Powell To Step Down Over Iraq

"Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next Presidential inauguration," sources close to the conversation told The Washington Post.

Citing sources, who requested anonymity, the daily said that Bush is expected to appoint hard-liners to take the helm of the world’s sole superpower’s foreign policy, noting that Rice and deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are the leading candidates for drafting the U.S. foreign policy in the days ahead.

"Although Bush appears to value the range of opinions he has received from his chief national security advisers, he may feel free if he wins a second term to realign his foreign policy more closely to the harder-edged, conservative view exemplified by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld," the Post quoted Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, as saying.

Bush recently named Rice as his personal representative on the Middle East conflict, a move that some State Department officials view as an audition for Secretary of State.

Rice "is an honest, fabulous person, and America is lucky to have her service, period," the daily quoted Bush as saying at a news conference before departing for his August vacation.

But Rice’s image has been tarnished by the fallout over the administration’s use of faulty intelligence about Iraq’s weapons, raising questions about her scrutiny of the materials and the veracity of her public statements.

The Post also named Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the centrist chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who is a strong supporter of Powell, as one of the most likely candidates for the department of state.

Senate Democrats said that Wolfowitz is considered more of a strategic thinker than a manager that he could be tapped as Rice’s replacement as national security adviser if she became secretary of state, the daily added.

‘Embarrassed’

Although Powell had told his close associates that the resignation was due to "a commitment made to my wife" rather than any dismay at the administration’s foreign policy or Iraq’s alleged WMDs, analysts see that Powell has been embarrassed by the failure to find much evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs.

In February, Powell presented a much-anticipated report on Iraq to the U.N. Security Council, but no clear-cut evidence was available in the passionate hour-long presentation, that included vague "intercepted" phone calls, space images and video-clips.

The daily further said that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, who is already the third longest serving CIA chief, is expected to quit soon, particularly after he had admitted on July 11 in a surprise move that he was to blame for the key error that President Bush had included in his January 28 State of the Union Address to Congress, that Iraq was trying to procure nuclear material from Africa, and of course for allowing Bush to mislead the American people.

The Post said that Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a former CIA case officer, is considered a strong possibility to replace Tenet.

Almost four months into the end of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, the U.S. and its closes ally the U.K. now face credibility problems after insisting all along that the Arab country’s WMDs posed an imminent security threat.