Word: pentagonal
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...Indeed, a depressing array of defense and foreign policy experts, including members of the uniformed military, have quietly concluded that postwar Iraq is the most vexing theater of operations the American military has faced since Vietnam. Even if Saddam Hussein is captured or killed, most experts (outside the Pentagon) believe that the restoration of order will be extremely difficult. Jihadist terror, organized criminality and internecine religious violence are likely to continue. For the immediate future, this is where George Bush's war on terrorism is being fought-and this is where his political future may be decided...
...more money and manpower are needed to secure the peace. But the President has stubbornly resisted sharing with the American people a detailed assessment of the situation in Iraq: the fact that we may still be there a decade from now at a cost of hundreds of billions. The Pentagon-the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, that is-stubbornly insists that it retain control of all aspects of the Iraq operation and that no increased manpower is needed. Oddest of all, the Pentagon retains its neoconservative fantasy that Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress-who misled the Administration...
...That leaves Iraqification, the third path, which everyone agrees is absolutely necessary. The Pentagon says it is Iraqifying as fast as it can, building no fewer than five indigenous security services that will ultimately involve 70,000 recruits. But far more bodies are needed. Several experts, including some in the Administration, suggest calling the Iraqi army-the ragtag regular army, not the Republican Guard-back to barracks. We are paying 235,000 former Iraqi soldiers to do nothing each month. Why not pay them to be border guards, to provide security for pipelines, power lines and neighborhoods? If they...
...Friday's bombing in Najaf underscores the pressures mounting on the U.S. The Pentagon announced earlier this week that the total number of U.S. personnel killed since President Bush declared an end to hostilities on May 1 had passed the number killed during the war. The 65 postwar U.S. combat casualties have come in ones and twos; the incident report for Wednesday, for example, is typical: One U.S. soldier killed and three wounded by an improvised explosive device in Fallujah; another soldier killed in an ambush on a convoy in Baghdad and two of his colleagues wounded, four soldiers wounded...
...more than 1,000 shoulder-fired missiles before the war, and, says Lieut. General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of the coalition ground forces in Iraq, "there's by no means any sense of comfort on my part that we have identified and secured everything that was out there." The Pentagon is so concerned that it is offering $500 for every shoulder-fired missile Iraqis turn over to authorities, but so far, not a single check has been written. And with Iraq's borders more or less unguarded, Sanchez says, "there could be all sorts of munitions and just about every other...