Garner Out in Iraq Shuffle

By: Knut Royce

In an apparent acknowledgment that postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq are floundering, the White House plans to name a politically astute career diplomat to replace Jay Garner as the civilian administrator of the country, sources said Thursday.

L. Paul Bremer, ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism in the Reagan administration, will report directly to the White House, sources said.

It was not immediately clear whether Garner, a retired Army lieutenant general who reports to the Pentagon, will stay on under Bremer. Garner was handpicked in January to oversee the reconstruction by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He held his first meeting in Iraq on April 15.

Bremer's expected appointment, which might be announced as early as Friday, could be a big plus for the State Department, which has feuded with the Defense Department over how the transition to democracy should be managed while playing second fiddle to the Pentagon in staffing the transition team.

"In terms of finding someone to manage this process, which has not started out well, I do not believe that [the White House] could have done better" than to select Bremer, said Robert Gelbard, a retired career diplomat who led post-conflict efforts in Haiti, Bosnia, and East Timor.

"They [the White House] lost confidence in Garner's ability to supervise the transition to Iraqi democracy", said a source close to the administration. While well-liked by the military brass, Garner "was not sophisticated enough to supervise the transition", he said.

After being greeted as liberators by many Iraqis with the fall of Baghdad last month, U.S. troops increasingly are facing violent demonstrations in other parts of the country. Many Shia, who make up the majority of the country, have called for the removal of coalition forces from the country.

An aide in Bremer's office at Marsh Crisis Consulting here, where he is chief executive officer, said he was unavailable for comment Thursday and referred all questions to the White House. White House national security spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment and referred questions to the Pentagon. Chris Isleib, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which runs the reconstruction effort, said he was unaware of the pending change but was checking out reports.

During his career with the State Department, Bremer was an assistant to six different Secretaries of State, including Henry Kissinger. After retiring he joined Kissinger Associates as managing director.

Gelbard said that Bremer "will get along extremely well with [Secretary of State Colin] Powell".

"He's one of the most organized individuals I have ever encountered", Gelbard said. "He also knows the bureaucracy very well. He made his career in Washington. He did in part because of his outstanding intellect, but also because he was able to manipulate the bureaucratic system, which is critical for getting anything done in the executive branch."

But another former senior State Department official who worked with Bremer said that Bremer is a "voracious opportunist with voracious ambitions".

"What he knows about Iraq could not quite fill a thimble", he said. "What he knows about any part of the world would not fill a thimble. But what he knows about Washington infighting could fill three or four bushel baskets."

At the same time, this retired official said that the selection of Bremer is "not all that bad of an appointment" and that "he's not going to be a rubber stamp".