Karzai's US Tour Includes 101st Before Their Deployment

President Karzai is going to stop at Ft Campbell on his US tour.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai completes his US tour Friday with a visit to US troops from the 101st Airborne Division weeks before they deploy to his war-torn country.

The US Army's Fort Campbell post has played a key role in President Barack Obama's surge of 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, a bid to turn around the nine-year war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. But the top US and NATO commander in the country voiced cautious optimism about the effort.

Walking through "the saddest acre in America" amid rows of white gravestones at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, a somber Karzai bore witness to the tragic cost paid by Americans in the war.

The visit was part of a carefully scripted four-day trip by the Afghan leader designed to mend fences with his main ally after strains marked by Karzai's angry public outbursts.

The commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, said there was still no clear winner in the war.

"In the last year, we've made a lot of progress," McChrystal told PBS television. "I think I'd be prepared to say nobody is winning at this point. Where the insurgents, I think, felt that they had momentum a year ago, felt that they were making clear progress -- I think that's stopped."

He predicted the outcome of a pivotal bid to push the Taliban out of Kandahar and nearby villages would be clear by the end of the year.

"I think it's going to be the end of this calendar year before you will know" if the operation is working, the general told reporters earlier. "I may know before that."

NATO commanders view Kandahar -- capital of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime -- as a make-or-break battleground in the war.

By: Brant