Military Reporters and Editors

This morning is tonight in Afghanistan, and somewhere outside the town of Marjah, a band of soldiers and Marines is dug in, sometimes coming under fire from entrenched insurgents firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, occasionally snatching sleep in below-freezing temperatures while dwelling on the fight to come. [Read more...]

The Afghanistan casualty count for January, supposedly one of the slowest months for fighting and casualties in that country, got worse almost by the day in the first month of 2010, portending darker times that will test our willingness to stick this one out.

February picked up where last month left off. Four NATO troops were killed Monday, two of them British soldiers on a foot patrol in southern Afghanistan. A Spaniard was killed and six others were wounded while escorting a UN relief convoy, and an American GI died in a similar roadside bomb attack, also in that country’s volatile south.

To read the full story visit the San Antonio Express-News

A walk in the land of milk, honey and angst
As I took a long walk yesterday in Bellaire, my hometown, everything I saw was striking.

This six-mile walk always takes me back into a generally happy childhood — the elementary school I attended, the baseball and football fields where I swung a bat for the first time and made my first tackle, the neighborhoods where we played, the trees we climbed, the metal risers at good old Feld Park built by a young man in 1965 who, some months later, was killed in Vietnam, and the two houses I lived in with several roommates — all good friends — while working my way through the University of Houston. [Read more...]

On the eve of the London Conference on Afghanistan, some bad news to share.

It seems the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, has nothing good to say about the man who is his chief partner, President Hamid Karzai. A number of military and political observers I regularly track are unnerved by all the White House infighting.

Read the rest of the story at the San Antonio Express-News.

Even before the invasion, when we met at the Kuwait Hilton Hotel, a few of us reporters had a conversation about how the war in Iraq would go if it ran years, rather than months.

Thinking of Vietnam and how that one started with a rush of optimism and support from the media, I predicted that a long war in Iraq would sour back home. And when it did, that some cynical politicians would turn on the media and blame us rather than the policy or the execution of the war, as if journalists have more power than guns or governments.

Read the rest of the story at the San Antonio Express-News.

In the week or two before I flew to Afghanistan, there was one truly difficult thing to do on a long checklist — telling my mother about the trip.

Mom turned 96 a couple of weeks after the Fort Hood shooting, which I covered. I was only able to tell her about the Afghanistan trip a few days before boarding the plane for Kabul. Before doing it, the many events we had shared since I was a toddler fascinated by the pretty scorpion I wanted to pet one afternoon flashed through my mind’s eye.

Read the rest of the story at the San Antonio Express-News.

Over the years, staff photographer Edward Ornelas and I have had conversations in the war zone that go to the heart of the Islamic mind.

In our latest tour, in Afghanistan, it went like this:

“Wow, they attacked the hotel we had lunch at last week,” I told him.

“We could get blown up here or on the street tomorrow,” he replied. “Inshallah.”

Read the rest of the story at the San Antonio Express-News.