Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso led a small congressional delegation to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan early this week, meeting with top commanders and Afghani officials and touring several military bases.

This is not Barrasso’s first trip to the front lines. He spent Thanksgiving in Iraq, visiting with soldiers from Wyoming and all over the United States.

“I wanted to get to Afghanistan to do the same thing,” Barrasso said, speaking from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.

Barrasso said he feels the situation on the ground in Afghanistan is similar to Iraq.

“Either place you know you’re in a war zone,” Barrasso said. “This is a country that has been at war for 30 years.”

Barrasso left Casper on Sunday, flew to Denver International Airport and then on to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, making stops in Washington, D.C. and Kuwait City.

Barrasso visited the hospital at the Bagram Air Force Base northwest of Kabul. The Bagram hospital is the main medical facility in the area and has been operating since 2006. Barrasso said he visited the trauma ward, talked to the medical staff and attended the surgery of an Afghani man who had been injured by a roadside bomb.

One of the goals in setting up the state-of-the-art hospital was to reduce the amount of time that casualties in the field would spend unattended. Currently the hospital operates helicopters that can meet incoming military helicopters half way, thereby cutting down the time wounded soldiers or civilians have to wait before receiving treatment. The most severe cases are flown from Bagram to hospitals in Germany.

Barrasso, a former physician, said the hospital was very modern and well equipped.

“They have everything you would need at a top-of-the-line trauma center,” Barrasso said.

Barrasso also visited the Sharana Forward Operations Base south of Kabul to receive a briefing on reconstruction taking place there. At Sharana he had lunch with Pfc. Justin Nation, a Riverton native serving in the Army.

“He is a typical, great Wyoming man,” Barrasso said.

There are 17 members of the Wyoming National Guard currently stationed in Afghanistan, mainly serving as Embedded Training Teams (ETTs) with Afghani police and security forces. The ETTs are helping build up Afghani crisis response capabilities to help with situations such as medical emergencies and fires.

“A lot of this effort is on the importance of training Afghani folks to take over the mission,” Barrasso said.

Barrasso said the troops he visited with hadn’t expressed any concerns about their mission in Afghanistan.

“Of course they miss home and they miss family,” Barrasso said. “They say it’s harder on the folks at home than it is here.”

Some of the troops, he said, had been overseas for 13 months already, and several, including Nation, were planning to re-enlist for another tour of duty.

In Kabul, Barrasso spoke with U.S. Ambassador William Wood and Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, about the current status of the mission and the upcoming 2009 Afghani presidential election.

“They feel they are making significant progress,” Barrasso said.

There is also the possibility, he said, that more Wyoming guardsmen may be deployed to Afghanistan in the near future.

The delegation, which will be returning today, included other congressional members, whose names were not disclosed for security reasons, and Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Robert Hood.



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