‘Shape Up and Dress Right’:

For several months, the Special Operations Forces soldiers whom the United States sent to Afghanistan have been growing beards and donning local garb in an effort to blend in with the local people and their surroundings.

But last weekend, the story goes here, Pentagon brass were shocked by news photos of scruffy looking Special Operations Forces swinging into action to help abort the assassination attempt here against President Hamid Karzai in which his companion, Gul Agha Shirzai, governor of Kandahar Province, was wounded.

“On Monday,” said a Special Operations Forces officer, leaning against the mud wall of a local bazaar, “we got the word: some general in Washington ordered no more beards.” NY Times [thanks, Abby]