SUNDAY UPDATE FROM AFGHANISTAN

Had a very good (and exhausting!) day today going down to the southern provinces... down where the drug wars are heating up, now that the Afghan Army and Police are ripping out the poppy fields. They just started about two weeks ago and are making amazing progress. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and various bad guys are the Drug Lords, and they're not happy about this new campaign to (as President Karzai says) "Kill the poppy or it will kill Afghanistan". I was on seven difference flights in the south today, on C-130s and Chinook helicopters. One of the stops was at a forward post right on the front of this new anti-drug operation. Landing in the desert unbelievable... sand everywhere. A couple of convoys from point to point as well, so I was crammed into a humvee a couple of times. Plenty of reminders that the area in the south is still a security challenge. More to info to come...














Meeting Afghan National Army troops training in the mountains outside of Kabul.














Enjoying that form-fitting body armor as the Afghan National Army takes target practice (a symphony of AK-47s)














In the middle of the desert, southern provinces of Afghanistan. This is at a forward operations site where they're fighting the drug lords...And they're not far away through the blowing sand.