Word: centcom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...members of al-Sadr's Medhi Army seized their buildings, weapons and vehicles. The inability or unwillingness of the Iraqis to help suppress the twin uprisings forced U.S. officials to admit publicly last week what many have assumed for months. General John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), says Iraqi security forces won't be ready to assume control until September at the earliest...
...another one: How do we get out of it? The Marines' relentless fighting in Fallujah, Washington hoped, would send a clear message to the insurgents: there would be no retreat. It was, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, a "test of wills." General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) responsible for Iraq, told Bush in a video-conference call last Friday that his troops were not seeing Sunni-Shi'ite cooperation in any structural or systematic way. In the south, U.S. forces reclaimed the city of Kut from the short-lived control of al-Sadr's militia. But Pentagon...
...will probably delay shipping out some 25,000 soldiers--mostly members of the 1st Armored Division--who have been in the country for a year. Because of scheduled troop rotations, there are 135,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, up from 120,000 several weeks ago. An Army officer at Centcom insists that delaying the departure of elements of the 1st Armored Division for up to three months "should be enough to get us through this rough patch...
That's why the White House and Pentagon moved quickly to formulate the right response. President Bush spoke last Thursday with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command (Centcom), to discuss how to retaliate. According to a senior Administration official, Abizaid called for "a specific and overwhelming attack to restore justice." It would be accompanied by an information campaign that would spread the word "that this won't be tolerated," the senior official said. The decision by commanders in the field to respond with such force, he added, "obviously pleased" Bush. "He understands...
...series of such back-and-forth sessions that Rumsfeld crafted the war on Iraq. Normally, combatant commanders like former Centcom chief General Tommy Franks would take their plans to Washington for quick approval; under Rumsfeld, Franks had to redraw them repeatedly. Other generals were alarmed to see a Defense Secretary get so far down in the weeds of a military operation. Not since Robert McNamara's Pentagon had civilian authority reached so deeply into the order of battle. Both men played down this back-and-forth at the time. Franks has since told his fellow generals that the early sparring...