Obama to nominate critic of Rumsfeld as head of Veterans Affairs /
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US president-elect Barack Obama will announce Sunday the nomination of retired army general Eric Shinseki -- who warned Donald Rumsfeld that a large force was needed to invade Iraq -- as head of the Department of Veteran Affairs.
The president-elect is to make the announcement on NBC television, which released an advance transcript of an interview scheduled to air on Sunday.
If confirmed by Congress Shinseki, 66, would be the first Asian-American to head the VA, the second largest US government agency after the department of defense itself and fiercely criticized in many quarters for failing to properly help Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
"I'm going to be making announcement ... about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki," Obama told NBC.
"I think that General Shinseki is exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home," Obama said.
Hawaii-born Shinseki, who is of Japanese descent, was the first Asian-American to be a four-star general and the first to head one of the branches of the US military. He was appointed army chief of staff by then-president Bill Clinton in 1999.
At a hearing in Congress in February 2003 senators asked Shinseki how many soldiers he believed would be needed to topple Saddam Hussein and occupy Iraq.
"Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required," Shinseki said.
"We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems," he said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz famously dismissed the estimate as "wildly off the mark," while Rumsfeld himself reportedly belittled the estimate with expletives. Both believed a force of around 100,000 was enough to control Iraq.
Shinseki had no direct role in the war planning and took an early retirement in June 2003, soon after the fall of Baghdad.
According to US news media Obama is to make the announcement official on Sunday -- Pearl Harbor day -- at a press conference in Chicago.
Shinseki "has agreed that he is willing to be part of this administration because both he and I share a reverence for those who serve," Obama was to tell NBC.
Shinseki was decorated for his two combat tours in Vietnam, where he received a leg injury. He also headed US Army forces in Europe and headed a NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
John Rowan, the National President of Vietnam Veterans of America, described the choice as "promising."
The group has "no doubt that General Shinseki has the integrity and personal fortitude to usher in the real changes needed" to help veterans and their families, Rowan said in a statement.
"VA bureaucrats, for whom 'change' is a dirty word, will learn that there really is a new game in town," Rowan said.
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the nation's largest nonpartisan organization for veterans of the the two wars, said Obama had demonstrated an understanding of the urgency of the issues facing those who fought for the country.
"General Shinseki is widely-respected, honest and experienced," the group said. "He is a man that has always put patriotism ahead of politics, and is held in high regard by veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan." |
