Word: pentagonals
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...Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confirmed that U.S. forces had carried out an air strike in Africa. An AC-130 gunship, he said, had targeted "what we believe to be senior al-Qaeda leadership." Whitman neither specified a location nor confirmed reports of other U.S. attacks. Asked about another air strike on Jan. 23--confirmed to TIME by a Pentagon officer--Whitman said, "We're going to go after al-Qaeda and the global war on terror, wherever it takes us." He continued: "I don't have anything for you on Somalia...
...chances of the Administration subscribing to any kind of restrictive legislation grows dimmer as the situation on the ground in Iraq continues to improve. "To pull the rug out from under them now seems irresponsible," White House press secretary Dana Perino said last week. Indeed, the betting inside the Pentagon is that the Democrats will fold in the coming weeks, once they feel comfortable telling their supporters that they tried their best to shut down...
...White House's confidence can be seen in its willingness to deploy Gates, rather than anonymous Pentagon bookkeepers, as the point man on the issue. Bush, Gates insisted last week, has begun to withdraw troops from Iraq, just as the Democrats have demanded. "The drawdowns have already started," Gates said. "It's really not about principles, it seems to me, anymore - it's about pacing. And that's where I think deference should be paid to the views of those conducting the operations...
...John Murtha, the gruff former Marine and Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs the Appropriations Committee's defense panel, expressed wonderment that anyone would believe what the Pentagon has to say about its coffers running dry. "Because the Pentagon says it, you believe it?" he asked a reporter at a November 20 press conference with Obey. "Go back and look - 'Mission accomplished,' al-Qaeda connection, weapons of mass destruction, on and on and on, and you believe the Pentagon?" He calls the Pentagon's alarmist warnings "Rumsfeld-like," which is perhaps the ultimate insult in Washington today...
...issued substantive policy proposals on reforming Social Security, dealing with immigration and enlarging the U.S. military. The proposals themselves have been uneven; as my colleague Mark Thompson has written, Senator Thompson's plans to expand the size of the Army to 775,000 troops and to mandate that the Pentagon's budget be set at 4.6% of GDP are both problematic. But his proposal to create add-on savings accounts to Social Security and to reduce the program's cost by changing how initial benefits are calculated could be the foundation for a bipartisan compromise. At the very least, Thompson...