Posted on 11/27/2006 2:26:53 PM PST by ARealMothersSonForever
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's most senior adviser on Iraq is leaving the State Department to return to his teaching job.
Philip D. Zelikow is the best-known member of Rice's academic brain trust at the State Department, and the author of sometimes contrarian appraisals of the Iraq conflict and reconstruction effort. He holds the title counselor, a sort of adviser without portfolio.
In a resignation letter dated Monday, Zelikow said he will return to teaching at the University of Virginia in January. He cited a "long-standing debt to my family" and "truly riveting obligation to college bursars," for his children's tuition.
Zelikow was among the first people Rice hired after she took over as secretary of state in 2005. She also brought in other fellow academics to join a team of Republican political strategists to be her top advisers. His first assignment was a scouting trip to Iraq.
When Zelikow returned, according to the Bob Woodward book "State of Denial," he wrote a secret memo characterizing Iraq as "a failed state" two years after the U.S.-led invasion. In September 2005, he wrote a memo estimating a 70 percent chance of success in achieving a stable, democratic Iraq, and what he called a "significant risk" of "catastrophic failure," the book said.
Besides his internal assessments of Iraq, Zelikow's main duties have included work on the U.S. plan to ship civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India. The plan, which the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed last week, reverses decades of U.S. anti-proliferation policy. The Bush administration says it strengthens a key relationship with a friendly Asian power that has long maintained what the United States considers a responsible nuclear program.
Rice and Zelikow had written a book together before she took a leave from Stanford to be President Bush's first-term national security adviser. Zelikow took a leave from U.Va. to be the top staffer on the Sept. 11 study commission before joining Rice's staff.
His name has been mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed John Bolton as U.N. ambassador, but a U.S. official said that is not likely. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House hopes the Senate will confirm Bolton, whose recess appointment runs out in January.
State Department shuffle for Iraq ping.
I have been very disappointed with Rice at State. Maybe she should leave too.
Well, I'd rather see Dr. Samuel Huntington as the Secretary of State. Of course, it is not within my powers to get him there.
Zelikow was among the first people Rice hired after she took over as secretary of state in 2005. She also brought in other fellow academics
Those "academics" may be a big part of the problem.
Wasn't Zelikow the man who managed to "mislay" the Able Danger reports?
His assessments, to the extent they have been reported, have been very sober and well-reasoned. It is hard to point to anything he has been particularly wrong about.
Actually it be is a Terrorist Cheerleaders Ping since you three spend all your time hyperventilating about what the 20-30,000 Militants are doing and ignoring the other 24,970,000 Iraqis.
I'd like to see Ollie North at the State Dept.
That is what someone else said.
My that would be real clever. Bring back an ancient "realist" who still has not learned a single thing from what happened on 09-11-01. Bring back one of the same clowns who created this mess in the Middle East! There is a real "solution".
Well I guess he would be the prefect choice for the "Hide our heads under the pillows and hope the world will just go away" Terrorist Cheerleaders Squad .
Good riddance.
Yeppers...Zeli is up to his eyeballs in keeping the Able Danger documents and testimony into the 9/11 commission, IIRC.
Amen to that, hopefully with the Schoolmarm not too far behind him.
Ollie would be good at the CIA. He's more of an action man. At the State he'd be good in the personnel function [to flush the Augean stables], not in the policy one.
I had such high hopes for Condi...but, I am kind of worried about her influence.
Professors are generally not doers by their very nature. As disasterous example, we have Madame Albright.
Well, I see that you have difficulty in comprehending the written texts. His "Clash" states that intercivilizational wars end up either in stalemates or in genocides, for the beginning - and he had stated it prior to 9/11. 9/11 had nothing to teach him. To me, it sounds like an extremely clear thinking.
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