Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, plans to leave his post and will be replaced by Ryan Crocker, the current ambassador to Pakistan, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
Khalilzad has been the U.S. point man in trying to restore security and stability to Iraq in the face of widening sectarian violence since starting the job in June 2005. Crocker, a career diplomat, has served in postings around the Middle East and was a deputy assistant secretary for the region before going to Pakistan in 2004.
A Bush administration official and a UN diplomat separately described the planned changes. The administration official said the switch would take place early next year. The United Nations ambassadorship being vacated by John Bolton, who announced today he will be leaving that post, is a job that may be open to the 55-year-old Khalilzad, according to the administration official.
At first when I read this I thought "good." A commenter, Dawn, pointed me to the announcement saying, "Yet Another fleet-footed neocon-PNACer takes flight." That’s what I thought too. Zal was a signer of the P.N.A.C. letter to President Clinton suggesting "regime change" in Iraq in 1998. Even more, he is a former Unicol executive who was involved in the Afghani pipeline with the Taliban [see Right Web|Profile|Zalmay Khalilzad]. Then I got to the part about him replacing John Bolton. Bush and Cheney just won’t stop appointing Neoconservatives to these posts. I hope the new Congress just keeps saying "no" until Bush appoints a real candidate instead of one of his Conservative Oil-connected cronies. Enough already…
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