Bush Taps Negroponte, McConnell for Posts

"Admiral McConnell has decades of experience, ensuring that our military forces had the intelligence they need to fight and win wars," Bush said. Before serving as NSA director, he was the military intelligence officer for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War.

"As DNI, Mike will report directly to me. And I am confident he will give me the best information and analysis that America's intelligence community can provide," Bush said.

He said he was also confident that the Senate would "see the value of these two serving in crucial positions, and I would hope that they would be confirmed as quickly as possible."

Negroponte said he leaves the DNI post "with regret" because of his respect for the thousands of intelligence professions who serve the country around the world.

But for a career foreign service officer, Negroponte told Bush, "the position . . . to which you are now nominating me is an opportunity of a lifetime."

He added, "It will be a great privilege for me to come home to the department where I began my career and rejoin a community of colleagues whose work is so important. . . ."

McConnell said his private-sector work during the past 10 years "has allowed me to stay focused on national security and intelligence communities as a strategist and as a consultant." In many respects, he said, "I never left" the intelligence business.

"I plan to continue the strong emphasis on integration of the community to better serve all of our customers," he said. "That will mean better sharing of information, increased focus on customer needs and service, improved security processes and deeper penetration of our targets to provide the needed information for tactical, operational and strategic decision-making."

After Bush's announcement and brief remarks by the two nominees as Rice and Vice President Cheney looked on, the group left without taking any questions from reporters.

In announcing his choices to lead the Army and U.S. forces in the Middle East and Iraq, Gates extolled the qualifications of Casey, Petraeus and Fallon while praising the officers they replace.

"There is no officer at this time better suited to be Army chief of staff than General George Casey," who previously served as vice chief of staff, Gates said in a statement. As the commander of Multi-National Forces - Iraq for 30 straight months, "he has overseen the largest sustained ground forces operation by the U.S. military in a generation," Gates said.

"General Casey knows first hand the capabilities the U.S. Army must have to succeed in the complex and unconventional campaigns of the 21st Century," he added.

He said he was also recommending the promotion of Petraeus to four-star rank and his nomination as Casey's successor. Calling Petraeus "one of the most dynamic and innovative leaders in the U.S. military" and "an expert in irregular warfare and stability operations," Gates praised his service as commander of the 101st Airborne Division in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraq's third largest, after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

In that role, Petraeus "oversaw a multifaceted program that within months established local government, restarted the local economy and stood up local security forces," Gates said. "He would later stay on in Iraq to launch and lead the coalition's program to train and equip Iraq's army and police."

As commander of the Pacific Command, "Admiral Fallon oversees military operations and security relationships in an area encompassing 43 countries and approximately 60 percent of the world's population," Gates said. He said Fallon's Asian tenure "has been characterized by an extraordinary level of innovation and strategic vision" and credited him with forging "new partnerships to help combat the influence of violent extremist networks and ideologies that threaten the moderate Muslim nations of the Pacific."

Gates called Fallon "one of the best strategic thinkers in uniform today" and "exactly the right person for this most challenging assignment."