SOME SIGNS OF SUCCESS – Lt. Col. Rodger Lemons, 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, tells of the amazing results the U.S. has gotten by spending over $9.5 million in the last 10 months developing and improving Kandahar-area roads, building wells and refurbishing irrigation canals.

“When we got here late last summer, the Taliban controlled that entire area,” Lemons said. “If people were out moving around at odd hours, they would take those people and they would hang them from the trees as a sign to the other people within the villages in the area to stay away. And through a series deliberate clearance operations … over the last six months, that’s changed dramatically. … And now, all the people from Kandahar City look at that as their weekend getaway.

“There were literally 12,000 people, up and down the Arghandab River, picnicking in the orchards, … swimming in the river. Boys jumping off the bridges into the canal system. … Most children wave back. When we first got here, adults didn’t wave, and weren’t very responsive to coalition forces. That has changed dramatically, and I think that’s a product of the increased level of security.”

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MORE ON GATES, FROM POLITICO PLAYBOOK – the secretary choked up as he bid farewell to Marines at Forward Operating Base Dwyer, in the bleak, violent desert of Kandahar province, where fighters live in trailer-like boxes known as “cans.”

“I’m probably more responsible for your being here than anybody except the president. I’m the guy who signed your deployment orders … Every day that I’ve been in the job, that has weighed on me. And as a result, I have taken a sense of personal responsibility for making sure you had what you need to succeed in your mission – to try and do everything we could to bring you home safe,” he said. “I feel your sacrifice, the effort that you make, the burdens that you carry – more than you can possibly imagine. And those of your families, as well. … My admiration for you-all, my affection for you-all, is without limit. And y’all will be in my thoughts and prayers every day for the rest of my life. So thanks for your service.”

GATES TOOK A FEW QUESTIONS, then took individual photos with hundreds of soldiers. It was an assembly line: Gates shakes hands, claps hand on shoulder, the photographer snaps, then an aide gives the soldiers Gates’s personal coin as they walk off and the next person in line gets a handshake.

THE FIRST SOLDIER to get one of the 2,500 coins to be given out on Gates’s swing – Sgt. 1st Class Elias Camacho, 38, a father of four from Killeen, Tex. – works support operations and maintenance management in what he calls “the crazy environment” around desolate Dwyer, which he calls “hotter than Iraq.” But Camacho said he is not bitter: “This is my job. I raised my hand.” He says he’s not re-upping after one tour in Afghanistan, two in Iraq, one in Kosovo and one in Saudi Arabia.