"At that time everyone was a commander issuing the orders.
Gen. John R. Allen, the coalition commander, issued a statement condemning the suicide bombing.
Admiral Wu Shengli, China's naval commander, issued the warning to his American counterpart Admiral John Richardson on Thursday, during a video conference attempting to defuse a possible situation.
The case became public only because a frustrated American commander issued his own news release, outside the usual communications of the American military command in Baghdad.
Murat Karayilan, the P.K.K. military commander, issued a statement from his mountain redoubt in northern Iraq in support of Mr. Ocalan's call, NTV, a Turkish television channel, reported.
A Pakistani militant commander issued a veiled threat last week to attack important installations in Pakistan "to refresh the memories" of an attack on an American base in Khost, Afghanistan, in which seven Americans working for the Central Intelligence Agency were killed.
McChrystal, the field commander, issued a report, which Gates reveals was leaked to Bob Woodward by McChrystal's staff, saying a ten-year counterinsurgency commitment, costing nearly one trillion dollars, was the only way to go.
When the British kicked the Turkish Army out of southern Iraq in the First World War, General Stanley Maude, the British commander, issued a proclamation in which he declared himself in charge of the region, and added that his armies came not "as conquerors or enemies but as liberators".
"Even then," explains Shaul, "we have a testimony we took that a senior brigade commander issued order how to get around that, instructing that the unit fired first outside of the protected area and then calling for correction fire on to the location that they wanted to hit.
"In the context of the emergency law, the deputy military commander issued an order that Hosni Mubarak should be put under house arrest," the office said in a statement.
