Amid amazing landscape, talk still centers on Favre

Mike Rucker (center) and Luis Castillo (right) visit with U.S. military personnel. Michael A. Clifton

MAILBAG Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

(Editor's note: Peter King is on a seven-day USO trip with NFL players this week. Here's his latest diary entry and a link to a composite file.)

Wednesday, 9:25 a.m. Afghanistan Time

Crossing the Tajikistan/Afghanistan border aboard a U.S. C-17 Transport Plane -- I'm upstairs in the cockpit, sitting behind co-pilot Dan Blum, an Iowan, next to a wide window as we approach the northeast corner of Afghanistan. Pilot Matt Jarrett, a Georgian, chats with me through our headsets.

Military genius that I am, I have it all figured out now. You simply have to see the grandeur I'm seeing right now. Snow-capped, untouched, 15,000-foot mountain peaks stretching for miles and miles. I'm guessing the first 100 miles of Northeast Afghanistan are mountains. Majestic Himalyan-esque peaks with only a very occasional narrow mountain road giving any sign of human impact.

"If everyone in America could see what we're seeing right now," I say to Jarrett and Blum, "they'd know why we haven't caught these Taliban guys." These people have been surviving in these mountains for hundreds of years. We've been here for seven years.

Said Jarrett, a genial flat-liner: "My friends say to me all the time: 'Why can't we find 'em?' Are you kidding me? Look out here."

It's not like the Rockies," Blum said. "Look out here. No roads."

We have 40,000 troops in this country of 29 million people, covering 652,000 square miles. That's one soldier per 16 square miles, trying to find Taliban hideouts in the nooks and crannies that the Taliban have frequented for decades.

Somewhere I hear The Impossible Dream playing.

Wednesday, 2 p.m.

We check into our barracks at Bagram Air Base, a major staging area for allied forces in Afghanistan. We're in a classic, old seven-bunk bedroom that reminds me of Frost Valley in the New York Catskills on Indian Princess weekends with my daughters. Same musty smell.

As we check in to eat, Stars and Stripes Mideast Edition is laying in a pile near the reception desk. "PACKING IT IN" is the headline on the back page. "After years of speculation, Green Bay's Favre retires" said the subhead.

When we sit down to eat, TVs all over the dining hall are replaying an abridged version of SportsCenter on Armed Forces Network. It's all Favre all the time.

Where are we? Afghanistan or Atlanta?