Word: centcom
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...Pentagon has nine combatant commands, with responsibility for Africa awkwardly divided among three: the European Command, Pacific Command and Central Command (Centcom); the last is responsible for Iraq and Afghanistan. An African Command would eliminate that cumbersome structure. But critics say it could compound an existing problem: "The size and number of headquarters already are skewed too far in favor of 'tail' at the expense of war-fighting 'teeth,'" says a retired military officer...
...John Abizaid, the Centcom commander, laid out a laundry list of concerns to the Senate Armed Services Committee last March. While Abizaid spoke about the Horn of Africa, the threats stretch across much of the continent. "The Horn of Africa is vulnerable to penetration by regional extremist groups, terrorist activity, and ethnic violence. Al-Qaeda has a history of planning, training for, and conducting major terrorist attacks in this region, such as the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The volatility of this region is fueled by a daunting list of challenges, to include extreme poverty, corruption, internal...
...days of a female captive in the city, of a soldier with blond hair. "As the situation developed over time, we began to get some indications...that there may be an injured U.S. military member held in this hospital," said U.S. Air Force Major General Victor E. Renuart, Centcom's director of operations. Then, on about March 27 or 28, Mohammed Odeh Rehaief, a lawyer in Nasiriyah, approached some Marines just outside the downtown area and told them of a blond captive inside Saddam Hussein General Hospital...
...Lieut. General David McKiernan--who commanded the land component of the coalition forces--asked Franks what should be done if his troops found Iraqi arms caches on the way to Baghdad. "Just put a lock on 'em and go, Dave," Franks replied, according to a former U.S. Central Command (Centcom) officer. Of course, you couldn't simply put a lock on ammunition dumps that stretched for several square miles--dumps that would soon be stripped and provide a steady source of weaponry for the insurgency...
...Rumsfeld could claim progress in finding and capturing most of the 55 top members of Saddam's regime--the famous Iraqi deck of cards. (To date, 44 of the 55 have been captured or killed.) Two weeks after Rumsfeld's comment, the Secretary of Defense was publicly contradicted by Centcom commander Abizaid, who said the U.S. indeed faced "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" in Iraq...