Word: pentagonal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While President Obama's liberal allies are decrying his decision to refuse to release hundreds of additional detainee-abuse photographs, Pentagon officials - and nearly 200,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq - are breathing a little easier. Their argument that the photos could endanger soldiers by potentially inflaming anti-U.S. sentiment swayed the President, who found himself being praised by Republicans and attacked by his fellow Democrats for the move...
...Strictly on legal grounds, it was an easy call for Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department to decide three weeks ago that - having fought the release of the photos in federal court, and lost, three times - that further appeals would be fruitless. So the Justice Department urged the Pentagon to strike a deal with the ACLU, and both sides agreed the photographs would be released by May 28. (See "Abu Ghraib Aftershocks," photographs documenting the prison abuse scandal...
...April 23 announcement of the agreement. In weekly video conferences and private letters, top commanders in the region expressed grave concerns over the possible impact of the photographs. Both Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki raised similar doubts over the decision, a senior Pentagon official says...
...Such stark, simplistic logic appeals to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it skirts a couple of key questions about any such attack. For starters, would it actually succeed in putting a halt to Iran's nuclear program? Leadership at the Pentagon appears to think the answer is no. But what Israel and few others talk about, or not convincingly at least, is the other very risky unknown about such a strike: how exactly Iran would respond to it. Speculating a few weeks ago, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen told the Wall Street Journal that Iran...
...China's cuddly rhetoric has seduced few. In 2008, Beijing's annual military budget increased by almost 20% to $60 billion, according to official figures, though the Pentagon estimates that number could actually be closer to $150 billion. Its most recent report on the PLA warned grimly of China's ability to "develop and field disruptive military technologies" - tactics which the Pentagon thinks will change "regional military balances and... have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific." China's strategic interests now rim most of the world's continents and it remains embroiled in lingering territorial disputes with its neighbors. Though publicly...