Word: commander
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...early 1980s -- before the Internet became a cultural icon -- students at Carnegie Mellon University wired photosensors to the indicator lights on a Coke machine, programmed a computer to count the cans as they were dispensed, and connected the whole contraption to the network. By typing the command finger coke cs.cmu.edu, anybody with an Internet account at Carnegie Mellon -- or anywhere else -- could tell at a glance how many cans were left...
From that initial miscalculation, the Chechnya expedition became a long journey of blunders and contradictions. The advice of military and intelligence chiefs close to Yeltsin, beginning with Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, was foolishly optimistic. In the early stages, Grachev, an arrogant airborne commander, boasted that a regiment of paratroops could clean up Chechnya in two hours. Perhaps believing his own sloganeering, he ordered the army into action with only a slapdash plan and hastily assembled forces. According to some reports, no experienced general would take command of the operation...
...protests at all the bloodshed -- snipers were also picking off Russian soldiers waiting outside the city -- increased the pressure for a quick victory. Grachev moved up his D-day to New Year's Eve. The buildup of forces was halted, and local commanders had to go in with whatever units they could cobble together. Some were only at half-strength, and others were Interior Ministry troops, a kind of national guard used for internal security. "There was no joint training," says Sherman Garnett, a former head of Russian affairs at the Pentagon in Washington, "and the command was divided...
...There was discussion during the council meeting about it, because I think all of us are quite concerned that the experience of undergraduates with TFs not be jeopardized by a lack of training or lack of command of the English language," Shepsle said...
...little, too late to rally international opinion to Russian President Boris Yeltsin's defense: TIME State Department correspondent J.F.O. McAllister says Clinton Administration officials have actually been grumbling to Yeltsin about the sloppy military effort "for some time," to little effect because of an uncertain chain-of-command within the Kremlin...