New man in Baghdad?

November 07, 2008
New man in Baghdad?
Posted by Warren Strobel

Washington is currently gripped with the quadrennial fever over who will fill Cabinet posts and White House offices in a new administration. Names and guessing games abound. Kerry for Secretary of State. Gates staying at Defense? Colin Powell to head the Department of Education?

But President-elect Obama will have many, many other impoprtant jobs to fill beyond the Cabinet and the West Wing, not least of them a new U.S. ambassador to Baghdad to replace current ambo Ryan Crocker, who will be retiring early in the new year. For Obama, who has pledged to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, by summer 2010, it's an important and delicate choice.

One candidate to replace Crocker, N&S hears from a couple of sources, is Ambassador Frank Ricciardone, who's served as U.S. envoy to Egypt and the Philippines. Ricciardone, who is highly regarded in many quarters, also has extensive experience with Iraq. Not the least of that was in 1999 to 2001, when he served as special coordinator for the Transition of Iraq. In that pre-Iraq invasion role, much of his job was to deal with--and try to help unify--the fractious anti-Saddam Hussein opposition. Ricciardone earned the wrath of the right wing for being skeptical of Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress provided bogus intelligence on Saddam's supposed WMD and terrorist ties that helped fuel the Iraq War.

Unclear at this point who else, if anyone, is in the running for the Baghdad post.