THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18. 2012
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PAGE 7
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SOCIATED PRESS
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Associated Press
MILITARY
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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- Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was nearly 2 a.m. when U.S. Army Pfc. Zach Randle jumped out of his bulky armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan for what he hoped would be the last time.
While some service members go home, others are busy preparing thousands of vehicles and other equipment for shipment. It's a laborious task that's more difficult than it was in Iraq because of landlocked Afghanistan's tough mountainous terrain, lack of roads and its mountain passes that will soon be covered with snow.
"I don't want to see it again. It's been through a lot," Randle said of the 19-ton (17-metric ton) vehicle that was his ride — and sometimes his bed — during a six-month deployment to volatile Kandahar province.
"It protected us, but I'm just in a hurry to turn it in to be closer to going home," said Randle, who has now left Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama's draw-down of 33,000 U.S. troops by Sept. 30. The pullout — 10,000 last year and 23,000 more this year — will be finished within days. That will leave 68,000 American troops in this country to fight militants and help prepare Afghan forces to take over security nationwide.
Between now and the end of 2014, when most U.S. troops will have left, the Americans will move an estimated 50,000 vehicles, including tens of thousands of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles like the one Randle drove into the equipment yard. They'll also ship an estimated 100,000
metal containers — each about 20 feet long. End-to-end, the containers would stretch nearly 400 miles (600 kilometers).
Shipping has picked up in recent months, as base closure teams have spread out across Afghanistan to help soldiers sort, pack and load up their gear. As of the beginning of September, 208 U.S. and NATO coalition bases have been closed, 310 have been transferred to the Afghan government and 323 remain open, according to the coalition.
The packing up is going on as the war still rages. Just since Friday, insurgents attacked a base in neighboring Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying six Harrier fighter jets. Afghan police gunned down four more American service members, and a NATO airstrike mistakenly killed eight Afghan women looking for firewood.
As American forces keep fighting, thousands of civilian and military personnel will continue prepping vehicles for flight, taking tedious inventory of bullets, night scopes, radios and even recreational baseball bats. They'll also clean and crate tons of other gear, anything from bags of nails to generators.
Brig. Gen. Kristin French, commanding general of the Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan, likens the teams to "wedding planners" helping to organize the move.
"We are trying to take the burden off the war fighter and give it to our folks who have the mission to do it." French said at her office at Kandahar Air Field. "If we busy
trying to clean up our backyards, we're not doing what our focus is and that is to continue to transition security to the Afghan security forces and partner with them."
Vehicles are being gathered in Kandahar, Bagram Air Field near Kabul and Camp Barmal in northern Afghanistan. Containers are being staged for shipment at nine locations around the country, she said.
Some equipment is taken by truck, train, ships or planes to military depots in the United States. MRAPS are rolled onto airplanes. Some Humvee sit in shipping containers for a test trip on a railroad leaving Afghanistan via Uzbekistan to the north. Other equipment will also go north through Central Asia or else be trucked into Pakistan — some of it down to the port of Karachi, where it will sail back to the United States or other destinations.
Various items will stay in Afghanistan to be used by the Americans troops not going home — yet. Still other materiel will be transferred to the Afghan government, tossed out, taken to a scrap heap or shipped to other countries for use by U.S. forces.
For now, Randle and several dozen other U.S. Army soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are happy to get rid of their vehicles and all the equipment.
"Most of these soldiers will turn in their equipment tonight and they will fly home within the next three days."
ANIMALS
Doctors use chemotherapy to treat orangutan with cancer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jungle Island volunteer Linda Jacobts comforts Peanut, one of the orangutans from a private zoo, as she is treated with R-CHOP therapy, a combination of drugs used in chemotherapy to treat her aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
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MIAMI — Peanut is an 8-year-old orangutan and a star attraction at Miami's Jungle Island. These days she also has a team of cancer doctors huddling around her, watching as the chemo drip flows into her veins.
Peanut, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, is not the first great ape to be treated for cancer like a human. An orangutan with advanced stage cancer at the National Zoo in Washington had surgery to remove a cancerous intestinal tumor in 2000. In 2009, two female gorillas at the North Carolina Zoo underwent radiation therapy. All three cases involved much older apes, in their 30s or 40s, and all had to be euthanized.
Dr. Ryan DeVoe, senior veterinarian at the North Carolina Zoo where the two female gorillas lived, said he has found no record of other great apes being treated with chemo. But he also noted that
But while other animals are treated with chemotherapy, it's not common among orangutans.
DeVoe said another unique aspect of Peanut's case is that, unlike the older apes, she has age on her side for either being cured or at least experiencing remission and living normally and comfortably for a long period of time.
Peanut's diagnosis came by chance when her veterinary team found she had an intestinal obstruction and further testing revealed the cancer. The private zoo had no board certified veterinary oncologist on staff and turned to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. A team there, along with UM's Division of Comparative Pathology, which specializes in wildlife, confirmed the diagnosis and is now providing guidance for Peanut's treatment.
The orangutan has been undergoing chemotherapy to treat the aggressive lymphoma since August.
one patient before," said Dr. Joseph Rosenblatt, one of the doctors treating Peanut. "We don't know what to expect and yet we're intensely curious and potentially hopeful that we can help the animal."
many cases involving great apes with cancer are not reported or documented.
"When the animal looks at you in the eye, it's both a sympathetic as well as a look that radiates intelligence," he said.
Working on an orangutan is a first for Rosenblatt, who has never worked on an animal larger than a mouse.
"I've never had the same combination of fear and enthusiasm in
Peanut has a fraternal twin named Pumpkin, a rarity in the animal kingdom. They are the youngest of six orangutans at Jungle Island and a hit with park visitors. Both are highly intelligent and have been taught to use sign language and an iPad to communicate with their trainers, but they have distinct personalities. Peanut is welcoming and demanding, offering her doctor a twig in return for his water bottle. Pumpkin is quiet and her hair hangs low over her forehead. Pumpkin has not been diagnosed with the disease.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
U. S. soldiers arrive to a yard where they will turn in their vehicles and equipment at the Kandahar Air Field south of Kabul, Afghanistan. The U.S. military has started the process of moving out thousands of MRAPS, Humvees and other vehicles as part of the drawdown of 23,000 U.S. troops by the end of September.
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