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Senate confirms Lute as ‘war czar’

By a 94-4 vote, the Senate confirmed Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute to a possibly thankless job as President Bush’s principal point man for Iraq and Afghanistan war policy.

Lute’s official title will be deputy assistant national security advisor and advisor to the president on Iraq and Afghanistan. To date, he has been serving as director of operations on the Joint Staff.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, said he did not envy Lute’s assignment. “Lt. Gen. Lute has been nominated for an unenviable position. He will be responsible for bringing coherence to an incoherent policy, a policy that is still floundering after more than four years of war in Iraq.

“It is no secret that several retired four-star general officers were offered the position and turned it down,” Levin said. “It is no secret that Lt. Gen. Lute himself questioned the so-called surge strategy for Iraq before its announcement.”

Levin said there are no problems with Lute’s qualifications, but expressed concern about why the president needs a special military adviser on the ongoing military operations when he already has the Joint Chiefs and combatant commanders reporting to him.

“On one hand, the position implies a direct and independent relationship with the president,” Levin said. “On the other hand, as deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, the position implies subordination to the national security adviser. Creating a position with ambiguous subordination to the national security adviser could needlessly complicate and confuse an already confused policy process.”

Levin said there also are concerns about assigning an active-duty military officer to what is, essentially, a “political position” that “needlessly blurs the distinction between recommendations that he might make based on unbiased professional military judgment and those base upon or colored by political considerations.”

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the former armed services committee chairman and a former Navy secretary, said he sees nothing wrong with Lute’s role, noting that all military officers are part of the executive branch of government.