Word: general
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With violence and anti-American sentiment on the rise, it's plain to see that military operations in Afghanistan are not going well. But if Defense Secretary Robert Gates is right, three-star Army Lieut. General Stan McChrystal is just the guy to turn things around. On May 11, Gates announced plans to install the former Green Beret as the top U.S. and NATO commander for the troubled nation. Some analysts hailed the surprising overhaul as proof that the U.S. is rethinking its conventional approach to combat, especially given McChrystal's background as commander of the military's clandestine special...
...Nothing went wrong and there was nothing specific," Gates said of asking General David McKiernan, the outgoing commander, to step down just 11 months into a two-year post. "The focus here is simply on getting fresh thinking, fresh eyes on the problem." But McChrystal's role in the friendly-fire death of former NFL star Pat Tillman - as well as prisoner abuses allegedly committed on his watch at Baghdad's Camp Nama - mean his Senate confirmation might not go as smoothly (or swiftly) as Gates hopes. (Read Joe Klein's take on McKiernan's Afghan exit...
...Singled out in a March 2007 report by the Pentagon inspector general for his role in the death of ex-NFL star and U.S. soldier Pat Tillman. Though the two-year investigation cleared McChrystal of any official wrongdoing, it faulted him for failing to immediately notify Tillman's family of the military's suspicions that Tillman's death was the result of friendly fire...
...commander of special-operations forces in Iraq, he sent troops returning to the theater back to their original neighborhoods - a system he has suggested for general infantry soldiers in Afghanistan as head of a recent task-force review...
...There is another man who will not be in the room. That is Lieutenant General Stan McChrystal. It should be very clear to everyone, General McChrystal is the head of covert special forces. The so-called dark or black forces. The ones who stay undercover ... Because of his extraordinarily sensitive position with covert special forces, he is not appearing in public. And so he will not be questioned further by the committee in an open hearing." - Barbara Starr, CNN correspondent, on McChrystal's absence during an August 2007 Congressional hearing over the friendly-fire death of former NFL star...