President selects veteran policymaker to tackle Iraq

GEORGE W BUSH’S sudden selection of former CIA Director Robert Gates as US defence secretary brings back a member of the team that waged the successful first Gulf War with just two years to resuscitate the faltering US policy in Iraq.

Explaining his decision, Bush portrayed Gates as a force of change and a solid leader who will make the necessary adjustments in Iraq – and elsewhere.

“He understands we’re in a global war against these terrorists. He understands that defeat is not an option in Iraq,” Bush said. “And I believe it’s important that there be a fresh perspective.”

He was named to replace Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned after Democrats won a narrow majority in the Senate and regained total control of Congress.

Gates’ resume as a government policymaker is not untarnished. Critics dredged up his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director as evidence he was the wrong man for the job. Then, he was criticised for missing clues about the impending fall of the Soviet Union and for politicising Cold War intelligence. Those two complaints — misreading intelligence and using it selectively — have also dogged the Bush administration in its Iraq policy.

But supporters see Gates as a seasoned policymaker who climbed the CIA bureaucracy from an entry-level position to become director under the elder President Bush.

Gates helped lead US efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s while at the CIA and was deputy national security adviser during Operation Desert Storm.

Now, he is part of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Republican Lee Hamilton, to help chart a new course in the war-ravaged nation.

Rumsfeld, 74, was at the Pentagon and personally helped in rescue efforts after suicide hijackers crashed a plane into the building on September 11, 2001. He then oversaw the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.