailed to emerge from what commanders have called the most desperate fighting British troops have seen since the Korean War.
"A British company from 3 Para had been isolated and surrounded by Taliban in... Sangin district centre," the officer relates. "They had lost four soldiers and were being attacked three to five times a day. They were running out of food and were down to boiling river water." An attempt to air-drop supplies had failed, with the supplies landing in a Taliban stronghold, so the Canadians were ordered to conduct an immediate emergency resupply operation with their light armoured vehicles (LAVs).
"When we arrived in Sangin, the locals began throwing rocks and anything they could at us; this was not a friendly place," the officer reports. "We pushed into the district centre, and during the last few hundred metres we began receiving mortar fire." By the time they reached the British position, the Canadian convoy had to stay overnight. "We were attacked with small arms RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and mortars three times that night. I still can't believe the Brits have spent over a month living there under these conditions."
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Above & beyond: Tales of courage under fire
By Jonathan Owen Published: 01 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777867.ece
One VC already, five more in the pipeline; 132 honours in Afghanistan so far: more than the Falklands or the first Gulf War. These are some of their stories.
George Cross
Awarded to Cpl Mark Wright
The George Cross ranks with the Victoria Cross as the nation's highest award for gallantry and is awarded "for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger". Since its inception in 1940, the George Cross has been awarded posthumously to 84 recipients and to 71 living people.
He had wanted to be a soldier for as long as anyone could remember, but 27-year-old Mark Wright's promising army career was to be tragically cut short. It happened on 6 September when a foot patrol of about half a dozen soldiers searching for a suspected Taliban position in Afghanistan's Helmand province walked into a minefield.
Without any thought for his own safety, Cpl Wright ran to the aid of two soldiers injured by exploding mines. After helping to treat their wounds and calling for a helicopter to winch them to safety, he himself fell victim to a landmine and died before he could be taken to hospital.
It is understood he is to be posthumously awarded the George Cross, with Britain's military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, having hailed his "act of exceptional bravery".
Cpl Wright was born in 1979. He lived in Edinburgh with his fiancée Gillian, whom he was planning to marry this year. He joined the Army in January 1999, passing the selection tests to join the Parachute Regiment a few months later.
By the age of 23, he had completed three tours of Northern Ireland and in 2003 was sent, along with the 3rd Battalion, to Iraq, where he served with distinction. In May this year Cpl Wright was sent to Helmand, where he provided mortar support for his fellow soldiers. Senior officers said his "accurate and timely fire control" saved many lives and was "instrumental in fending off Taliban attacks".
His commanding officer, Lt-Col Stuart Tootal, said: "Cpl Wright died attempting to save the life of a fellow paratrooper... His actions were typical of the type of man Cpl Wright was. Quietly determined... he possessed exceptionally high moral and physical courage." The Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, has also paid tribute: "His selfless commitment and professionalism are an example to us all."
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Sarah Sands: Soldiers are not like us. They are better
The Mother's View: Soldiers are cheerful, fearless. Doubts are only voiced in diaries
Published: 01 October 2006
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1777741.ece
During a recent parents' evening at an academic London school, a mother put up her hand. She was alarmed that her son had suddenly expressed an interest in joining the armed forces. Had the school encouraged this in some subversive way and had any other parents had similar experiences? Imagine substituting the word "doctor" or "lawyer" for armed forces and you see how far removed we have become from "our boys". A couple of generations ago, many families had a connection with the Army; now few do.
We may glimpse soldiers rumbling past in Land Rovers or avoid them on late-night trains to Aldershot. We sentimentalise them for risking their lives but are squeamish about battle victories. We use them as ballast for our dinner party conversations about the war in Iraq but do not imagine them as husbands, or sons or brothers.
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Sandy Gall: Unlike Iraq, the Afghan war is winnable
The Strategy: 'Most Afghans do not want the Taliban back in power'
Published: 01 October 2006
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1777732.ece
A report that senior generals are pressing the Government to withdraw British troops from Iraq in order to beef up our commitment in Afghanistan underlines how desperately we need more soldiers there. But with the Americans against any British withdrawal from Iraq, and most European allies too chicken to fight in the south, we are piggy in the middle.
Hence the dire forecasts of failure now so commonplace. Worryingly, they are based not so much on pub punditry as on the flow of angry emails from officers in the thick of fighting in Helmand Province and other parts of the south. RAF close air support had been "utterly, utterly useless", according to Major Jamie Loden of 3 Para in a leaked email about the battle for opium town Sangin. A female Harrier pilot "couldn't identify the target", he wrote, fired two phosphorus rockets that just missed the British compound and then strafed their perimeter, "missing the enemy by 200 metres". Another British officer who criticised the RAF's performance said the American A10 pilots had been, by comparison, first-class.
This is ironic, since the American Air Force has been much criticised for repeated incidents of "friendly fire". In one notorious case, elders driving to Kabul for President Karzai's inauguration were mistaken for a Taliban convoy and shot to pieces. Dozens were killed or wounded. Most of these incidents have occurred in the Pushtun south and east, the Taliban heartland, and have done enormous damage to Karzai who, although a Pushtun, is often accused of being an American stooge.
And yet he has won two elections for the presidency with no challenger in sight and, until about a year ago, the country seemed on the road to relative peace and prosperity. So what has gone wrong? In a word, Iraq. Having bombed the Taliban out of power in 2001, less than two years later the Americans were diverting men, money and attention to Iraq. The switch has proved costly. Reconstruction, which was just beginning, stalled. There seemed to be no money or will to keep the wheels turning.
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A bloody choice: Iraq or Afghanistan? Britain must choose
If it does not, according to MoD documents leaked last week, we risk failure in both. Raymond Whitaker on a bloody dilemma
Published: 01 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777826.ece
At the beginning of October 2001,only weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the world stood on the brink of war in Afghanistan. Five years ago this Saturday, the first bombs fell.
With all that has happened since, it is hard to remember how much of a plunge into the unknown this first clash in the "war on terror" felt at the time. But the regime folded in less than six weeks. By mid-November, American and British troops were in Kabul; by Christmas an interim government was in place under Hamid Karzai.
After the horror of 11 September, it seemed 2001 was ending on a hopeful note, with billions of dollars being pledged in aid to rebuild the country and scores of nations offering peacekeeping troops. The world acknowledged that it had turned its back on Afghanistan after the collapse of communism, but Tony Blair promised that it would not happen again. So why is it that we have lost more British troops in Afghanistan in the past few weeks than in the preceding four years? Why are poorly-supplied British contingents fighting a full-scale war in the south, when we were told earlier this year that they were being deployed on a reconstruction mission? With a suicide bombing in Kabul claiming at least 12 lives yesterday, it is clear that security cannot be guaranteed even in the capital.
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The Squaddie v the GI: Have our troops got what it takes to do the job?
The war has stretched the Army to the limit. But it need not envy its US ally, discovers Cole Moreton
Published: 01 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777840.ece
The troops are exhausted. They need reinforcements. Tanks are broken and there is not enough money to repair them. Fighting is fierce, morale low.
These sound like the complaints of British soldiers in Afghanistan - only last week an officer there declared he was quitting in disgust after his men were forced to borrow bullets from the Canadians during a battle. His own gun had started falling apart in the heat. But this weekend the loudest complaints are not from the British.
It is the US army that is in revolt. General Peter Schoomaker, its leader, is refusing to submit a budget to the Pentagon because he says his troops need billions of extra dollars to go on doing what is expected of them. The news has shocked British squaddies who are used to seeing the Americans as better equipped, better supported and better paid. If even the Yanks are in trouble, what hope can the Brits have?
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The sacrifice: We count the dead. But not the injured
Soldiers in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed than those in Iraq, new research shows. But the true cost isn't counted in bodybags alone. By Marie Woolf and Sophie Goodchild
Published: 01 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777839.ece
Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed in combat than their fellow soldiers in Iraq, new research shows.
The startling fatality rate, in a paper by a leading statistician, will place fresh pressure on the Government over its mission in Afghanistan as well as raising fresh questions about overstretch of UK troops.
The findings come as opposition politicians accused the Ministry of Defence of covering up the full extent of casualties in Afghanistan by refusing to publish any casualty statistics for troops treated for injuries in the field.
Professor Sheila Bird, vice president of the Royal Statistical Society, has found that death rates among UK and Canadian troops involved in "major combat" in Helmand province are six times higher than those of UK troops involved in combat in Iraq.
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300 militants killed in Operation Mountain Fury in Afghanistan
October 01, 2006
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/01/eng20061001_307979.html
About 300 insurgents have been killed in Operation Mountain Fury in eastern and central Afghanistan, a coalition forces spokesman told Xinhua on Saturday.
"Yes, I can confirm that some 300 militants have been killed jointly by Afghan and the U.S.-led coalition forces in the operation," said Lt. Marcelo Calero.
He said the operation is ongoing, and that there is no timetable for ending yet.
The joint forces would continue to fight anti-government militants and facilitate reconstruction in the region, he added.
About 7,000 coalition forces and Afghan troops and policemen launched Operation Mountain Fury on Sept. 16 to wipe out Taliban militants in Logar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces in eastern and central Afghanistan.
However, a purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi rejected the claiming, saying only 41 Taliban militants were killed in the past three months, according to local reports.
Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of violence since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001.
Over 2,400 persons, mostly Taliban rebels, have been killed in this Central Asian country in the past nine months.
Source: Xinhua
End
American who served time for running private jail in Afghanistan leaves country
By Associated Press Saturday, September 30, 2006 - Updated: 03:41 PM EST
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=160081&format=text
KABUL, Afghanistan - An American was released from an Afghan prison and flown out of the country Saturday after serving more than two years for running a private prison as part of a freelance hunt for terrorists, officials said.
Court documents filed Friday in Washington, D.C., show that U.S. officials planned to secure Brent Bennett a passport and a ticket out of the country, and an Associated Press reporter saw a man identified as Bennett board a plane for Dubai late Saturday.
It was not clear if Bennett, 29, was free or in the custody of U.S. officials. He was held in a private room at the airport and journalists were prevented from talking to him.
Bennett, former U.S. soldier Jack Keith Idema, and Edward Caraballo were arrested in July 2004 and convicted of running a private prison in Kabul after Afghan security forces raided a house and discovered eight Afghan men who said they had been abused. Idema told the AP by phone from his prison cell Saturday that there had never been any evidence the Afghans were abused.
Abdul Qayum, the commander of the Policharki prison where Bennett had been jailed, said the American was in good spirits when he left Saturday.
An Afghan airport official showed an AP reporter a copy of the passport of the man boarding the plane in the name of Brent L. Bennett. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Idema, who is serving a five-year sentence, also told the AP that Bennett was being flown out of the country on Saturday. He said Bennett had been forcibly removed from his cell earlier in the week during a night of violence at the prison that included a fire being set in a cell block and gunfire from guards.
No U.S. officials in Afghanistan would comment on Bennett’s case, and an American lawyer filing paperwork on his behalf said he didn’t know if Bennett was free or in U.S. custody. When Bennett boarded the plane he was not wearing any restraints.
“We don’t know if he was forcibly put on the plane or not because they probably knew people would be watching,” lawyer John Tiffany said by phone from the United States.
Edward P. Birsner, the consul at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said in Friday’s court filing that the “Embassy has no intentions of taking Mr. Bennett into custody.”
A spokesman for the embassy declined to comment on the case Saturday.
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New video shows 9/11 hijackers in Afghanistan
Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:03 PM ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-10-01T000303Z_01_L30863066_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-HIJACKERS.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C1-topNews-1
LONDON (Reuters) - A new video tape has emerged which shows two of the September 11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, at a hideout of Osama bin Laden's in Afghanistan, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.
The paper said it had obtained a copy of the video through "a previously tested channel", without giving details.
It said U.S. and al Qaeda sources had verified the authenticity of the tape, which it said would be available on its Web site www.timesonline.co.uk/sundaytimes from noon (1100 GMT) on Sunday.
The paper said the video showed Egyptian-born Atta alongside another of the hijackers, Lebanese Ziad Jarrah.
Jarrah piloted United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.
The two men are seen laughing and joking and then apparently reading their wills to camera. There is no sound on the tape and lip-readers have failed to decipher their words, the paper said.
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Soldiers learn lessons training for Afghanistan
Updated Sat. Sep. 30 2006 11:28 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060930/soldiers_training_060930/20060930?hub=Canada
CFB GAGETOWN, N.B. -- Canadian soldiers training Saturday at a New Brunswick military base showed they still have a lot to learn before leaving Canadian soil to serve in Afghanistan in February.
Officials complained it took too long to co-ordinate the soldiers and get them into place during a training exercise at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, but Maj. Chris Barr of Wainwright, Alta., said he expected as much.
"We gotta walk before we run, and that's what this exercise is all about," he said as more than 900 Canadian soldiers completed a battle scenario on the base's sprawling training grounds in central New Brunswick.
Barr said the group will soon fly to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre in Wainwright, which aims to replicate what the soldiers will face in Afghanistan.
"And they have to run when they're there, because it's a very realistic environment," he said.
During Saturday's exercise, the soldiers were tasked to rescue members of the Afghan National Army who had been ambushed by the Taliban.
The exercise included gunfire, explosions, LAV-3 vehicles, a jet and helicopters.
"It went pretty well," said Capt. Andrew Gimby, a 32-year-old soldier from Oakville, Ont.
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Defence Secretary denies commanders want Iraq troops in Afghanistan
Nato chief defends Afghan plans
Sunday October 01, 2006 (0029 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155774
LONDON: Defence Secretary Des Browne has denied that senior military commanders have urged the government to switch troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.
Browne scotched a newspaper report Friday claiming that officers wanted to see a swift drop in the 7,500 soldiers in Iraq to help the 5,000 troops battling resurgent Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
The Guardian said that commanders wanted an "early and significant cut" to soldier numbers in Iraq, where British forces patrol the south of the country around the second city of Basra.
"There is a group within the Ministry of Defence pushing hard to get troops out of Iraq to get more into Afghanistan," an unidentified defence source told the daily.
However, Browne told BBC radio: "It is not true that senior military officers have been pressing the government to withdraw British troops from Iraq, that`s not the case. "My view, and military commanders share this view, is that we have a vital job to do in Iraq. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people. "There is no division between us and military commanders about what we are doing at the moment".
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Afghanistan mulls herbicide in drug war
Saturday, September 30, 2006 · Last updated 4:47 p.m. PT JIM KRANE ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Afghan_Poppy_War.html
JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.
Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes.
But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops - even with airborne crop-dusters - if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop.
"This year, we'll wait and see how it goes. Next year, the 2008 season, we will consider it," said Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud on the sidelines of an anti-poppy gathering in Jalalabad, the ancient and verdant capital of Nangahar province, once the heart of Afghanistan's poppy belt.
This year Nangahar was a success. Poppy cultivation stayed low amid a boom that saw Afghanistan produce 82 percent of the world's opium, providing for 90 percent of its heroin, according to U.S. and United Nations figures.
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NATO poised to lead U.S. troops in Afghanistan
Updated Sun. Oct. 1 2006 7:29 AM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061001/nato_afghansitan_061001/20061001?hub=TopStories
KABUL, Afghanistan -- America's direct control of military operations in Afghanistan will dwindle to a single air base within days as the NATO alliance assumes a nationwide command that places 12,000 more U.S. troops under its authority, a spokesman for the alliance said Sunday.
The expansion will consolidate military command under top NATO leader British Lt. Gen. David Richards and phase out the role of U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, whose troops will be transferred to NATO, said Mark Laity, an alliance spokesman in Kabul.
Of 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, only 8,000 U.S. troops will function outside NATO control: those tracking al-Qaida terrorists or involved in air operations, Laity said. The overall level of American forces will remain around 20,000.
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Rumsfeld: 'Change is hard for people'
POSTED: 0001 GMT (0801 HKT), September 30, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/09/30/rumsfeld.transcript/index.html
CNN) -- Here is a transcript of Frank Sesno's full interview with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:
SESNO: I'd like to start though on sort of a bigger, picture question if I could. An awful lot of people familiar with the Middle East with its people and its cultures are worried now, that we're seeing a deepening secular divide across the region, a rise in the influence of Iran.
Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that are really flexing their muscles, growth of terrorism potentially and increasing hostility towards the United States.
What does Donald Rumsfeld see when he looks out that window?
RUMSFELD: Well, you certainly see all of those things. They, they in fact are occurring. We do see a situation in the Middle East where you, you see every day on television, manifestations of a divide of differences.
Certainly, what is taking place in, in Israel and has been taking place in Israel and Lebanon is, is worrisome.
On the other hand we've seen these things over many, many years. I was Middle East envoy for President Reagan back in the mid 80's, early 80's, 1980's, and it was a difficult then as well. After 241 Marines were killed in the barracks there, in Lebanon.
But these things tend to come and go and the fact that the, there are differences within the Muslim faith are, is a reality.
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