Bush nominates Pace for Joint Chiefs of Staff
Friday, April 22, 2005 Posted: 10:30 AM EDT (1430 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/22/pace.ap/index.htmlWASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Friday named Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who quietly helped shape the Pentagon's role in the global war on terrorism, to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Pace, 59, would succeed Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers. He was expected to win easy Senate confirmation.
"He knows the job well," Bush said in announcing the nomination in an East Room ceremony at the White House.
The first Marine selected for the nation's top uniformed military post, Pace also is only the second to rise from vice chairman. Myers, due to retire September 30 after four years on the job, was the first.
After nearly four years in the No. 2 job -- a period in which the war on terror has been the military's dominant focus -- Pace has remained a relatively unknown figure to the public.
Privately, he is said to get along well with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who moved Pace into the vice chairman's spot on October 1, 2001, after Pace had served only one year as commander of U.S. Southern Command.
Aides say Rumsfeld has viewed Myers and Pace as virtually interchangeable in their role as military advisers. In a reflection of his confidence in Pace, Rumsfeld on a number of occasions has had Pace at his side for Pentagon news conferences when Myers was traveling abroad.
A secretary of defense and a Joint Chiefs chairman work closely together, by necessity, but their relationship can sometimes be difficult. By law, the chairman is required to give his unvarnished advice on matters affecting the armed forces, but the defense secretary is the boss. That can sometimes make it appear publicly that the chairman is deferential and lacking in independence.
Pace touched on this point briefly during a Pentagon news conference in March in which Rumsfeld noted that his recommendations on filling senior Pentagon positions are ultimately decided by the president.
"All I would add," Pace said, "is no matter how thin the veneer, your military is 100 percent civilian controlled."
The Joint Chiefs chairman, who normally serves two two-year terms, is the senior military adviser to the president as well as the secretary of defense. He commands no troops and is not in the chain of command that runs from the president to the secretary of defense to commanders in the field.
About Pace
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, Pace graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and earned a master's degree in business administration from George Washington University.
After basic training in 1968, he was sent to Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader. He later served in Korea and was a commander for two years during the Somalia intervention that ended in a U.S. withdrawal.
Earlier in his career Pace's assignments included an unusual combination of staff and command jobs. After his return from Vietnam in 1969 he served as head infantry writer at the Marine Corps Institute in Washington, then security detachment commander at the Camp David, Maryland, presidential retreat.
He also served as a presidential social aide at the White House and later was commanding officer of the Marine Corps recruiting station in Buffalo, New York. After he reached the rank of brigadier general in 1992 he became president of Marine Corps University. It was during that assignment that he was sent to Somalia as deputy commander of Marine forces. He reached four-star rank in 2000.
Pace and his wife, Lynne, have a daughter, Tiffany Marie, and a son, Peter.
