{"id":20286,"date":"2013-03-25T16:44:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T20:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=20286"},"modified":"2013-03-25T16:44:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T20:44:54","slug":"ceremony-held-for-new-command-central-leader-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=20286","title":{"rendered":"Ceremony Held For New Command Central Leader"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a historic ceremony Friday, <strong>U. S. Representative Kathy Castor<\/strong> welcomed 59-year-old <strong>Army General Lloyd Austin, III <\/strong>during a change of command ceremony for U. S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rep. Castor<\/strong> said, \u201ctoday I was reminded that ending the war and bringing our troops home is one of the reasons I first ran for Congress. <strong>General Austin<\/strong> led our troops out of Iraq, and as head of U. S. Central Command, he will now lead more than 30,000 troops out of Afghanistan to bring them home throughout the next year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ceremony also brought <strong>Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel<\/strong> to MacDill for the first time under his new charge, and we were proud to showcase the incredible workforce and intelligence that exists here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gen. Austin<\/strong> has broken barriers throughout his 36-year military career, and is now the first African American appointed to lead U. S. Central Command.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gen. Austin<\/strong> is a native of Thomasville, Georgia, and graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) with a B. S. degree in June 1975. He also earned a Master\u2019s Degree in Education from Auburn University, and a Master\u2019s Degree in Business Management from Webster University. He is a graduate of the Infantry Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, the U. S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the U. S. Army War College.<\/p>\n<p>Among the commands <strong>Gen. Austin<\/strong> has held are: Army Vice-Chief of Staff, United States Forces in Iraq, XVIII Airborne Corps, 10<sup>th<\/sup> Mountain Division, 3<sup>rd<\/sup> brigade, 82<sup>nd<\/sup> Airborne Division, 2nd Battalion, and the 505<sup>th<\/sup> Parachute Infantry Regiment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gen. Austin<\/strong> has been awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal four times, the Army Distinguished Medal three times, a Silver Star, and he received the Defense Superior Service Medal twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a historic ceremony Friday, U. S. Representative Kathy Castor welcomed 59-year-old Army General Lloyd Austin, III during a change of command ceremony for U. S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base. Rep. Castor said, \u201ctoday I was reminded that ending the war and bringing our troops home is one of the reasons I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}