Word: pentagonal
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...While there's no clarity yet on what proposals Ambassador Bremer will take back with him to Baghdad, there's a consensus in Washington that the current transition program is not working. The escalating security crisis in Iraq has prompted the Pentagon to pursue a strategy of "Iraqification," deploying more and more Iraqis against the insurgency. But for "Iraqification" to have any impact, it will have to be accompanied by a parallel political transition: Iraqis are a less likely to risk their lives defending an occupation authority than they would be to fight for a new Iraqi government...
...members of the 2nd Squad of the 1st Platoon--who call themselves the War Machine--of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company is a tale that has never been told. Soldiers have been wounded in war since the beginning of time--a fact that armies never like advertising. The Pentagon, which makes terse announcements when U.S. soldiers die in combat in Iraq, doesn't inform the public about those who have been wounded or release month-by-month injury counts. The wounded are mentioned only when some other soldier has been killed in the same attack. "When you join the Army...
...said the sophistication of four nearly simultaneous attacks indicated the work of foreign fighters--Islamic radicals from outside Iraq, perhaps representing al-Qaeda or the related terrorist group Ansar al-Islam. Several Administration officials told TIME that Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi'ite militia, is becoming more active in Iraq. Pentagon officials leaked word that captured insurgents had claimed that Iraqi General Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a Saddam intimate who is No. 6 on the U.S. most-wanted list, was the main commander of Baathist hit squads. Some U.S. officials told reporters Saddam himself could be directing the attacks--though they...
...former deputy to Jay Garner, the first, short-lived civilian administrator in Iraq, says he thought the plan was to employ most of the soldiers in reconstruction tasks after Saddam fell. But civilians at the Pentagon and in the office of the Vice President agreed with Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the former exile opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, that full de-Baathification of the military was essential. In May, two weeks after Bremer took over as proconsul in Baghdad, he ordered the army completely demobilized. Many U.S. officials involved in post-Saddam Iraq now feel this was a poor...
Instead, the White House is pushing the Pentagon to transform thousands of Iraqi security guards into paramilitary police officers. Capable militiamen account for only 5,000 of the 90,000 Iraqis now undertaking some sort of security work alongside U.S. forces. The Administration wants to triple the number in three months. That would require training these guards in a scant few weeks...