Word: pentagonal
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...there fewer heroes in the Iraq war than in previous wars? That's the message the Pentagon is sending, say critics, by not awarding today's soldiers nearly as many of the nation's highest military honors. Three and a half years of combat in Iraq, for example, have produced only two winners of the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military award for bravery in combat. There were, by contrast, 464 Medals of Honor handed out during America's involvement in World War II, which lasted the same amount of time. If the government had been as stingy...
...fewer opportunities for Audie Murphy--style heroics when your enemy is planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) or driving a car bomb. But the nearly 3,000 war dead testify to the peril of those fighting in Iraq, and a growing chorus has been speaking out against the Pentagon's parsimony. They're asking why there have not been more élite medals and why there have been huge disparities in the number of awards given by different branches of the military. "We need to look into the criteria used and the timing. There are obvious inequities," says Congressman John McHugh...
...force the Iraqi political leadership to take on more responsibility for security. "All options are on the table," Gates said. He also was not shy about suggesting that Rumsfeld had made misjudgments in the Iraq war. Asked by Republican John McCain, a likely 2008 presidential candidate, if the Pentagon had too few troops in Iraq at the outset - something the senator has long argued - Gates agreed. "There clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion," the former CIA director said...
...Gates stressed he would be his own man at Defense: he didn't seek out the Pentagon job, Gates told the senators, and he isn't returning to Washington now just to "be a bump on a log." "I don't owe anybody anything," he declared. Already, Gates seems to be distancing himself from the White House contention that Iraq was the central front in the war on terror. Iraq is "an important front," Gates conceded, but not the only one; the U.S. faces a "dispersed threat" from other parts of the world...
...talk would make a difference with Bush. The candor was welcome, Sen. Evan Bayh told the nominee, "but you are not the ultimate decision-maker." Gates's close friends have the same fear. "Bob could be pragmatic," one told TIME, "yet the ultimate decision-maker is not in the Pentagon. He's across the river in the White House. There's a very stubborn moral streak in George Bush." Bayh asked what made Gates assume Bush would take his advice. "Senator, because he asked me to take the job," Gates responded...