I appreciate that it’s become a bit of a cliche to question the timing of every White House decision. The Bush gang clearly abuses the late-Friday-afternoon game, and they clearly raised the terrorist alert level during the 2004 campaign under dubious circumstances, but it’s probably fair to say that the timing of at least some<\/i> of the Bush gang’s decisions are not entirely calculated by Karl Rove’s office.<\/p>\n
That said, I thought it was interesting to see just how many major announcements the White House issued yesterday.<\/p>\n
* Gen. John P. Abizaid is out as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, to be replaced with Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
* Gen. George Casey is out as the chief general in Iraq, to be replaced with Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus.<\/p>\n
* Harriet Miers is out as White House counsel.<\/p>\n
* Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, will replace John Bolton as the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.<\/p>\n
* Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a veteran Mideast expert, will replace Khalilzad.<\/p>\n
That’s several days’ worth of staffing changes, but all of this news was leaked by the White House over the course of a few hours yesterday afternoon — which happened to coincide with celebrations on the Hill of the new Democratic Congress.<\/p>\n
Is it too cynical to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the White House was trying to steal some of the Dems’ thunder? Isn’t it possible to think the Bush gang didn’t want Nancy Pelosi & Co. to have a day of positive headlines to themselves?<\/p>\n
Just sayin….<\/p>\n