Whilst not wanting the thread to descend into a political firefight (there are other forums/sites for that) I though this was a very good article from an independant US journo embedded with British Troops in Helmand, Afghanistan.
I think it's important we are told about the sadness of soldiers dieing out there (albeit in a 10 second clip on the news), but we don't get often to see the day to day stuff out there, so this is well worth ½ an hour of your time.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/precision-voting.htm