Obama nomina per gli affari dei veterani un ex-generale che si scontrò con Rumsfeld
– Obama ha scelto l’ex generale Eric Shinseki a dirigere il dipartimento per le questioni dei veterani.
● Shinseki (66) aveva avvertito, senza successo l’allora segretario alla Difesa Rumsfeld, sulla necessità di diverse centinaia di migliaia di soldati per tenere sotto controllo l’Irak dopo la fine delle ostilità.
● Il vice di Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz minimizzò la valutazione di Shinseki, come “del tutto fuori di misura”; i due valutavano bastasse una forza di circa 100mila uomini.
o Quando le valutazioni di ufficiali come Shinseki si dimostrarono correte con lo scoppio della guerra civile, Wolfowitz abbandonò per dirigere la Banca Mondiale; Rumsfeld si dimise in disgrazia, dopo la sconfitta Repubblicana del 2006 al Congresso, vista come un referendum sulla guerra contro l’Irak.
Shinseki fu il primo americano di origini asiatiche a diventare generale a 4 stelle, il primo a dirigere un comparto delle forze armate americane; venne nominato capo di stato maggiore con Bill Clinton nel 1999; decorato per due campagne in Vietnam, ha diretto le forze americane in Europa e una missine Nato in bosnia-Herzegovina.
Obama names ex-general who clashed with Rumsfeld to head Veterans Affairs
– President-elect Barack Obama was set Sunday to announce the nomination of retired US Army General Eric Shinseki – who unsuccessfully warned then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that a large force was needed to invade Iraq – as head of the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Obama was 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, fiercely criticized in many quarters for having failed to properly help Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
"I’m going to be making an announcement … about the head of our Veterans Administration, General Eric Shinseki," the president-elect 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."
– 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 overthrow President 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."
– Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, famously dismissed the estimate as "wildly off the mark," while Rumsfeld himself reportedly belittled the estimate with expletives – and scuttled Shinseki’s military career.
– Both civilians claimed that a force of around 100,000 was enough to control Iraq, overruling officers like Shinseki who were later proven correct when a sectarian bloodbath erupted in the country, killings hundreds of thousands of people and forcing millions more to flee their homes.
– Wolfowitz left office to head the World Bank before resigning under a cloud of scandal, while Rumsfeld resigned in disgrace after President George W. Bush’s Republican Party was trounced in the 2006 congressional elections, widely viewed as a referendum on the Iraq war.
– Shinseki was denied a direct role in the war planning and took early retirement in 2003.
He was decorated for his two combat tours in Vietnam, where he received a leg injury. He also headed US Army forces in Europe and a NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. – AFP, with The Daily Star