Word: clear
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...good in the first major offensive of President Barack Obama's war in Afghanistan. For the past four days, 4,000 U.S. Marines and 650 Afghan soldiers have been fighting their way into the southern reaches of Afghanistan's Helmand River valley, hoping to clear out insurgents there. But other than in one limited area of fierce resistance, the fighting has generally been restricted to small-scale skirmishes in which few Taliban have been killed because most of the insurgents appear to have slipped away - as guerrillas tend to do when confronted by overwhelming firepower. More important to U.S. goals...
...concern secondary to Iraq, the Afghanistan theater will see the number of American soldiers serving there increase by 17,000 by this fall. And under McChrystal, they'll be waging a different kind of war. Limited troop availability in the past meant that while NATO forces could clear an area of insurgents, they were unable to hold the terrain. Now the plan is for the Marines to set up combat posts in villages to provide the residents with lasting security. Still, some Afghans are skeptical. "I hope this operation gives a positive result," says Haji Nimatullah, a businessman in Lashkar...
...McChrystal has also declared - in a soon-to-be-released tactical directive - that soldiers should hold their fire if there is even the slightest risk of a civilian presence in the target zone. "Suppose the insurgent occupies an enemy home or village and engages you from there with the clear idea that when you respond, you are going to create collateral damage," explains McChrystal. "He's going to blame that on you. Even if you kill the insurgents, what happens is you have made the insurgency wider. You are going to run into more IEDs. You are going...
...rest of the world know well that the North has a range of missiles. The Obama Administration, in the wake of Kim's recent, relentless belligerence, has made it clear that preventing the proliferation of missiles and other weapons of mass destruction is what drives U.S. policy now. On June 30, the Administration imposed unilateral U.S. sanctions on two North Korean companies engaged in proliferation - sanctions that will "augment efforts to curtail the North Korean regime's ability to develop and sell WMD and missiles," says Bruce Klingner, former North Korea analyst at the CIA, now a senior fellow...
...former vice-presidential candidate made it clear when the deal was announced that she was trying to tell her own story rather than have it told by others. She explained to the Associated Press, "There's been so much written about and spoken about in the mainstream media and in the anonymous blogosphere world that this will be a wonderful, refreshing chance for me to get to tell my story that a lot of people have asked about, unfiltered." It's become de rigueur for presidential candidates to produce such tomes. There's a high bar, though; Barack Obama...