Bush's Iraq fresh start to include new advisers
Source: Reuters
(Adds Bush, analysts' comments) By Carol Giacomo and Steve Holland WASHINGTON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush is planning to name a new ambassador and will likely pick new military commanders for Iraq as he prepares a new strategy for a worsening war that has mired his administration. The changes are part of a major realignment of administration personnel as Bush seeks to adjust his approach to Iraq, where nearly four years of a large U.S. military presence has failed to bring stability and an end to violence. The current U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, is expected to replace Zalmay Khalilzad in Baghdad as U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Khalilzad is expected to be nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, three senior U.S. officials said on Thursday. ABC News said Bush was expected to nominate Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific, to replace Gen. John Abizaid as the head of U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus was expected to become the top ground commander in Iraq, replacing Gen. George Casey, ABC said, citing unnamed officials. But there is little expectation that changing faces will mean a radical shift in policy called for by some opposition Democrats, who took control of the U.S. Congress on Thursday after an election dominated by the Iraq debate. Bush is giving top consideration to a short-term increase in U.S. troops to Baghdad but refused to say on Thursday if it would be in the plan he will announce next week. He has shown little inclination to set a timetable to withdraw the 132,000 American service-members now in Iraq. "I'm in the process of making up my final decision as to what to recommend, what recommendations to accept," Bush said at the White House after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "One thing is for certain, I will want to make sure that the mission is clear and specific and can be accomplished." VIRTUALLY COMPLETE CHANGE Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who on Thursday became first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said November elections that brought her party to power in the U.S. Congress meant Americans wanted a change of direction. "It is the responsibility of the president to articulate a new plan for Iraq that makes it clear to the Iraqis that they must defend their own streets and their own security, a plan that promotes stability in the region and a plan that allows us to responsibly redeploy our troops," she said in her inaugural speech. Replacing Abizaid and Casey and giving Khalilzad a new job would wrap up a virtually complete change of top U.S. officials responsible for the prosecuting the war and dealing directly with the American-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad. These expected changes follow the departure of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was replaced with former CIA chief Robert Gates. Khalilzad, who had also served as ambassador to Afghanistan during Bush's first term, would replace John Bolton, who left the U.N. post last week. Michael Rubin, an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority that administered Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, said replacing Khalilzad was a positive move that "creates opportunities which we can either seize or squander." Khalilzad is a careful diplomat but his efforts to draw Sunni Mulims into the Iraqi political process have not been successful and his status as an American Sunni Muslim gave some Iraqi Shi'ites an excuse to accuse him -- erroneously -- of pro-Sunni partisanship, said Rubin of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, said Petraeus is an experienced Iraq hand. The Pentagon declined to comment on the ABC report. (Additional reporting by Will Dunham)
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