Word: aerials
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Islam Dara is a small mujahedin supply base nestled in jagged rocks beneath a circle of mountains, a desert oasis fed by a cold thin stream. Except for the sound of aerial bombing that burns red rings of brush fire above the enclave, Islam Dara seems sheltered. A few canvas tents are pitched amid boulders and mounds of ammunition: RPG-7s, launchers, bazookas. With its cool caves and grassy marshes harboring frogs, Islam Dara is a boy's paradise out of Kipling. But the dozen or so boys who stay there are living an idyll...
...then there is Los Angeles. Gang violence doesn't fit the Geneva Convention standard of war: there has been no invasion, no mass uprising against an oppressor, no minefields, aerial bombings or refugee camps. Instead, there are small armies of youths fighting one another and the police. Gang violence is combat stripped of all the familiar rationales. It is the closest thing the U.S. has to battle within its borders, and many of the children emerge from the streets of Los Angeles more psychologically scarred than the young mujahedin who patrol the mountain passes of Afghanistan...
...stutter of the machine guns and watched the plane belch smoke. The world was in color again; the G-forces had receded; my stomach was back where it belonged. Victory was mine. The radio link to the other plane came alive. "Yee-haw!" taunted the loser of this aerial gunfight, a trucking-company official from Tucson. "Now it's my turn...
...were flying -- with the indispensable help of flight instructors -- in identical Italian-built, Marchetti SF.260W air-force trainers, experiencing the sometimes sickening thrill of aerial combat, but without the lethal weapons. I am neither a licensed pilot nor a natural-born killer. But this was a Walter Mitty dream of combat come true -- and, as someone once said about bullfighting, it may be inexcusable, but it's irresistible...
...around here," he says. Since he bought his first two-seat trainers and went into the business last spring, more than 1,000 would-be fighter aces have flown sorties. For about $500 a flight, Air Combat U.S.A. will give the Top Gun fanatic an exhilarating course in aerial tactics guaranteed to put your stomach in your throat with maneuvers that test the mettle of experienced nonmilitary pilots -- not to mention the amateurs, like myself. But surprisingly, says Blackstone, "the amateurs often do better than the experienced pilots, because in air combat you break all the rules of straight...