Word: centcom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Secretary Rumsfeld then pulled out a two-page memo and handed it to me. "I wrote this after a promotion interview about two weeks ago," he explained. "The officer told me that one of the biggest mistakes we made after the war was to allow CENTCOM and CFLCC to leave the Iraq theater immediately after the fighting stopped - and that left you and V Corps with the entire mission...
...Democrats are unlikely to mount a campaign to block Petraeus' promotion. Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the next CENTCOM commander must come with new plans for Iraq "if directed to by a new President." Petraeus hedged last month when asked what he would say if a new President were to order a withdrawal plan within 60 days of taking office. He verbally juggled risks and objectives before conceding, "We take orders and we follow them...
...same time, U.S. officials have suddenly become far more vocal than before about their unhappiness with the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki. The White House has been criticizing him in public, and both the Centcom boss, Admiral William Fallon, and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte made recent trips to Baghdad to tell al-Maliki he needs to quickly deliver some of the promised political deals on security and oil revenue with the various warring factions...
...unclear if this will actually force the Iraqis to change. One reason outgoing CENTCOM boss John Abizaid had long opposed additional troops was that he believed reinforcesments would only encourage Iraqis to sit on their hands and let the Americans do the dirty work of stabilizing the nation. Bush has not explained what incentive the Iraqis have to change now - other than his suggestion last night that they would "lose the support of the American people." Asked in a briefing at the White House Wednesday what would force the Iraqis to take these steps, a senior administration official told reporters...
...Petraeus - whom critics call "King David" for his often sophisticated self-promotion skills - will be in charge of day-to-day fighting in Iraq, while Fallon will oversee the entire Middle East and Southwest Asia, which are under CENTCOM's purview. The admiral will also be tasked with trying to convince Middle Eastern countries to lend the U.S. a hand in redeveloping Iraq's flagging economy...