Pentagon's new chief pledges to find solutions in Iraq
19/12/2006 16:33
Robert Gates, the new US defense secretary, yesterday pledged to go to
Iraq soon in search of a solution to the violence and warned that failure in
Iraq will be unbearable for the United States.
"I intend to travel quite soon
to Iraq and meet with our military leaders and other personnel there," Gates
said at his sworn-in ceremony at the Pentagon.
"I look forward to hearing
their honest assessments of the situation on the ground and to having the
benefit of their advice, unvarnished and straight from the shoulder, on how to
proceed in the weeks and months ahead," he said.
Gates stressed that the
United States could not afford a failure in Iraq.
"All of us want to find a
way to bring America's sons and daughters home again, but, as the president has
made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East," he said, noting
that "failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our
nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to
come."
Although putting Iraq at the top of his list of major concerns, the
new defense secretary said he did not forget Afghanistan, where US forces
overthrew the Taliban regime shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001.
"The progress made by the Afghan people over the past five years is at
risk...," he said. "Afghanistan cannot be allowed to become a sanctuary for
extremists again."
"The right man to meet challenges"
At the ceremony, US
President George W. Bush praised Gates as "the right man to meet the military
challenges confronting the United States."
"We are a nation at war," the
president said, "and I rely on our secretary of defense to provide me with the
best possible advice and to help direct our nation's armed forces as they engage
the enemies of freedom around the world."
Bush said he was counting on Gates
to bring a "fresh perspective" to the Pentagon as the United States charts "a
new way forward in Iraq" to build a country that can govern, sustain and defend
itself and be an ally in the war against "extremists and radicals."
The
change of guard at Pentagon was taking place at a crucial juncture in the Iraq
war, a conflict that cost Donald Rumsfeld the job of defense secretary and will
likely define Gates' Pentagon tenure.
When US President George W. Bush
announced last month that he will change Pentagon chiefs, he said he wanted
"fresh perspective" on Iraq, acknowledging that the current approach was "not
working well enough."
Rumsfeld was a chief architect of the war strategy and
still defends the decision to invade in March 2003.
Uphill tasks
ahead
Gates took office amid a wide-ranging administration review of its
approach to the war.
Bush said last week that he would wait until January to
announce his new strategy, to give the new defense secretary a chance to offer
advice.
Last Wednesday, the US Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly endorsed
the nomination of Gates as the country's new defense secretary.
On Nov. 6,
the US Senate overwhelmingly endorsed the nomination of Gates as the country's
new defense secretary.
Senators from both parties said the former CIA
director is candid, largely because he told them that the country was not
winning the war in Iraq.
They also expected him to face an uphill task, given
the situation in Iraq.
Gates served for 26 years in CIA and the National
Security Council. Under President George H. W. Bush, he served as CIA
director.
Soft-spoken but tough-minded, the new defense secretary is seen as
in many ways the antithesis of Rumsfeld, the brash leader he would
replace.
Gates has been critical of the Bush administration's failure to
execute its military and political plans for Iraq, and has spent time debating
new approaches to the war as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan
panel which released a key report to recommend major policy changes in Iraq
early this month.
Xinhua
|
