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JM: How hard writing a book can be! I have been a magazine writer for a long time, but I had never written a book before, and I think I entered into it thinking, well, this will be like writing a whole lot of really long magazine pieces — uh, wrong|But in the meantime, I’m reading Joe McGinniss’s new book about Sarah Palin, “The Rogue,” which I need to read for a story that I am working on…|That shocked me a little bit, I have to say, and it also offered a challenge, which was to write that sort of book, a really objective, thoroughly researched and documented history and narrative exploration of this subject that so many people have heard of, yet know almost nothing about}
A NATO diplomat said there was no discussion of speeding up the 2014 timeline during the meeting between Karzai and the alliance chief. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with alliance’s regulations, said Karzai was eager to see the next stage of transition, which would have Afghan forces take charge of security for almost the entire country. More in Afghanistan: The way forward There are questions, however, about the ability of the Afghan forces to secure the country. The Afghan army has grown to 184,676 soldiers, and the country’s police force now numbers 146,339 officers – putting them just short of the planned number of 352,000 members. But critics say the rapid expansion has not significantly improved their ability to plan and conduct operations without support from foreign forces in terms of logistics, air support and medical evacuations. Furthermore, the number of Afghans leaving the army has remained stubbornly high, with 27 percent of troops either deserting or not re-enlisting despite the higher salaries offered. And though the number of volunteers is still high, the army needs to train about 50,000 recruits each year just to compensate for the loss. Polls show that the 11-year war has little public support among NATO’s 28 member states, most of which are cutting defense budgets as part of the austerity measures adopted to deal with the financial crises. A recent upsurge in the number of insider attacks on coalition troops by Afghan soldiers or police – or insurgents disguised in their uniforms – has further undermined public support for the war in the West. At least 52 American and other NATO troops have died so far this year in those attacks. In the past several months, there have been calls in the United States and elsewhere to accelerate the drawdown and to withdraw coalition troops by the end of next year. Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance remains committed to help enable Afghan forces assume full responsibility for the country’s security after 2014. The military alliance has also agreed to offer a smaller, post-2014 mission to help Afghan forces with training, advice and assistance. “We are committed to continuing that cooperation with the Afghan national security forces,” he said. The secretary-general and NATO’s governing body, the North Atlantic Council, were visiting Kabul Thursday for meetings with Karzai, coalition military commander Gen. John Allen and commanders of Afghan government forces. The current strategy agreed to by NATO, its partners and Karzai’s government is to enable the Afghans to take over the war against the Taliban and other insurgents by the end of 2014. NATO started drawing down its forces earlier this year. It currently has 104,000 troops in Afghanistan – 68,000 of them Americans – down from 140,000 the alliance had here in 2011. Among those who left are the 33,000 U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan after 2009, when President Barack Obama ordered a surge in a bid to quell the Taliban. Karzai also said he did not believe the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections in the United States would affect Washington’s long-term policy toward Afghanistan regardless of whether President Barack Obama or his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, emerges as the winner. “America has a set strategy for Afghanistan and any government who comes in will follow that, so it will not affect Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
In it, Garzon, a slightly-built 52-year-old with short-cropped gray hair and glasses, appears shaken and at times hesitant. He sits in a simple chair in front of the judge, with four rows of chairs behind him in the small courtroom. Garzon is wearing a dark jacket and trousers with an open-necked shirt. Behind him are two men in dark uniforms, and several other unidentified people are in the room. He also answers questions from a prosecutor. Garzon’s testimony added little new to what is already known about the crash on the evening of July 24 as the high-speed train, carrying 218 people in eight carriages, approached the capital of Spain’s northwestern Galician region. But the video was the public’s first look at the court testimony of the driver who walked away from the accident with a gash in his head. ABC said its footage showed 18 minutes of excerpts from the full 55-minute session, accompanied by what it said was a transcript of the full session. The paper said it obtained a copy of the video that the court took of the session but has not made public. The train had been going as fast as 119 mph (192 kph) shortly before the derailment. The driver activated the brakes “seconds before the crash,” reducing the speed to 95 mph (153 kph), according to the court’s preliminary findings based on black box data recorders. The speed limit on the section of track where the crash happened was 50 mph (80 kph). In his Sunday night testimony, Garzon said he was going far over the speed limit and ought to have started slowing down several miles (kilometers) before he reached the notorious curve. Asked whether he ever hit the brakes, Garzon replied, “The electric one, the pneumatic one … all of them. Listen, when … but it was already inevitable.” His voice shakes, his sentences break down and he appears close to tears as he replies to a question about what was going through his mind when he went through the last tunnel before the curve. “If I knew that I wouldn’t think it because the burden that I am going to carry for the rest of my life is huge,” he said. “And I just don’t know. The only thing I know, your honor, sincerely, is that I don’t know. I’m not so crazy that I wouldn’t put the brakes on.” Garzon said that after the derailment he called central control in Madrid about the accident. “At the speed I was going and the smashup, though I couldn’t see what was behind me. I knew what I was up against and I knew it was inevitable that there was a calamity and so (I called Madrid) to activate the emergency protocol,” he testified. Garzon also explained a photograph on his Facebook page which showed a train speedometer registering 124 mph (200 kph). He said he took the photo “as a laugh or whatever you want to call it” while a colleague was driving a test train on a different track some time ago. His Facebook page was taken down shortly after the crash. It is not known who removed it. The investigating judge is trying to establish whether human error or a technical failure caused the country’s worst rail accident in decades, and Garzon is at the center of the investigation. The judge provisionally charged Garzon on Sunday with multiple counts of negligent homicide. Garzon was not sent to jail or required to post bail because none of the parties involved felt there was a risk of him fleeing or attempting to destroy evidence, according to a court statement. National rail company Renfe said Garzon is an employee with 30 years of experience who became an assistant driver in 2000 and a fully qualified driver in 2003. Garzon went back to court, voluntarily, to offer more testimony on Wednesday. In that second appearance, he said he was talking by phone to the train’s on-board ticket inspector moments before the accident and hung up just before the train left the tracks. But that contradicted what the court said the black boxes showed – that Garzon was on the phone at the time of the derailment. The court said the inspector would testify Friday as a witness. It said the judge has ruled that while the phone call was inappropriate it could not be considered a cause of the accident. Health authorities say 57 people from the crash are still in the hospital, 11 of them in critical condition.

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