"Afghan mission feels like war" (Oregonian lead article, 09/13/2006)

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http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/11581179377020.xml&coll=7

Oregon's citizen soldiers battle a worsening situation in Afghanistan

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

JULIE SULLIVAN and DAVID AUSTIN

In 2003, as National Guard troops stretched to wage the war on terror and as brigades broke up and recombined, Oregon Army National Guard leaders saw a solution:

Volunteer for Afghanistan. The mission would keep the state's famed 41st Brigade intact and send Oregon's citizen soldiers, including teachers, coaches and contractors, to train Afghanistan's first-ever national army.

A small scouting group deployed and confirmed the Afghans' openness and desperate plight. This was no Iraq.

But three years later, and three months after Oregon's 41st Brigade Combat Team landed, Afghanistan appears distressingly like Iraq. On Friday, a car bombing in the once-secure capital, Kabul, killed Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul, an Army reservist from The Dalles. On Saturday, a Taliban ambush killed Sgt. Nathaniel "Brad" Lindsey, a Troutdale gunner and a member of the 41st.
. . .

Almost five years after the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan, once a promising sidelight eclipsed by Iraq, has become another worrisome battlefront. Now, with a resurgent Taliban and drug trade driving the highest death rates for U.S. and coalition soldiers since 2001, military leaders worry about fatigue -- for both the soldiers fighting the war and the nation watching.

. . . more