As Barack Obama, the US president, signed his economic rescue plan into law on Tuesday he also approved an additional 17,000 US troops for Afghanistan.
They'll join the 38,000 already battling the Taliban in the country.
Obama said the extra troops are necessary to "stabilise a deteriorating situation".
But all this came as residents in one Afghan village told an increasingly familiar story - one of US air attacks, and civilian casualties.
Hamish MacDonald reports.
