Petraeus’s Team of Experts to Review Central Command - Sean Naylor, Army Times
The incoming head of US Central Command, Army Gen. David Petraeus, plans to form a team of under 100 experts to conduct a top-to-bottom strategic assessment of CENTCOM's area of responsibility.
Petraeus tapped Col. (P) H.R. McMaster to lead the Joint Strategic Assessment Team, or JSAT, according to multiple sources.
McMaster is widely regarded as one of the Army’s most capable officers. He is the author of “Dereliction of Duty,” an examination of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s performance during the Vietnam War, and he commanded the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar in western Iraq, a deployment that came to be seen as a model of how to conduct counterinsurgency at the local level.
The team will include people from government, the military and academia.
Petraeus takes charge at Central Command on Oct. 31 and the JSAT will begin its work immediately thereafter.
Sources said the work would likely be completed in February.More at Army Times.
Petraeus Told He 'Must Succeed' in Afghanistan - Thomas Harding, Daily Telegraph
General David Petraeus must "knit together" Afghanistan's confused command structure if the coalition is to avoid a humiliating defeat, a senior American defence official has said.
The man behind the "surge" strategy in Iraq will take charge of US Central Command tasked with bringing fresh direction to an Afghan campaign that was seen as "marking time".
But he will face a tough battle to bring unity to the 40 nations and 53,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan that come under several different chiefs.
In a downbeat assessment of the current state of the campaign in Afghanistan, the officer said there was "100 per cent chance of success if we do it the right way but if we do it the wrong way there is a zero per cent chance".
He admitted that it was unlikely other nations such as Germany would get more involved in the fighting in southern Afghanistan.
He also warned that like the British Army, the American military was suffering from the effects of continual operations over seven years. "At some point we have to refit, rest our force and retrain them before we redeploy them."
Gen Petraeus will look to unite commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq for "unity of purpose" so there could be "unity of effort," the military official told defence correspondents in London.More at The Daily Telegraph.