Grrrrr...can't these newspapers even get military stuff right???
It's CDR Lippold, not CMDR Lippold!
Gah.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in October 2000, a week after the Cole attack, the then-recently retired Zinni said: "I pass that buck on to nobody."
The Rumsfeld critic explained that he personally signed off on berthing the Cole in Yemen even though "their coast is a sieve for terrorists."
"The threat conditions in Aden were better than elsewhere," he insisted, citing risk assessments for Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
Gen. Zinni said that cutbacks in the size of the Navy's fleet during the Clinton years made it necessary to use regional ports for refueling, noting: "Ten years ago, we did all refueling at sea" using Navy oilers.
Still, prior to the Cole attack, there's no record that Gen. Zinni ever complained about Clinton era defense cuts.
In what may be an even more troubling development, a report indicates that the leading Rumsfeld critic may have inadvertently played a role in tipping off Osama bin Laden to an impending U.S. cruise missile attack two years before the Cole episode.
Two days after President Clinton ordered the attack on bin Laden's encampment in Khost Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported:
"Kuwait's Al-Watan newspaper, quoting unidentified sources in London today, reported that Pakistan leaked to bin Laden news about an impending U.S. strike. The sources said the leak was aimed at limiting casualties, so that bin Laden would have less justification for a counterattack.
"A Pakistani government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of the U.S. Central Command, was in Peshawar the day before the attack to meet with Pakistani officials.
You're half right. (Or is that half-and wrong?)
"CDR" is what the Navy uses for correspondence (From the Correspondence Manual) and Cmdr. is proper usage by journalists (military and civilian) as defined by the Associated Press (AP) Style Guide.
I think AP stylebooks say CMDR. So it's not incorrect, as far as writing style goes.
Actually,
The way we in the military use rank abbreviations internally differs from the way it is communicated in the civilian sector. That style is considered proper by the military, and we are instructed to use that particular style of abbreviation when writing for/to civilians (i.e. for publication, invitations, letters etc).
Since I am intimately familiar with Army rank, I will use it to demonstrate:
A lieutenant colonel is a LTC in military documents, but a Lt. Col. for civilian correspondence
Similarly, a sergeant major is a SGM internally, but for civilian correspondence it is abbreviated as Sgt. Maj.
Each service has it's own unique "civilian" abbreviations.