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Day Two of NBC's feature focus on Afghanistan coincided with another day of headline news from there. Anchor Brian Williams was at Bagram Air Force Base but all three newscasts kicked off from Kabul. A guesthouse for United Nations monitors preparing to supervise next month's presidential election runoff was attacked by four gunmen disguised in police uniforms. The dawn assault was the Story of the Day. It led to a two-hour gunfight and firebombing. All four gunmen, five UN staffers, three security guards and an American contractor were killed. It was a busy day of international news with coverage from Pakistan and Ethiopia as well as Afghanistan. NBC split its anchoring chores, with Williams overseas and David Gregory taking care of the domestic beat in Washington DC.

ABC had the most dynamic rooftop videotape of the urban combat. Jim Sciutto was at the spot where one of the gunmen, attempting a rooftop escape, was shot and fell to his death. "Just as the first attack was ending, nearby explosions rocked our own hotel. Our camera crew filmed the first rocket and its impact." Sciutto's hotel is misleadingly called the Serena. NBC's Richard Engel noted that the fighting had moved to "what was Kabul's most secure neighborhood…The Taliban itself says that as this winter season begins it will be focusing more on Kabul and doing more attacks in urban areas."

NBC anchor Williams noted that Bagram AFB was operating round the clock. Yet F-15 air strikes will be useless if the combat turns urban. Gen Steven Kwast reassured him that the US Air Force has no plans to bomb downtown Kabul: "You would never use a weapon like this against the threat you describe--but we have special forces and we have intelligence capability," he suggested.

Consider how differently the war looks in Kabul and in Washington DC. ABC's Martha Raddatz reported from the Pentagon that an unidentified "senior official" had told her: "It seems quite clear that the Taliban and others are trying to influence the decisions regarding additional troop deployment." Yet such a motive was by no means clear in Kabul: "A Taliban spokesman said the attacks were a warning to people not to take part in the November 7th presidential runoff," reported ABC's Sciutto. CBS' Mandy Clark came to the same conclusion: "With just ten days to go before the elections, there are deepening concerns that the Taliban will fulfill its promise of creating even more chaos before the polls open."

Andrew Tyndall 10/31/09 9:50:17 pm

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