WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has tapped a retired four-star Army general to head up a team charged with reassessing the overall U.S. operation in Iraq, military officials said Friday.
Gen. Gary Luck (search) is the former head of American forces in South Korea and is now a senior adviser to the U.S. Joint Forces Command (search). Luck was also an adviser to Gen. Tommy Franks at the beginning of the 2003 war in Iraq.
Luck will lead a small team of military specialists next week to review the training of Iraqi security forces, the interaction with the interim Iraqi government and the strategy for fighting terrorists throughout the country, officials told FOX News.
Pentagon officials have instructed Luck to identify weaknesses and report back in a few weeks.
President Bush (search) said Friday that Luck’s team was going to Iraq to ensure the United States was on the right path in its efforts.
“Part of a successful strategy is one that says there will be elections, the political process will be going forward, but one in which the Iraqis assume more and more responsibility for their own security,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office.
“And that's precisely why the assessment team is going to Iraq — to make sure that, at this historic moment in the history of Iraq, there is a focused, determined strategy,” he said.
Meanwhile, a senior Army official said the Pentagon is considering changing the call-up policy for the National Guard and the Army Reserve in order to allow reservists to perform more than 24 months of total active service.
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