WASHINGTON, 28 January 2005 — Douglas Feith, the US Defense Department’s top policy official, the chief architect of the American-led invasion of Iraq and one of the principal advisers for the Defense Department’s postwar strategy in Iraq, announced Wednesday he would step down from his job this summer.
As the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, Feith’s departure makes him the highest-ranked official to leave the Bush administration.
Feith is, according to the Washington Post, “part of a group of neoconservative foreign policy experts known for strong support of Israel and who had long-held aspirations of unseating Saddam Hussein.”
Feith, and the Pentagon’s former chairman of Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, were known for their “hard-line position against giving up Israeli-held land to Palestinians,” said the Post.
Feith’s office was responsible for creating the short-lived Office of Strategic Influence, which proposed providing news items, even false ones, to foreign media in an effort to influence policy-makers and public opinion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld closed it after news of the office created uproar on Capitol Hill. In a statement Rumsfeld said Feith “is creative, well organized and energetic, and he has earned the respect of civilian and military leaders across the government.”
Eric Ruff, a spokesman for the Defense Department, said Feith’s planned departure had nothing to do with policy matters and that he would continue working on “big-ticket” issues until his departure.
These “big-ticket” issues include the “war on terrorism,” the development of a new US global defense position and the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon planning tool redone every four years.
