Marines and their families sound off to CNN about what it is like preparing to go to war in Afghanistan.

President Obama has decided to send more than 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, which will cost around $100 billion/year.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan – An estimated $10 million a day is smuggled out of Afghanistan, most of it through Kabul’s international airport, rather than through secret routes over the mountains or across the desert, the country’s finance minister said Sunday.  The amount of corruption, both by public officials and officials of private companies, makes him embarrassed to acknowledge while traveling that he is an Afghan, Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal said. “Corruption is a stronger threat than terrorism for Afghanistan,” said Zakhilwal, who was appointed in February and is the top financial advisor to President Hamid Karzai. “It is a cancer, a disease. It has destroyed the reputation of Afghanistan.”

The $10-million figure comes from a 19-day undercover study conducted by the U.S. that estimated $190 million left the airport undetected during that period, Zakhilwal and U.S. officials said. No similar study was done for the international airport in Kandahar.  Much of the hot cash ends up funding the Taliban insurgency, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Zakhilwal’s comments came at the beginning of a four-day conference sponsored by the American Embassy in Kabul, the capital, in which U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials are tutoring Afghan customs officials and others on detection methods. The remarks were some of the most candid to date about the size and blatant nature of corruption under Karzai’s government. Much of the cash allegedly comes from drug cartels eager to get the money to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a leading financial hub and the main destination for flights from Kabul.The rest may be from corrupt officials, or otherwise law-abiding businesses that wish to dodge taxes, Zakhilwal said. Read the rest of this entry »

The American died Saturday while on foot patrol, Sgt. Angela Eggman said. She did not provide further details, AP reported. Meanwhile, a NATO airstrike early Sunday killed six militants who were planting bombs along a road in eastern Laghman province, U.S. military spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said. In southern Afghanistan, about 1,000 U.S. Marines and 150 Afghan troops continued an operation to disrupt Taliban supply and communications lines in the strategic Now Zad Valley of Helmand province. Marine spokesman Maj. William Pelletier said Sunday that clearing operations yielded a few weapons caches and troops engaged insurgents around Changowlak, just north of Now Zad, in an area known as a Taliban stronghold.

Shanks said the Now Zad push was one of many operations being carried out in Afghanistan, rather than a major offensive. “We have 22 similar operations ongoing throughout the country,” he said. No Afghan or U.S. casualties have occurred since the operation began Friday. The Afghan Defense Ministry reported over the weekend that at least seven Taliban fighters had been killed and troops had confiscated explosives and weapons. Source