To the Surprise of Pentagon and White House

choi

Eric Schmidt and Helene Cooper, Big Surprises from Pentagon. New York Times, Apr 21, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/ ... nd-carl-vinson.html

the first 2 and 1/2 paragraphs:

"When Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the military’s top commander in the Pacific, ordered the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson “to sail north” from Singapore this month, he was oblivious to the larger — and incorrect — impression that he was rushing a naval strike force to confront an increasingly belligerent North Korea.

"Four days later, when Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. dropped the most powerful conventional weapon in the American arsenal on Islamic State fighters in a tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan, he not only seized headlines around the world but also unintentionally signaled to dictators in Syria and North Korea that they might be the next target of what the Pentagon called the “mother of all bombs.”

"Instead of simply achieving tactical objectives, the timing of their actions surprised their bosses at the Pentagon, upset edgy allies and caught the White House flat-footed. * * *

My comment: This report asserted that neither White House nor Pentagon knew what the generals did -- for days, in case of the USS Carl Vinson movement.