Fifth U.S. soldier in a week killed in Afghanistan

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A U.S. service member was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan, the military said today, raising to five the number of Americans killed in less than a week as violence escalates ahead of next month's parliamentary elections.

Elsewhere, an Afghan villager claimed a woman and child had died in a coalition airstrike during fighting earlier in the week.

The bomb exploded Tuesday near a vehicle in eastern Ghazni province where an American unit was conducting operations to "disrupt enemy activity in the region," the military said.

Two American troops were evacuated to the main U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul; one died shortly after arrival while the other was in stable condition.

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What the hell is going on over there, anyway? It seems like everybody, myself included, has become so obsessed with Iraq that White House policy on Afghanistan gets a pass. This is bad because it appears that the situation there is only slightly better. I mean, US soldiers are dying, the national government only seems to have control over Kabul, and we let bin Laden get away. Is Afghanistan a quagmire, too? It sure does look like it.

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