The White House has announced a series of personnel changes in
US President George W. Bush's foreign policy team and the US
military leadership in Iraq, which analysts said were designed to
pave way for the new policy on Iraq that Bush is expected to unveil
next week.
In a statement on Friday, Bush said he accepted the
recommendations of Defense Secretary Robert Gates that David
Petraeus replace George Casey as the top US commander in Iraq, and
William J. Fallon, currently the Commander of US Pacific Command,
succeed John Abizaid as commander of the US Central Command which
oversees American military affairs in the Middle East.
Bush also nominated John Negroponte, currently director of
National Intelligence, to serve as deputy state secretary, and J.
Michael McConnell, a former director of the National Security
Agency, to succeed Negroponte as the country's top intelligence
official.
Of these and other changes, the ones involving changing the
military leadership in Iraq has caught the most attention, as they
are directly linked to Bush's proposed new Iraq plan and its
implementation.
Since Democrats defeated their Republican counterparts in last
November's Congressional elections and retook control of both
chambers of Congress, the Bush administration has been under
increasing pressure to change course in Iraq.
After two months' review, the administration's new Iraq policy
has already taken shape, and Bush is expected to announce the new
strategy as early as next Wednesday.
US media reports said Bush's new strategy is expected to include
new political, military, economic and diplomatic steps to win the
war, and the military approach could include a short-term increase
of US forces to Iraq, to help quell the sectarian violence in the
country, particularly in its capital of Baghdad.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned one day
after Republicans' defeat in the Nov. 7 elections, was a key
architect of the Bush administration's now unpopular war policy,
and his ouster was believed to be a first step by Bush to revamp
his strategy on Iraq.
The replacements of both Abizaid and Casey were almost certain
after Bush began to review his Iraq war policy and Rumsfeld
resigned after the elections, as both the two generals were
installed to their current positions under Rumsfeld's leadership at
the Pentagon and both were said to have reservations about Bush's
proposed increase of troops in Iraq.
Personnel changes in the US military leadership in Iraq, and
other changes, would help Bush to demonstrate to the American
people that he was taking a new approach in Iraq by enlisting a new
team to implement his new policy, analysts said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2007)
