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Tue 3 Apr, 2007 10:19 am
Bush losing key adviser on Iraq
By Warren P. Strobel
McClatchy Newspapers
4/2/07
WASHINGTON - President Bush is losing his top day-to-day adviser on Iraq, the White House confirmed Monday.
Meghan L. O'Sullivan, who has played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush's controversial Iraq policies over the past four years, will leave later this spring.
Her departure, which follows that of her deputy, could leave the White House with a vacuum of long-term experience on Iraq policy, and it comes as Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress prepare for a showdown over withdrawing U.S. troops.
O'Sullivan, 37, known for her 100-hour work weeks and steady optimism over the eventual outcome in Iraq, said in an interview that with the completion of months-long reviews of policy in Iraq and Afghanistan - which she also oversees - she felt it was the right time for a change.
"There's never a good time to leave this kind of job. ... But (I decided) this would be as good a time as any," she said, adding that she was happy with the outcome of both reviews.
O'Sullivan, who says she's uncertain of her next job, helped craft the strategy that Bush announced in January, including an increase of 28,000 U.S. troops to help secure Baghdad.
She has spent nearly three years at the White House and before that was a top aide to L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq before the country regained its sovereignty.
O'Sullivan's boss, Steve Hadley, praised her in a statement. "She has served this president with real distinction during a critical time in Iraq," he said.
But four years after the U.S. invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq remains mired in a churning civil war, with suicide bombings an almost daily occurrence. More than 3,200 U.S. soldiers have died. Two million Iraqis have fled the country, and 1.9 million are internally displaced, according to U.N. figures.
Stanford University professor Larry Diamond, who worked in Baghdad with O'Sullivan during Bremer's tenure, called her an amazingly quick study of Iraqi politics.
She "came in with very little knowledge of Iraq when the war began," Diamond said, but by the time she left some Iraqis were calling her "the Gertrude Bell of the American mission" - a reference to the British civil administrator who helped create Iraq in the early 1920s.
Still, Diamond said, O'Sullivan's time at the White House has been "during a period where our policy has failed, and our situation in Iraq has, at best, stagnated and I think, by many objective assessments deteriorated disastrously. You can hardly call her tenure a success."
O'Sullivan isn't one of the neoconservatives who advocated the U.S. invasion. In fact, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld briefly removed her and others from an advance Pentagon team in March 2003. Yet O'Sullivan never wavered in public or private from optimism that the U.S. effort in Iraq would succeed.
"The situation is still a difficult one," she said Monday. "We're really at the very, very early stages of this new strategy."
"Meghan L. O'Sullivan, who has played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush's controversial Iraq policies over the past four years, will leave later this spring. "
And this is bad because...........
Who is Meghan L. O'Sullivan?
Meghan L. O'Sullivan (born September 13, 1969)
A political appointee in the administration of George W. Bush. O'Sullivan currently serves as the Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan.
O'Sullivan grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts.
She received her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in 1991. O'Sullivan later received her master's degree and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.
Career
O'Sullivan was an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and a fellow at the Brookings Institution under Richard N. Haass.
O'Sullivan has also served in the Office of Policy Planning at the State Department, where she assisted Colin Powell in developing the smart sanctions policy proposal; as an assistant to Paul Bremer in the Coalition Provisional Authority subsequent to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and as Senior Director for Iraq at the National Security Council.
Her resignation was announced April 2, 2007, to take effect "later this spring".
Published works
Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism, Brookings Institution Press (2003), ISBN 0-8157-0601-4.
Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy, edited with Richard N. Haass, Brookings Institution Press (2000), ISBN 0-8157-3355-0. [edit] By Meghan L. O'Sullivan
Sanctioning 'Rogue' States: A Strategy in Decline?, Harvard International Review, Summer 2000.
"Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive Policies" with Richard N. Haass, Survival, 42:2 (Summer 2000), The International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"Iraq: Time for a Modified Approach", Brookings Institution (IraqWatch), February 2001.
"Sanctions and U.S. Foreign Policy", with Raymond Tanter, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 13, 2001.
"The Response to Terrorism: America Mobilizes", Brookings Institution Forum, September 21, 2002. Moderator: James B. Steinberg; Scholars: Thomas E. Mann, Michael E. O'Hanlon, and Meghan L. O'Sullivan.
"The Politics of Dismantling Containment", The Washington Quarterly 27:1 (Winter 2001), pp. 67-76. Copyright 2000 by The Center for Strategic and International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Well, she has been "implementing" strategies that for lack of a better word SUCK.
Not necesserilly blaming her, but she did work for the dope.
woiyo
woiyo wrote:"Meghan L. O'Sullivan, who has played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush's controversial Iraq policies over the past four years, will leave later this spring. "
And this is bad because...........
You are the one implying that it is bad? I didn't.
BBB
Re: woiyo
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:woiyo wrote:"Meghan L. O'Sullivan, who has played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush's controversial Iraq policies over the past four years, will leave later this spring. "
And this is bad because...........
You are the one implying that it is bad? I didn't.
BBB
How am I implying it is bad? I am trying to find out YOUR view since you seemed very happy to post this information.
Anyone associated with any of the strategic or tactical planning of this operation should be fired.
wioyo
wioyo, we are in agreement that anyone involved is Bush policy making should deported to Greenland.
BBB
Re: wioyo
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:wioyo, we are in agreement that anyone involved is Bush policy making should deported to Greenland.
BBB
Why ruin Greenland. :wink:
Re: wioyo
woiyo wrote:BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:wioyo, we are in agreement that anyone involved is Bush policy making should deported to Greenland.
BBB
Why ruin Greenland. :wink:
Because Greenland is already being ruined by global warming.
BBB :wink:
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