Purge of the Unbelievers

What to make of the sudden spate of personnel convulsions emanating from the White House?

I see a possible theme: A purge of the unbelievers.

Harriet Miers, a longtime companion of the president but never a true believer in Vice President Cheney's views of a nearly unrestrained executive branch, is out as White House counsel -- likely to be replaced by someone in the more ferocious model of Cheney chief of staff David S. Addington.

Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad, considered by Cheney to be too soft on the Sunnis, is kicked upstairs to the United Nations, to be replaced by Ryan Crocker, who presumably does not share his squeamishness.

John Negroponte, not alarmist enough about the Iranian nuclear threat in his role as Director of National Intelligence, is shifted over to the State Department, the Bush administration's safehouse for the insufficiently neocon. Cheney, who likes to pick his own intelligence, thank you, personally intervenes to get his old friend Mike McConnell to take Negroponte's job.

And George Casey and John Abizaid -- the generals who so loyally served as cheerleaders for the White House's "stay the course" approach during the mid-term election campaigns -- are jettisoned for having shown a little backbone in their opposition to Cheney and Bush's politically-motivated insistence on throwing more troops into the Iraqi conflagration.

The Diplo-Military Overhaul

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Robin Wright and Michael Abramowitz write in The Washington Post: "President Bush is overhauling his top diplomatic and military team in Iraq, as the White House scrambles to complete its new war policy package in time for the president to unveil it in a speech to the nation next week, officials said. . . .

"On the diplomatic side, the White House will appoint veteran U.S. diplomat Ryan C. Crocker, the current envoy to Pakistan, who began his career in the 1970s in Iraq, as the new ambassador to Baghdad. The controversial current ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, will be nominated to become the top U.S. envoy at the United Nations, replacing John R. Bolton, U.S. officials say."

Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes for the New York Times: "As a Sunni Muslim, Mr. Khalilzad has been perceived by some Iraqi Shiites as not sympathetic enough to their views; removing him from Baghdad would help Mr. Bush make a fresh start there. And Mr. Khalilzad had told colleagues that he was ready to leave."

Or, as Ron Hutcheson and Warren P. Strobel write for McClatchy Newspapers, "his efforts to reach out to Iraq's Sunnis, who launched an insurgency after the fall of the late President Saddam Hussein, made Khalilzad some enemies in Washington, particularly in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, a State Department official said."

Michael R. Gordon and Thom Shanker write in the New York Times: "President Bush has decided to name Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus as the top American military commander in Iraq, part of a broad revamping of the military team that will carry out the administration's new Iraq strategy, administration officials said Thursday.

"In addition to the promotion of General Petraeus, who will replace Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the choice to succeed Gen. John P. Abizaid as the head of the Central Command is expected to be Adm. William J. Fallon, who is the top American military officer in the Pacific, officials said.