This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.puk.org/report/02rot0205d.htm. G o o g l e's cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting. To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:sztt2SzETdYC:www.puk.org/report/0 2rot0205d.htm+puk+eric+schmitt&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content. These search terms have been highlighted: eric schmitt These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: puk _________________________________________________________________ [top1.gif] [top2.gif] [top3.gif] [top1.gif] [top4.gif] [top6.gif] [top5.gif] [top3.gif] [top5.gif] [top7.gif] [top7.gif] [top8.gif] [top9.gif] [top10.gif] [top11.gif] [top12.gif] [top13.gif] [top14.gif] [top15.gif] [side1.gif] [side2.gif] [side3.gif] [side4.gif] [side5.gif] [side6.gif] [side7.gif] [side8.gif] [side9.gif] [side10.gif] [side11.gif] [side12.gif] [side13.gif] [side14.gif] [side15.gif] [side16.gif] [spacer.gif] xyz Top U.S. Military Commanders Are Transferred Closer to the War Zone New York Times February 4, 2002 By ERIC SCHMITT and JAMES DAO WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - The top Marine general for Central Asia and the Persian Gulf is moving his headquarters to Bahrain from Hawaii, joining Army, Navy and Air Force counterparts who have already uprooted from peacetime postings in the United States to set up battle stations in the region, military officials said today. Even as the war in Afghanistan fitfully winds down, the moves suggest future operations against terrorism in the 25-nation region spanning the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean that makes up the Central Command. More than 1,000 war planners, logistics experts and support specialists are now at sophisticated command posts in the region, ready to pivot quickly from the focus on Afghanistan if President Bush orders operations such as those he hinted at in his State of the Union address last week, in which he denounced Iraq and Iran. The military has not ordered a comparable march of senior tactical commanders to Southwest Asia since the gulf war, in 1991. Mr. Bush's top aides have tried to tamp down expectations of imminent military action outside of Afghanistan. Pentagon officials say, for example, that a three-week exercise involving more than 2,000 marines off the coast of Kenya that starts today does not foreshadow military action in neighboring Somalia. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld today accused Iran of turning a blind eye to Al Qaeda members seeking refuge there. "The Iranians have not done what the Pakistan government has done: put troops along the border and prevent terrorists from escaping out of Afghanistan into their country," Mr. Rumsfeld said on the ABC News program "This Week." For now, the Central Command's overall chief, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, is keeping his headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., but traveling frequently to the region, where his top field officers, called component commanders, make most of the daily decisions on the ground. "These are the guys who are actively fighting the war every day," said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, senior spokesman for the Central Command. "When you have that task of running the war from the tactical level, it's better when you're physically closer to the forces you control." Every morning at 11, General Franks holds a video teleconference from the Tampa headquarters with his military commanders more than 6,000 miles away, where the time is up to nine and a half hours later. Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, a former commander in the 82nd Airborne Division who heads Army forces in the region, checks in from his forward headquarters in Kuwait. Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, a politically savvy F-15 pilot who once was the Air Force's chief liaison to Congress, consults from Prince Sultan Air Base outside of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr., who was a squadron leader in the bombing of Libya in 1986, calls in from his Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Rear Adm. Albert M. Calland 3rd, a Navy Seal who leads Special Operations forces in the region, works from an undisclosed location in or near Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Earl B. Hailston, the Marine commander, also heads Marine forces in the Pacific and oversees about two-thirds of all Marine Corps forces around the world, most of them in California, Hawaii or Okinawa. The decision in late January to move General Hailston and nearly half his staff of 500 marines to Bahrain marks the first time that the Marine Corps commander for the region has had his headquarters there, other than for training exercises. "They wanted to make sure he was closer to the hotbeds of unrest," one senior Marine Corps officer said. General Hailston is the last of General Franks's component commanders to move his headquarters to the region. General Moseley's predecessor as the air commander, Lt. Gen.Charles F. Wald, moved his headquarters from Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., to Saudi Arabia in mid-September to run a new advanced air operations center where 300 American military personnel now work. Admiral Calland moved his special operations headquarters from MacDill in early October. About half of the 40 Army Special Forces "A-teams" that worked with anti-Taliban troops have now left the region, giving way to a growing number of Army civil affairs specialists. General Mikolashek moved from his Army headquarters at Fort McPherson, Ga., to Kuwait on Nov. 11, taking most of his staff of 700 with him, Army officials said. The Central Command differs from the military's three other geographic commands - Europe, Latin America, the Pacific - in that its headquarters is not based in its region of responsibility. The United States has never been able to surmount the political sensitivities in the region to obtain permanent basing rights for Central Command there. In times of war or major missions, General Franks deploys forces based largely in the United States. The main exception is the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which has permanent headquarters in Bahrain. In wartime, General Franks's top commanders follow their forces to the front for practical and political reasons. "In the cultures of many of the nations in our region, there is no substitute for face-to-face conversation," said Admiral Quigley. Expanded American military presence in the region could also send a message to Iran and Iraq that they could not provide chemical or biological weapons to terrorist groups without running a grave risk of American military response. Currently, there are about 4,000 American troops in Afghanistan, with several thousand more aboard ships in the Arabian Sea or stationed in neighboring countries like Pakistan and Uzbekistan. More than 20,000 additional soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are in the Persian Gulf area. Nonetheless, the forward command posts, and their implication of offensive operations, are politically sensitive. Army officials, for example, said that though he is openly there, they could not officially acknowledge that General Mikolashek had deployed to Kuwait, but they readily admit that the United States has prepositioned equipment in Kuwait and Doha, Qatar, to help repel any Iraqi attack. Not all host nations are so sensitive. Khalifa Ali Alkhalifa, Bahrain's ambassador to the United States and a one-star general in the Bahraini Air Force, said his country supports the new Marine headquarters. "They moved tactically to be ready at the right time," for the next mission, the ambassador said. Marine Corps officials said General Hailston will continue to keep more than 200 members of his staff at Camp H. M. Smith, Hawaii, and will shuttle between it and Bahrain. Back to Top [spacer.gif] [bot.gif]