Bush wants Pace for top post

President Bush yesterday nominated Marine Gen. Peter Pace to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which would make him the first Marine to hold the post.

“The first thing America needs to know about Pete Pace is that he is a Marine,” Mr. Bush said in the Roosevelt Room, where he made the announcement. “To the American people, ’Marine’ is shorthand for ’can do,’ and I’m counting on Pete Pace to bring the Marine spirit to these new responsibilities.”

The nomination of Gen. Pace, 59, is likely to be quickly approved by the Senate. He would replace Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, who has served as chairman of the president’s panel of top military advisers since Oct. 1, 2001, and will retire on Sept. 30.

“This is an incredible moment for me,” Gen. Pace said. “It is both exhilarating and humbling. It’s exhilarating because I have the opportunity, if confirmed by the Senate, to continue to serve this great nation. It’s humbling because I know the challenges ahead are formidable.

“But I have great faith in our ability to meet those challenges — for both personal and professional reasons,” he said, adding thanks to his wife, Lindsey, and “my mom, who goes to church every Sunday and lights candles and burns the church down while she prays that I might be on the path I should be on and be safe.”

The highly decorated general, a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, served as a rifle platoon leader in the Vietnam War, commanded Marines in Somalia and in the Atlantic and was the head of the U.S. Southern Command before being tapped by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for the vice chairman’s post.

Gen. Pace is known to have a good working relationship with Mr. Rumsfeld, and to have had much influence on the administration’s execution of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, praised Gen. Pace as a “superb professional officer who has been tested under a wide range of military operations.”

“He is thoroughly experienced in working with the Congress, having served as vice chairman,” Mr. Warner said. “It is fitting that this fine officer will be the first Marine nominated to the position of chairman.”

Mr. Bush nominated Navy Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr. to fill Gen. Pace’s vice chairman post — but not without inducing laughter, including his own, when he had trouble pronouncing the nominee’s last name.

After stumbling over the name several times, the president told the press that the prospective member of the Joint Chiefs will be known by a new nickname.

“He shall be known as Admiral G,” Mr. Bush said.

Adm. Giambastiani, 56, was Mr. Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant for a year and has helped spearhead the secretary’s reforms of military structure and readiness.