Word: centcom
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...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...
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...
...broadcast service, dedicated to reporting the Iraq news it deems important. The broadcast will be live and unfiltered--unfiltered, at least, by meddlesome journalists. Dorrance Smith, a CPA media adviser and a former ABC News producer, told the Observer that the network's model was the wartime broadcasts from Centcom headquarters, which frustrated journalists with their lack of specifics but convinced audiences that we were blowing up a lot of stuff real good. The hope is that local TV stations will use the feed, allowing the government to take its reportage straight to the public...
...abate. U.S. officials have said repeatedly they don't believe the attacks on coalition forces - averaging somewhere between 12 and 20 a day - are being directly orchestrated by Saddam and his family, but are instead carried out by cell structures organized on regional and local lines. Just last week, Centcom commander General John Abizaid warned that the resistance fighters were clearly digging in for a long fight, in which case they would have steeled themselves for the likelihood of sustaining significant losses - even Saddam himself. For that reason, some key events that played out in Washington and New York Tuesday...