Word: centcom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Central Command (CENTCOM) is one of the strangest organizations in the U.S. military. It has no troops to call its own, just responsibility for a huge arc of turf, from the Horn of Africa to Pakistan, that is home to some of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods. Franks' job--held in the past by such men as Norman Schwarzkopf and Anthony Zinni--is to meet and befriend the civilian leaders of each of the region's 25 countries in case the U.S. needs to drop in on short notice to clean things up. When that time comes, the general...
...Rumsfeld got a fair chunk of what he wanted too: more special forces than Franks preferred, a faster race to Baghdad than the general had originally envisioned and a quicker start to the ground war than the Centcom chief had proposed. Rumsfeld also wanted the air and ground campaigns to start simultaneously; if war begins late next week, one will quickly follow the other. "Rumsfeld is particularly enamored of special-operations stuff, and Franks is less so, and that was reflected in how the Iraq plan came together," a senior Centcom officer says. "The two of them tugged and massaged...
...manage the message with a clear eye toward the political concerns involved. There is no screwing around here--these guys are going to stay on message every minute of every day. And the only way you guarantee that is to have your guy at Centcom...
...good soldier, the general knows when to keep his head down. Rumsfeld loves the spotlight; Franks is only too happy to stay out of it. "Franks thought that Schwarzkopf cut way too high a profile during the Gulf War," says a military subordinate who has worked on Franks' Centcom staff. "He thinks it's tawdry." Ultimately, Franks is really more comfortable behind the scenes. A Marine officer puts it another way: "He's been a low-profile guy all the way up. That's been the secret to his success...
...from MacDill Air Force Base, 7,700 miles from Kabul. The command center at MacDill monitors all the intelligence from the region and beams Franks' orders to his field generals. Last week he directed the largest fight of the war so far. A few days before Operation Anaconda began, Centcom gave TIME photographer Christopher Morris a rare opportunity to capture the action...