Word: area
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...past 15 years, along with nearly everyone else in this corner of eastern Australia. The region is undergoing its worst drought in over a century, and dead flower beds and brown football fields are the least of their worries. Toowoomba is the go-to city for a large rural area, including the nearby Darling Downs, fertile farm country until the rain went away and never came back. "We've been in water restriction in Toowoomba since 1992," says Dianne Thorley, the city's mayor of eight years. "Australia [is] drying up, like a dried apple...
...Baghdad-connected highways that run through Madain make the area a natural transit point for the bombers that sow mayhem in the capital. A preferred insurgent tactic for evading detection is to construct car bombs and IEDs as close as possible to their target in or around Baghdad...
...This whole place used to be sanctuary," says Col. Wayne Grigsby, commander of U.S. forces in the area. Now several thousand Americans are spread across several combat outposts, and they patrol Madain for hours each day. Grigsby's men are confronting enemies whose diversity and ingenuity reflect the variety of armed groups that have proliferated in Baghdad since 2003. Their main focus, says Grigsby, is preventing militants and their weapons from entering the capital...
...commander believes his brigade is succeeding in limiting the number of bombs entering Baghdad. But he's unsure whether the bomb-makers live in the area or are brought in to construct the devices. "If I had that answer, man, I'd go out and whack 'em right now," Grigsby says...
...Gathering intelligence isn't the only challenge; Sunni militants are well practiced at basing themselves in areas where it is difficult for the U.S. to operate. Thompson says that the Sunni insurgency in Madain - as elsewhere in Iraq - is divided between nationalist elements and the jihadists of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The al-Qaeda group has based itself in a bend in the Tigris River dominated by fish farms, and the dike roads that criss-cross the area cannot carry the weight of U.S. vehicles...