Word: commandant
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates's announcement Wednesday promoting General David Petraeus from his current post running the war in Iraq to head up U.S. Central Command triggered both political and military unease. That response may be inevitable, coming on the downside of an unpopular war and in the waning months of the tenure of the unpopular President who launched...
...While Republicans hailed the news that Petraeus - who implemented the "surge" of 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq, which is seen has having tamped down violence - was moving up the chain of command, Democrats were cooler. Opponents of the war fear that if the Democrat-led Senate approves Petraeus's promotion, it could be taken as a signal to "stay the course" in a war that has dragged on for more than five years and has killed more than 4,000 U.S. troops. Party activists will be paying close attention to how Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vote...
...Instead of the “few bad apples” blamed when the prisoner abuse first came to light over the Abu Graib incidents, it is clear that those highest in the level of command sanctioned specific methods of prisoner abuse. While the meetings referenced in the ABC report revolved around interrogation at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, according to the Vanity Fair piece, “[An] August 2006 report of the Pentagon’s inspector general concluded unequivocally that techniques from Guantánamo had indeed found their way to Iraq...
...Gates, himself a former Air Force officer (he served from 1967-69 in the Strategic Air Command), told young officers at Maxwell Air Force Base that the nation needs new ways of thinking about warfare. Gates may still be smarting from the fact that when he was CIA chief in 1992, the Air Force refused to invest in a spy drone because it didn't have a pilot. The same kinds of disputes, most notably in the Air Force, persist today over Iraq and Afghanistan. "I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets into...
...rebid after the corruption involved in the decision had been exposed; the new bidding process was won by a European consortium. Twice in the past year, the service seems to have misplaced sensitive nuclear components, including nuclear-tipped missiles that flew across the U.S. unbeknownst to the chain of command. Its chief of staff, General Michael Moseley, was implicated last week in a bizarre plot to steer a $50 million contract to friends to develop ground-based entertainment for use during shows by the Air Force Thunderbirds precision-flying team. Gates mentioned none of this in his speech at Maxwell...