"In Hot Pursuit"

If you have ever spent much time in the American Southwest, particularly the mesa-speckled border between New Mexico and Arizona, land which sits at roughly the same latitude as Afghanistan, you will have a sense of the terrain where the U.S. is now furiously searching for Osama bin Laden. The hills around Kabul, an area where bin Laden may be hiding, sit at nearly the same latitude as Phoenix, Ariz., though Kabul's elevation makes it colder, clearer and more exhausting to visit. At night this time of year, temperatures can fall into the 30s. During the day, the clear skies make...