The Coldest Winter
In this episode of International Dateline, John Martinkus reports from Afghanistan as he travels with the U.S. 82nd Airborne.
From an isolated forward base near the Pakistan border Martinkus heads out with the troops on a ten day patrol - the conditions - extreme - as the temperature can plummet to minus 30 degrees Celsius. Progress is extremely slow in the snow, slush and frozen mud, but the troops must be constantly vigilant for roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
"How do you turn communities from bad to good? It takes time. It takes ...a legitimate government body, a legitimate police force that isn't stealing from you and is active and is competent", says the troop's commander.
But it's 'Catch 22' for US troops - trying to build a 'Hearts and Minds' program to win over the Afghans while they fight with the Taliban in the very backyards of the local population.
Interview with Joseph Stiglitz
Prior to the US invasions of Iraq, officials in the Bush administration estimated that the war would be between $100 and $200 billion. This month, it is five years on from that invasion and George W. Bush's America looks no closer to reaching a withdrawal from a conflict it has now spent more time in than either of the world wars.
And while many Americans have been counting the social and political cost to their country, others are beginning to tally the frightening economic costs of the Iraq war.
Enter, Joseph Stiglitz - Nobel laureate and former chief economist of the World Bank.
While the Bush administration is currently tallying the cost of that war at $500 billion, Stiglitz this week upturned the apple cart, putting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at more than $3 trillion in a new book with Linda Bilmes. None of this is, of course, welcome news as the world stands perched on the nervous brink of economic slowdown, a slowdown Stiglitz says has been created by the war and its role in creating the sub-prime and credit crunch crisis in the United States. A mistake of this order, he says, will not only take years and even decades to fix in the US - its effects will spread across the globe.
Watch these segments online at SBS:
Interview with Joseph Stiglitz
About International Dateline
SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.
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