Rice names critic of US Iraq policies as adviser

WASHINGTON, Mar 3 (Reuters) Eliot Cohen, a supporter of the US decision to invade Iraq but a critic of the post-war occupation, will become a top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the State Department said.

A Harvard-educated professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, Cohen will take over as State Department counselor from Philip Zelikow, who has left to resume teaching at the University of Virginia.

The State Department said the defense policy expert and military historian would focus on Iraq and Afghanistan in his new position, which traditionally serves as a sounding board and independent adviser to the secretary of state.

Cohen, who is to begin advising Rice soon but will not join the State Department full-time until later this year, in a July 2005 Washington Post opinion piece harshly criticized the way the Bush administration handled Iraq after its invasion.

While defending the underlying rationale for the war, Cohen, whose son is an Army officer, said the United States had been inept in managing its aftermath.

''What I did not know then that I do know now is just how incompetent we would be at carrying out that task,'' he wrote, saying the Pentagon's leaders treated ''the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the 'real' war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg.'' Cohen also said he ''did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order.'' He faulted efforts to rebuild Iraq with big contracts ''rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.'' Although Cohen has been described as a neoconservative, in an interview with Reuters he rejected that label, saying he is a political independent.

Cohen also declined to comment on policy issues, including whether the Bush administration's move to send about 21,500 more US troops into Iraq would quell the violence and restore a measure of stability.

''It has seemed to me that some of the debate about surge or no surge has been misplaced because what you are seeing is not just the addition of more troops but also a very substantial changeover of personnel at the top and some changes in approach in a number of areas,'' Cohen said, without identifying them.

Among the personnel changes, Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as the U.S. defense secretary. The administration has also shifted its approach on dealing with Iran and Syria, opening the door to a high-level dialogue by agreeing to attend Iraqi-convened conferences on stabilizing the country.

REUTERS DH RK0800