Word: pentagons
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...Gist: With wars on two fronts and increasingly bellicose threats from North Korea and Iran, the Pentagon has continued to lower its recruiting standards to meet the ever-increasing demand for U.S. troops. Even so, the agency recently found that 75% of Americans ages 17 to 24 are ineligible to enlist - largely because of either a lack of education, a criminal record, poor fitness or all of the above. In the wake of the Pentagon's findings, nearly 100 retired and active-duty military commanders have launched "Mission: Readiness," a report on why America's youth needs to shape...
...Pentagon officials acknowledge a "mild case of heartburn" over the delay, but they like the idea of the "political buy-in" it will represent once Obama decides. Still, they wish the issue hadn't achieved such a high profile. The Obama White House, they say, brought much of this upon itself with its running tally of (now seven) top-level, top-secret meetings, including the attendees and topics being discussed in the media. The Administration compounded its problems by asking McChrystal for his assessment after only 60 days in Afghanistan, well before all the 21,000 U.S. troops ordered there...
...knows that as well as McChrystal. "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) - while Afghan security capacity matures - risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible," he wrote on Aug. 30. If, as some at the Pentagon expect, Obama won't decide on how many reinforcements to send until near the month's end, that represents three months of McChrystal's critical year...
...That why the Pentagon has ordered more than 5,000 of the M-ATVs (called "baby MRAPs" by some) for its Afghanistan forces. These vehicles and their V-shaped hulls are designed to deflect the blasts of roadside bombs, which have become the Taliban's weapon of choice. Such improvised explosive devices killed only a single U.S. soldier in 2003 but have killed more than 100 so far this year, accounting for nearly half of the U.S. deaths...
...above) that left 50 dead and the suicide-bombing of a military convoy near the Swat Valley in which 41 perished. But it was the Oct. 10 assault on the heavily guarded army headquarters in Rawalpindi that left Pakistanis shaken. Militants occupied the building--the equivalent of the U.S. Pentagon--for 22 hours before commandos freed 39 hostages, capturing one perpetrator and killing nine others. Analysts called the attack "unprecedented...