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sleepy jack · 12-09-2008, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Obama to Name Eric Shinseki to Head Veterans Affairs

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama will name former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki to head the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“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 during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” parts of which aired tonight ahead of tomorrow’s broadcast.

Shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Shinseki told Congress it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize postwar Iraq, more than then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had estimated.

Rumsfeld roundly rejected Shinseki’s assessment, insisting the effort could be accomplished with a U.S. commitment of no more than 150,000 troops. He also cut short Shinseki’s tenure as chief of staff, which critics of the Bush administration said was punishment for Shinseki’s testimony.

Shinseki’s estimate “was right,” Obama said during the NBC interview, which was taped today.

Rumsfeld himself later resigned his post, his reputation damaged by the failure of U.S. planning for the invasion’s aftermath and the subsequent violence. As of Dec. 4, a total of 3,395 U.S. troops had been killed in action in Iraq and 30,852 had been wounded.

Shinseki, who served in the Army for 38 years, became the highest-ranking Asian-American in U.S. military history when he was named chief of staff in 1999.

The retired general graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, served in Vietnam and was Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization peace Stabilization Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He received the Purple Heart.

If the retired general is confirmed, he will run a department that employs 244,000 federal workers and provides housing, education and disability benefits, health care and burial services for the more than 24 million U.S. veterans and their families.

Shinseki will join Obama at a press conference scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Chicago time tomorrow to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Cabinet secretaries are subject to Senate confirmation once they are formally nominated after Obama takes office on Jan. 20.

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