Word: general
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...NATO regional command for southern Afghanistan. He also needed the approval of the local, district and regional Afghan government authorities. That part wasn't too bad. Ellis was a gung-ho briefer. On Saturday, April 3, I watched him describe the school operation to a group of Canadian generals. "That was one of the most impressive op rants I've seen in a long time," Lieut. General Andrew Leslie, the Canadian chief of land staff, said when Ellis finished - and later, he confided to me, "This is the kind of officer you really want out here...
...going to believe this, but they just [freakin'] postponed it," he told me. "The staff at RC-South found this regulation that says you can't build a security outpost that close to a school. It would endanger the kids." Ellis was agog. He had briefed the commanding general of RC-South, Nick Carter, on the project, and he was in favor. But General Carter was on leave - and his staff didn't want to take the risk. Regulations were regulations. "I mean, if we don't have a strongpoint there, you endanger the kids. Do you think the Taliban...
Still, Ellis was confident the operation would go forward. This was just a bureaucratic glitch. Everyone thought so. On April 3, I spoke with Ellis' immediate superior, Lieut. Colonel Reik Anderson, commander of the 1/12, and with the Canadian in charge of Joint Task Force Kandahar, Brigadier General Daniel Menard, who was furious about the delay. "We're going to have a letter signed by the district and provincial governors, insisting that we go ahead," Menard told me, then proceeded to talk like a general. "This is essential. It would be the first nonkinetic breach of Taliban control...
...voting ended on Thursday in Sudan's first multiparty general election in 24 years, voters could be forgiven for feeling disappointed. The national vote, say opposition parties and some observers, was rigged, and it will likely cement the presidency of a man who has been indicted for war crimes. Still, the entire exercise was backed by the international community. Asked by a reporter last week whether the U.S. was "ready to sign off on the results no matter how flawed the actual process in this election" was, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley answered, "What is the alternative...
...quarters have been harsh. The U.S.-based anti-Khartoum advocacy movement accused the U.S. of endorsing a "sham" election. The ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, likened the task facing foreign observer teams to "monitoring a Hitler election." Amid such criticism, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Major General Scott Gration, headed to Sudan to try to salvage the sinking electoral ship but ended up only enraging al-Bashir's northern opposition by expressing his confidence that the vote would be as "free and fair as possible." John Ashworth, a veteran of 27 years in Sudan now working...