KABUL – President Obama’s unannounced visit to Afghanistan was the third secret presidential stop in a war zone that I’ve covered. Once before I was on the receiving end–in Baghdad when President George W. Bush had Thanksgiving dinner with troops in 2003 — and I was the television representative with Bush when he visited a U.S. air base in al Anbar province on Labor Day 2008.

These “secret squirrel” trips, as I call them, are carried out with strict operational security, which is sometimes hard to accomplish given the fishbowl a president operates in. Mr. Obama slipped away from Camp David in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, a relatively easy maneuver since it’s out of the public eye.

For his 2008 trip, Bush was driven from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base through holiday weekend traffic in broad daylight. The man who engineered that, then-White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin, has promised to tell me how that was pulled off — someday.
The small group of reporters accompanying the president — the “pool” representing their colleagues who travel in a pre-determined rotation — are given a few days’ advance notice. When I went, we were summoned one-by-one to be told what was up. We could tell only our bosses and — if absolutely necessary — one family member. And those conversations had to be in person and alone, never by telephone.

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 KABUL – I’ve traveled around the world to some unusual destinations for work, but my first trip to Afghanistan was unlike any other I’ve taken.

It began as I walked out of the gleaming, modern Dubai International Airport into the aging Boeing 737 of Safi Airways.

First of all, there was the time change. I always set my watch to the time of my destination. That meant moving it 30 minutes ahead. Not an hour. Not two hours. But half-an-hour. As one who is ever-mindful of the time at “NBC News World Headquarters in New York” (as Michael Douglas intones at the beginning of “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams”), I’m in for a lot of strenuous mental mathematics over the next four weeks.

Majid Saeedi / Getty Images

Afghan spectators watch as two fighting dogs attack each other during a weekly dog fight in Kabul on Dec. 11, 2009. Dogfighting is having a resurgence after it was banned under the Taliban for being un-Islamic. Click here for a slideshow of civilian life in Afghanistan

And there’s the English-language in-flight magazine. These publications are usually bright and cheery, touting the beauty and charms of the airline’s destination cities. The lead feature of the April/May edition, under the heading “Live Entertainment in Kabul,” is about what appears to be a major spectator sport in the capital city: dog fighting.

“Growling, snapping, leaping and grabbing, the dogs attack each other in swirling clouds of ochre-colored dust,” the article chirps. “Dogs may be a costly investment for the average Afghan, but they can also make their owners money.”

Then take the magazine’s city guide for Kabul, headlined “Full of Life,” which includes these helpful tips:

– At the airport “Taxis are available to the city center, but it is safer to be picked up.”

– “Westerners are occasionally targeted by criminals or Taliban sympathizers, and kidnapping can be a threat.”

– “Riots happen occasionally and are often accompanied by looting – stay well away from them as authorities will respond with lethal force.”

– “Kabul is generally considered one of the safer parts of the country, but bombings have increased somewhat.”

At least no one can accuse them of sugar-coating.

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BEIJING – Flowers. Candles. Cards. Songs. No – it wasn’t Valentine’s Day. Just the day after Google began redirecting its mainland China users to an uncensored server based in Hong Kong.

Dozens of Chinese Netizens gathered in front of Google’s headquarters in northwestern Beijing Tuesday to bid farewell to the Internet giant by presenting tokens of their affection. One of the cards placed on top of the company’s logo outside its gate said, “In Google We Trust.” Some people held posters saying “I love Google.”

But the vigil did not go as smoothly as the Google lovers hoped. They were constantly harassed by both plainclothed and uniformed police who told them to leave and wouldn’t allow them to light their candles. A bit of bickering broke out between police and candle holders, but nothing got violent.

AFP – Getty Images

A group of Chinese students hold a candlelight vigil outside the Google headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday, holding placards saying, “We Love Google” after Google stopped censoring search engine results in China the day before.

On Wednesday, a similar farewell party was held in Guangzhou, in southern China, just a few hours’ drive from Hong Kong. A group of IT engineers, journalists and some other professionals planned to meet at a well-known local bar to talk about Google’s pullout.

However, their meeting spot had to be changed after the bar owner was summoned by police and told he wasn’t allowed to operate that night. After their second bar was questioned by police, the group moved to a warehouse to discuss what Google’s pullout meant to Chinese Internet users.

Wen Yunchao, an outspoken Guangzhou-based blogger better known as “Beifeng,” was part of the warehouse discussion and said they wanted to commemorate event. “It’s a great loss to Google users. It’s going to be very inconvenient for us to use Google now. But I admire and praise Google’s action because they value morals more than profits.”

Tens of thousands of Google lovers expressed their anger and concern on Twitter, a social networking site they are able to use with the help of proxy servers and without Big Brother’s censorship. Since Google’s initial announcement in January, a group of Chinese Netizens started discussing Google’s future on Twitter under a tag “Googlecn.”

Many posted outraged messages about the government’s attempt to control the Internet. One user said the, “Chinese government has never abided by the Chinese Constitution, therefore they should pull out of China.”

Another one teased in a train conductor’s tone: “Dear passengers of Train Harmonious, one of the passengers called Google has been kicked off the train because he didn’t obey the rules. Now please pull down the curtain and you are not allowed to watch the scenery outside. Our next stop: Pyongyang.” (This post may seem long, but written in Chinese characters, it fits the Twitter character limitations.)

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