General John Abizaid, the head of central command in Iraq, and others have listed radical Islamists to be among the insurgents.
Certainly Bush's rewriting of his Iraq legacy will be helped by his decision to reverse his earlier policies, abandoning the idealism of the top-down reinvention of Iraq symbolised by Paul Bremer's approach and bringing on board the reality-based pragmatism of David Petraeus, now head of Central Command, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, and Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Iraq.
General Abizaid [head of central command in Iraq] is already re-recruiting some of the old Iraqi senior officers.
Clinton told Holbrooke that he would be the civilian counterpart to General David Petraeus, the military head of Central Command.
His then subordinate, General David Petraeus, later celebrated for salvaging the mission in Iraq, is now his boss as head of Central Command.
Allen was deputy head of Central Command before taking command in Afghanistan last year.
He turned to Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the head of Central Command and the commander in Iraq during the Bush surge, and asked: "What takes so long?
Those are among the C.I.A.'s major preoccupations, and they are what General Petraeus has lived and breathed in his last three jobs, first as commander in Iraq, then overseeing all of the Middle East and South Asia as head of Central Command, and finally as commander in Afghanistan.
They include the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, General David Petraeus, head of Central Command and General Raymond Odierno, US commander in Iraq.
In the Middle East, for instance, such decisions now rest with Gen. James Mattis, the head of Central Command, and with Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, General Odierno's successor, who will formally take command on Wednesday, and Gen. James N. Mattis, the head of Central Command, also attended the evening session with the vice president.
