Word: general
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...months into his tenure, the Washington Post broke the scandal about the miserable conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the outdated, Kafkaesque bureaucracy facing wounded soldiers just to get medical attention and benefits. Gates fired the Army's secretary and surgeon general and the hospital commander. The special-ops community nicknamed him the Black Chinook - lands at night, takes care of business and gets...
With nowhere to go, Gates was given an impromptu tour at the airport by his former military adviser General David Rodriguez, now No. 2 to General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. He ushered Gates through a hangar outfitted as NATO's new cyber-command-and-control center. One of his staff whispered, "An enormous well-oiled machine for eatin' bad guys." In another hangar, Gates got a glimpse of the fledgling Afghan air force and stepped into the cockpit of an old Russian Mi-17 attack helicopter. "Don't you love the irony of Gates...
...guerrilla leaders who now live in Pakistan's tribal regions and dispatch suicide bombers to blow up American and Afghan forces. Ex - CIA officer Milt Bearden recalls crowds shouting "Allahu akbar" (God is great) in honor of Gates. Afghans who fought the Soviets still refer to him as "General Gates." (See Obama's personal touches to the Oval Office...
Upon arriving in Kabul last spring, McChrystal flooded the Afghan countryside with counterinsurgency experts who came up with dire assessments and stated a need for more troops. Even Gates seemed blindsided by his own general. Gates had been public about avoiding a big American footprint in the Pashtun countryside. But after the McChrystal team's findings began leaking, Gates shifted course. To me, he said, "Once McChrystal said, 'This is what I need,' then I was there. And my goal was, how do we get Stan McChrystal as much of what he's asked for as quickly as possible...
...year-old with bleached-blond, bouffant hair, made international headlines in 2008 when he made a short film called Fitna, in which verses from the Koran were displayed against a background of violent film clips and images of Islamic radicals' terrorism. Described as "offensively anti-Islamic" by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the film led to protests in the Muslim world and prompted Britain to ban Wilders from entering the country. But it also brought Wilders more popularity at home. His Party for Freedom finished second in last year's European Parliament elections, winning 17% of the Dutch vote...