Word: commandment
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Expectations aside, just how badly or well the war was objectively going was a matter of debate last week even among the Pentagon brass. Some U.S. officers in the field, who had to personally cope with the allied travails so far, were more anxious than certain commanders in the rear, who were focused on the campaign's overall progress. The latter group could point to a number of achievements, including the allies' near total command of the skies over Iraq, the securing of Iraq's southern oil fields and the advance of thousands of troops to within 50 miles...
...hopeful mood on display at the White House on the war's opening night has vanished. A presidential adviser said aides were trying to concentrate on their work while glued to their televisions. "They're very, very somber," the adviser said. Before Bush's speech at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., last Wednesday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters aboard Air Force One that Bush would declare the war was progressing "ahead of schedule." But Bush decided to scratch that sentence from his speech, eliciting private criticism from an Administration official, a rarity in Bush's Washington...
...enemy resistance and crippling weather, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's push into Iraq in just a week is an advance of men and armor unmatched in speed in the annals of warfare. In addition, more than 7,000 smart bombs and missiles battered the Iraqi leadership's command and control outposts and pounded the tanks and artillery of Saddam's Republican Guard. After prolonged delay, 1,000 members of the U.S.'s 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted into northern Iraq to open a second front. A senior U.S. official told TIME that U.S. military special operations and CIA paramilitary...
Still, the coalition's battle plan is adapting to the new reality on the ground. Officials at the Pentagon and at Central Command field headquarters in Qatar, were considering slowing the pace of the ground war. The initial U.S. strategy was to bypass most cities in southern Iraq and rush ground forces to Baghdad within days of the war's start; military officials believe that once U.S. forces crush the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard forces protecting the city, Saddam's hold on power will crumble. But the decision to leave the southern cities unsecured has proved costly...
...cannot be made to halt the war through shame, Saddam hopes to try pain. U.S. military-intelligence officials believe the Iraqi command circulated copies of the movie Black Hawk Down before the war, as a manual for defeating the Americans. The film tells the story of the 18 U.S. Army Rangers who were killed by Somalis while attempting to rescue comrades from two helicopters downed in Mogadishu in 1993. The casualties prompted the U.S. to wind up its military operation in Somalia. The Iraqis may hope that similar scenes of Americans being bloodied in the streets of Baghdad would bring...