Word: centcom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...guys!,? said the U.S. general as he entered a room full of reporters for the first background briefing by a senior officer at CENTCOM HQ in Doha. He asked if there were any Arab media in the room. (Al Jazzera was not there...
...contrast between the upbeat briefings being given by the Pentagon and Centcom in Qatar and the actual situation on the ground in southern Iraq is becoming ever more striking. Since the ground war started last Thursday, U.S. forces have indeed raced forward, reaching Najaf and other points in the north that are within striking distance of Baghdad. But the costs of this rapid advance are now being paid. There is mounting insecurity behind the front lines, and spreading harrassment of the long logistics column that links Kuwait with the troops 240 miles to the northwest...
Sept. 11 launched Franks on a different trajectory. The war in Afghanistan was an operation that was initially run by the CIA but gradually became a more traditional Centcom show. Franks didn't exactly wow the White House at first. Bush and Rumsfeld were impatient with the war's progress; the U.S. let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora, and a year later the search for the remnants of the Taliban continues. Franks had been set to retire in mid-2002, and if the Bush team had wanted to change generals, it could easily have done so. But Bush...
...that she was present once when top-secret information was discussed--she holds only a secret clearance--but the investigation cleared Franks of the other allegations. "I've been on the plane and seen Cathy excuse herself many times when he was briefed on something above her classification," a Centcom officer says. "It seems very petty." Franks and his wife sit next to each other on his aging 707 command plane--there are four stars on his headrest and four hearts on hers. "It's cute," says a fellow passenger. "When she doesn't travel, he likes to leave that...
Franks will climb aboard his command plane for Qatar this week, and he won't be back for a while. At lunchtime last Friday hundreds of Centcom troops and staff gathered out behind Franks' headquarters while listening to the country music of Neal McCoy. He's a Texas country-and-western star who traveled with Franks to visit the troops in Afghanistan over Thanksgiving. Before McCoy and his band began their hour-long set, Franks got up, microphone in hand, and belted out a version of an old Charley Pride tune called (Is Anyone Going to) San Antone? As Franks...