Word: centcom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Somalia falls within the military's CENTCOM command area, and as a longtime Qaeda theater of operations has been a focus of U.S. military interest for years. Special Operations command has been active in the Horn of Africa with psychological operations and civil projects, such as building water wells and providing veterinary services, in several countries in the region for a number of years. The CENTCOM base in the tiny country of Djibouti - from which the gunship raid was staged - has become an important focus of regional counterterror efforts. Units based there have also played a central role in helping...
...pulling for one of their own: Lt. Gen. James Mattis, one of the military's most seasoned combat veterans (he led the complex but successful invasion into Afghanistan and then took the 1st Marine Division on the march to Baghdad). The Marines have not held a senior position in CENTCOM or Iraq since before the start of the war and many of them privately blame poor Army leadership for the war's failures...
...KINDS OF MILITARY EXPERTS, BOTH active duty and retired, have been calling for more troops since before the war began--former Army chief Eric Shinseki, former Centcom boss Anthony Zinni and, perhaps loudest of all, Senator John McCain. But seen in another light, the surge is the latest salvo in the 30-year tong war between the two big foreign policy factions in the Republican Party: the internationalists and the neoconservatives. The surge belongs to the neocons and in particular to Frederick Kagan, who taught military history at West Point for a decade and today works out of the American...
...Outgoing Centcom boss John Abizaid told a Senate panel in November that the U.S. "can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect." But he added that "the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps." Surge proponents quietly cheered the recent announcement that Abizaid is retiring. They believe that Abizaid and many of the Army's other top generals are locked in a post-Vietnam mentality that has them worrying more about the recruitment and retention required...
...Iraqi people. The surge has been backed by a handful of neoconservatives in and out of the government, along with some retired generals, most of whom have been over to the West Wing in the last 10 days to talk about it. It surely helps the surge faction that CENTCOM boss Gen. John Abizaid, who had publicly opposed the idea, announced his retirement this week. And Colin Powell would not have broken a year's silence on Iraq just to oppose the surge last Sunday unless he was pretty convinced it was gaining steam...