WASHINGTON: Four years after the fall of Baghdad, the White House is once again struggling to solve an old problem: Who is in charge of running Iraq policy?
...
[A]dministration officials confirmed Wednesday that the White House had sounded out a series of generals to fill the post of coordinator for Iraq and Afghanistan. There is talk of expanding the authority of the job and elevating the title of its new occupant, after the incumbent, Meghan O'Sullivan, a deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, leaves the post after nearly three years in Iraq-related posts at the National Security Council.
So far, there have been no takers and the White House says it is still weighing options about how to reconfigure what may be one of the most thankless jobs in Washington.
If you are wondering who Meghan O'Sullivan is, the Nation provides the skinny (from October 2006):
O'Sullivan is ... a protégé of Richard Haass, who left the State Department as policy director in July 2003 and became president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she is neither a neocon nor an ideologue. She has even earned the suspicion of conservatives for having proposed engaging with Iran and for suggesting--before 9/11--that it is unproductive to brand a state a "rogue regime." The problem is that O'Sullivan, who is in her mid-30s, is not an expert in the field.
I can see Dubya at the podium now. 'Meghan, you've done a helluva job.'
3 comments:
Yep! That sounds like something Dubya would say!
This is just so stupid. They say it will help cut through the crap, but it only adds another bureaucratic layer of insulation for Bush. Don't we already have a commander-in-chief? Don't we already have a Secretary of Defense? Don't we already have a National Security Advisor? don't we already have the Joint Chiefs?
This war czar position is total crap. Bush just wants to look like he's doing something.
To answer the question, nobody is in charge of Iraq. The person who comes closest is Al Sadr.
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