Word: centcom
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...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...
...much of the three and a half years of the Iraq war, top-level military officers like CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abziaid mostly stood by mutely while Bush and now-departed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly said the commanders in Iraq were orchestrating the military strategy on the ground. (The message: if the war isn't going well, ask the generals why.) The Joint Chiefs of Staff - the top officers of all four services and the Chairman and Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - never aggressively challenged Rumsfeld's micromanaging. Nor did they object when Rumsfeld broke...
...November, Gen. John Abizaid, the CENTCOM boss, balked at the idea of a troop surge, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee he didn't need more troops to pacify Baghdad. Besides, he added, a surge presented two additional problems: it would discourage rather than encourage the Iraqis to take responsibility for their security. And it would not be sustainable. Abizaid said U.S. forces that have rotated out of Baghdad and back to the U.S. now lack the equipment to increase the "op-tempo," the Pentagon phrase for work rate...