Word: year
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what instructions he had given the military to make the next 30,000 troops more effective than the 21,000 troops he sent last March, whose presence didn't seem to improve the situation on the ground at all. "Look, the fact that there were increased casualties this year I think is to be expected from increased engagement by our forces." True enough, but the NATO coalition lost ground to the Taliban this year, by Obama's own admission. And the President could only come up with speed of deployment and a clearer sense of mission as strategic game changers...
...public part of the program; he is privately furious about the leaks, especially those from the military. "We will deal with that situation in time," an Obama adviser told me. The criticism of the President for dithering is also unfair. This second Afghan strategy review in less than a year was made necessary by an assortment of dramatic new developments on the ground. Each had to be analyzed individually and then correlated with the others. There was the fraudulent election, which stripped the remaining clothes from the Emperor Karzai. There was a big mistake made by the U.S. military, sending...
...real haggle was over speed of deployment. The military plans carefully, in five- to 10-year increments, and moves with the speed of a supertanker. A good part of the reason the troops were sent to Helmand instead of Kandahar, even though it violated the prevailing counterinsurgency strategy, was that the fortifications already had been built in Helmand; it seemed too late to turn the supertanker around. Obama kept sending plans back to the Pentagon, seeking a faster launch for his "extended surge." The military still isn't entirely sure that it'll be able to move 30,000 troops...
Public anger has deepened since then. Last May, the government published the findings of a nine-year inquiry into child abuse at Catholic schools, orphanages and hospitals from the 1930s to the 1990s. The report, which described "endemic sexual abuse" at boys' schools, shook Ireland to its core and left the reputation of the religious orders that ran the institutions in tatters. Then, on Nov. 26, another government inquiry found that the church and police colluded to cover up child sex-abuse cases in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004, prompting the head of the Irish church, Cardinal Sean...
...church tried a different solution: a year-long recruitment drive. The initiative seems to have paid off, at least for now. In September, 38 Irish men began studying for the priesthood at seminaries in Ireland and Italy. That figure may pale in comparison to the 100 or so new seminarians who signed up annually in the 1960s, but it was the highest intake in a decade. "You're not just going to pull somebody off the street and they'll suddenly become a priest," Rushe says. "It's a decision that can take a long time to make." (See pictures...