Word: pentagonal
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...also issued a series of memos that begin to lay out his vision: one supports a 50% increase in the number of covert operatives--an excellent idea. Another seems to support the transfer of operational control over the use of covert force from the CIA to the Pentagon. That may not be a bad idea, either, but it feeds a fear among some intelligence professionals that with the CIA in tatters, power may shift, subtly, toward the Secretary of Defense. "The militarization of intelligence is a real worry," an intelligence expert told me--and Donald Rumsfeld's intense and, according...
...Secretary of Defense has a dreadful track record when it comes to intelligence. In Bush's first term, Rumsfeld set up an Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to challenge the CIA's cautious analysis of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction by touting the incendiary garbage provided by Iraqi exiles. That is, I suppose, a version of intelligence reform: a system in which fantasies are produced to support the President's policy preferences. But it is not the version proposed by the 9/11 commission--and it is time for Bush to make clear whether he supports...
...must have been kidnapped on that twilight patrol. But because little information filtered out of North Korea, by the 1990s Jenkins' plight had drifted into the stuff of legend. He had become a curious cold-war footnote, presumed by many to be dead. Only in 1996 did a Pentagon report state that it suspected there were at least four American defectors, including Jenkins, still living in North Korea...
...exchange between Wilson and Rumsfeld was the most public airing of a concern that has spread among soldiers serving in Iraq and their families as the death toll has climbed: Is the U.S. sending troops into the line of fire without the means to protect themselves? The Pentagon has treated reports of equipment shortages--troops' hammering sheet metal onto humvees or asking their families to send bulletproof vests--as isolated kinks in the military supply chain. But last week, in response to Specialist Wilson, military officials were forced to acknowledge an unsettling reality: the U.S. has nowhere near the number...
...shortage of armored humvees is a parable for the miscalculations that have plagued the U.S. enterprise in Iraq. Given that it was a war of choice for the U.S., the typical soldier's reasoning goes, the Pentagon had plenty of time and money to make sure the troops had everything they needed. But John Keane, the Army's No. 2 officer during the war, told TIME last week that "we did not anticipate fighting an insurgency in Iraq, and that's the truth of it." As the rebellion escalated in late summer 2003, the Army didn't have the armor...