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From the category archives:

War Zone Life

How to Buy an Afghan Carpet–It’s Not Easy

I am not a carpet kind of guy. Left to myself I would be quite happy plodding around barefoot on the beaten earth floor of a Neanderthal cave, or scuffing through the dust floor of an Ethiopian tuqual. But others seem to find great pleasures in tightly bound and painted hairs ripped from the backs [...]

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At Night Through Armed Checkpoints

“You no speak okay?” I nodded my head and slouched lower in our wreck of a Toyota Corolla shuddering up to the checkpoint. Snow sleeted down the mountain slope to lash through the yellow of the headlights. “Say nothing okay. Nothing.” I’d already had a lot of practice at this already, about a dozen times [...]

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Torturers and Torture Chambers I Have Known

A few years ago I was splitting a bottle of Dewar’s Scotch with one of the most senior drug control police officers in the Afghan government, (drinking is an activity more common than you would think in that Islamic nation,) when the conversation turned to torture. There had just been a sensational case involving the [...]

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The Mad Mullah and the Giant Earthquake

Northern Pakistan was hit by a 6.1 or possibly 6.4 earthquake this afternoon. The shaking was also felt throughout southern Afghanistan including Kabul. There’s nothing unusual about this and indeed earthquakes are pretty common in the region.  They’re caused by the ongoing collision of the Indian subcontinent with the under belly of Asia.  It’s a [...]

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NATO Soldiers, Booze and Bullets

I see that General McChrystal, the most senior military commander overseeing the NATO operations in Afghanistan, has had to shut down all drinking at his headquarters in Kabul. According to his daily report of activities released by his staff he decided to ban all drinking by his troops because too many of them couldn’t do [...]

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Las Vegas as a Permanent Insanity

What value can there be to yet another article about Las Vegas and in particular the “Strip”?  Thousands of writers have brought their analytic tools to the Present Arms! position and marched along the Strip through the searing light that can dull lasers and the oxygen-less exhaust heat from Hell that roils in from the [...]

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What To Do In A Minefield

I’m often asked if I worry about getting shot when working in some of the places I go to. Not really.  I mean, it is something I am always aware of and something I try to be prepared for, but the possibility of getting shot is not nearly the nightmare that people assume it is. [...]

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