GIs in Afghanistan wage `forgotten' war

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0506050297jun05,1,3423933.story?coll=chi-news-hed

GIs in Afghanistan wage `forgotten' war
Troops battle tedium, but peril still lurks

By Kim Barker
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published June 5, 2005


NEAR ORGUN, Afghanistan -- Sgt. Ben Crowley looks through the scope of his rifle at the suspicious white bag lying in the middle of the dusty road. He sees no wires poking out, nothing that screams bomb. He moves closer, his gun pointed at the bag. Four vehicles, filled with U.S. and Afghan soldiers, wait behind him.

But no one is nervous. The bag is what it seems--full of dirt and gravel and nothing else. It is a typical moment in a typical day near a typical base in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan. Little happens throughout this day. No bombs, no rockets, no gunfire. Just hordes of children demanding chocolate and pens.

Crowley walks back to his Humvee, which will break down within the hour, the third time in a week. As usual, his rifle has no bullet in the chamber. He is not locked and loaded. Crowley does not see the point, because most attacks here involve roadside bombs, not guerrilla ambushes.

"Iraq is like a war," said Crowley, 28, of Greensboro, N.C. "This is like a summer camp."

Sometimes war is not hell. It is simply waiting. But the war in Afghanistan is not really a summer camp, unless summer camp involves swallowing pounds of dust every day, hiking with guns and searching for an alleged Taliban sympathizer named Mohammad Wali. And in this war, soldiers die. On Friday, two were killed by a roadside bomb east of where Crowley and his platoon had patrolled the day before.

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[oblivious]

1. We ask, `Who's Hamid Karzai?' They say, `He's your president, not ours.'"

Well, that says quite a lot.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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