Word: tour
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...troops in Iraq in July, up 8,000 from the 132,000 stationed there at the beginning of last year. The increase in troop numbers means that nearly a third of soldiers deployed to war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, are on at least their second tour of duty. While the Pentagon doesn't break down these statistics by theater, it's clear that the proportion is higher in Iraq, where many troops are on their third go-round...
...areas where the surge has been concentrated, many find that their task has changed dramatically since their previous tours. Staff Sergeant Shane Plummer, 27, was an infantryman during the 2003 assault on Baghdad and was posted to the Diyala River Valley in 2005. These days, he's based at Combat Outpost Cashe, 12 miles (20 km) southeast of Baghdad, where he focuses more on building relationships with Iraqis than on fighting them. With each tour, he says, "the mission has changed more toward making friends than finding...
Returning troops find that some Iraqis, too, are more willing to make friends. Plummer, who is originally from Kansas, remembers how the Iraqis he encountered on his 2005 tour "would give us dirty looks and wouldn't tell us where the bad guys were." He says the mood has shifted to the friendliness he encountered on his first tour, when many Iraqis were grateful to be freed from Saddam Hussein's rule. Plummer says Iraqis are now happy to engage with him and his men on matters ranging from trash collection to counterinsurgency operations. "The more they get involved...
...mood is very different in places like Mosul, where things have gotten worse in the past year. Norris, the son of an Army chaplain, spent his previous tour in Diyala, but some of his men have had firsthand experience of Mosul. Fleenor earned a Purple Heart for the injuries he sustained here in 2004, and he lost his best friend, Sergeant Frank Hernandez, to a roadside bomb during the same deployment. As he walks the confines of Rabiya, Fleenor still wears a black metal band on his wrist etched with Hernandez's name. Sergeant Tony Carter, 33, who also served...
...Mind Your Minder While the orchestra rehearsed, the government minders took the 80 mostly American journalists on a whirlwind tour of Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung, the late Great Leader, is still the dominant figure in the intense cult of personality that is North Korea. His image is everywhere, most prominently on an overlook where a gigantic bronze statue stands in front of the Korean Revolution Museum. After we boarded the buses, a group of about 40 North Koreans walked up and made their way to the statue. We were just about to leave, but again there was a journalists' revolt...