AP: Iraq Rebuilding Critic Joins State Dept.

[Eugene]

Iraq Rebuilding Critic Joins State Dept.

By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer

Friday, March 2, 2007

(03-02) 15:54 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided to appoint a leading critic of the U.S.
reconstruction effort in Iraq as a senior aide, the State Department said Friday.

Deputy spokesman Tom Casey said that Eliot Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School
of Advanced International Studies, will replace Philip Zelikow as counselor of the department.

"I have general knowledge of American foreign policy and a willingness to speak my mind,"
along with experience and contacts at the Pentagon, Cohen said in an interview.

-snip-

The appointment of Cohen, a conservative, follows the departure from the Bush administration
of U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and arms control under secretary Bob Joseph, both known for
their hawkish views.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/02/national/w154029S34.DTL

[stillcool]

1. A Critic? OMG!!

Highlights & Quotes

Eliot Cohen, called by one observer “the most influential neocon in academe,” is a well-known scholar of military affairs based at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), which has served as a base for a number of prominent neoconservatives, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and political scientist Francis Fukuyama. Cohen heads SAIS's Center for Strategic Studies, a program founded in 2003 with a generous grant from Philip Merrill, a minor media mogul who heads the U.S. Ex-Im Bank and serves as an adviser to the hawkish Center for Security Policy. Cohen is famous for his thesis that the war on terror constitutes World War IV, and that the Cold War should really be considered World War III. (5)

Cohen has been affiliated with a number of hawkish advocacy groups, including the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the Project for the New American Century. He also serves on the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon’s in-house think tank, which has been heavily criticized for members’ conflicts of interests and for its stilted ideological profile. (Nearly a third of the board members come from the staunchly conservative Hoover Institution.)

Cohen is the author of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime, 2002, which George W. Bush reportedly read in preparation for the invasion of Iraq; Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, 1990; and Citizens and Soldiers, 1985. (2)

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1100

[Eugene]

2. Cohen, like other neocons, blames Garner and Bremer for screwing up in Iraq.

Whatever faint hopes Iraq had left are now extinguished.
Iraq is f**ked.

[rodeodance]

3. Thanks (i see Condi has decided to keep a closed mind!!)