Word: grenada
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hardly new. It existed even during the fondly recalled days of World War II, when correspondents had to wear uniforms and submit to censorship, a practice the military abandoned in Viet Nam and has avoided since. In response to criticism over the barring of reporters from the 1983 Grenada invasion, the Pentagon created a National Media Pool of rotating news organizations. The military not only decides when a pool will be "activated" and "deactivated" but also sets the ground rules for participation, including understandably strict limits on what information can be published before an operation begins. Moreover, it allows...
...strike on Libya in 1986, American military performance since Viet Nam has been miserable. In 1983 commanders in Lebanon failed to erect defenses to prevent a mere truck from crashing into a Marine barracks and killing 241 American servicemen with a load of explosives. The invasion of Grenada that same year was ultimately successful, but so botched that 18 Americans died even though the island was defended only by a ragtag of Cuban construction workers and Cuban and Grenadian soldiers...
Tactically, Grenada and Panama were vastly different. The Grenada strike was thrown together in two days adhering to a foolish requirement that it be a joint operation of all U.S. services. As a result, command lines were blurred and coordination was poor. Navy commanders could not talk to their counterparts in the Army and the Air Force because their radios were incompatible. The troops had difficulty finding the American students they had been sent to liberate...
...Joint Chiefs Chairman General Colin Powell squelched interservice rivalries and gave the two top on-site Army generals, Maxwell Thurman, head of the U.S. Southern Command, and Carl Stiner, the Task Force Commander, clear authority to direct the attacks. Says retired Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III, who commanded the Grenada task force: "In Panama they had a lot of time to prepare, and they did a hell of a job; they were able to tailor things a lot better...
Much could change, however, if the U.S. is unable to bring home quickly the 11,000 extra troops it dispatched for the invasion (13,000 were already on hand at permanent bases in Panama). After the far smaller invasion of Grenada, U.S. forces remained for six weeks; the Marines who invaded the Dominican Republic to thwart a leftist coup in 1965 were not completely withdrawn for 18 months...