Word: commands
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...change in tactics and command (McChrystal was brought in to replace Army General David McKiernan, who had led ISAF since June 2008) was necessitated by a grim truth. The war in Afghanistan is not going well. The Taliban, funded in large measure by the opium trade, which is centered in Helmand, now controls wide swaths of Afghanistan. Over the past four months, a recent U.N. report says, the number of "assassinations, abductions, incidents of intimidation and the direct targeting of aid workers" has been higher than last year. Increasing numbers of foreign fighters - "most likely affiliated with al-Qaeda...
...between stints with various special-operations units, McChrystal pulled tours at the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard. Before coming to the Pentagon, he spent 2003 to 2008 heading up the Joint Special Operations Command, the secret corps of Army Delta Force and Navy Seals based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, although McChrystal deployed regularly to its forward post inside Iraq. In 2006 his unit succeeded in tracking down and killing Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal's record has not been without controversy. After the 2004 death by friendly fire of former...
...Helmand offensive began, U.S. troops called in an air strike on a compound after coming under fire from it. A number of civilians died, and McChrystal was not pleased. "I want you all to stop dropping compounds," he quietly told the 100 members of his staff gathered inside his command center and others linked via video. "Yes, sir," responded the commander involved. Three days later, when troops in Helmand came under fire from such a compound, they followed his order. "We made the decision to isolate the compound and not destroy it," a Marine captain said, "because we couldn...
...Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, killing 18 of his troops as they prepared for parachute jumps. This mention in the interview was accompanied by an instant change in tone. He went from animated to muted, and there was a long silence of nine seconds.] I had been in command for almost a year ... We had just finished a joint readiness training, where you build up a team. What we had done, we had a year of team-building in preparation for that event. Very quickly after that, we had the accident, which was completely unexpected. Not only...
...time is very carefully thought through, and it is as precise as you can be, and it is when there are no other options. So I think the human-being part of it ... if we went back to the concept of shock and awe, those are designed to shock command and control systems. And nations. You can shock and awe human beings, but it doesn't last. I've seen operations where kinetic strikes would go in on a target, and the enemy would come out shooting. They weren't awed...