Word: pentagons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tradition took on great power - in the past, the Pentagon took great pains to ensure the bodies of unknowns remained unidentified, even going so far as to destroy relevant documents about where bodies were discovered and with what, if any, personal effects. But with the advent of DNA testing in the 1980s and '90s, the tradition of burying an unknown soldier has begun to decline. Most soldiers around the world are now required to supply blood samples upon joining the military to ensure their bodies can be identified if they are slain in the line of duty. Although military personnel...
...first alarms began to sound while he was still in training. "He was very vocal about being a Muslim first and holding Shari'a law above the Constitution," says an officer who attended the Pentagon's medical school with Hasan but would speak only off the record because his commanders ordered him not to discuss the case. "When fellow students asked, 'How can you be an officer and not hold to the Constitution?,' he'd get visibly upset - sweaty and nervous - and had no good answers." This officer was so disturbed when Hasan gave a talk asserting that...
...Washington-area Joint Terrorism Task Force reviewed the transcripts along with the task force's representative at the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS); they reviewed Hasan's personnel file and concluded there was no need to open an investigation. The exchange was just one of hundreds, maybe thousands, that al-Awlaki was having with people in the U.S. The contents of the e-mails seemed relatively innocuous, inquiries about his legitimate area of research - trying to figure out how Muslims in the military are affected when sent to fight against fellow Muslims. Says a counterterrorism official who spoke...
...Army appointed its first Muslim chaplain in 1993, and five years later the Navy opened the U.S. military's first mosque at Norfolk Navy Base in Virginia. The Pentagon is eager for the language skills of Muslims, and has been awarding signing bonuses and expedited citizenship (for the two-thirds of enlistees who are legal aliens) since 2003 to recruits fluent in Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Kurdish and Pashto. (The Army's website, in its typically patriotic but omnisciently weird way, declares these 450 new soldiers - all sent to Afghanistan, Iraq or the Horn of Africa - "100% support the Global...
...really trust each other; and, if not Clinton, who will emerge as the President's alter ego on foreign policy? At this point, the strongest member of Obama's national-security team is Gates - but he's a Republican and an unlikely spokesman or presidential confidant on anything beyond Pentagon issues. General Jim Jones has settled in as National Security Adviser, but he's not a political animal - and every President needs a close foreign policy adviser who understands the intersection of long-term strategy, politics and diplomatic chess...