ONE of the driving forces behind the Iraq conflict and an architect of America’s conduct of the War on Terror has become the most senior Pentagon official to bow out of President Bush’s second term.

Douglas Feith, the third most senior civilian in the Pentagon who was associated with many of the Administration’s greatest controversies, announced that he is leaving to spend more time with his family.

In his role as Donald Rumsfeld’s senior policy official, Mr Feith drew repeated fire from critics of the Iraq war and its messy aftermath as well as from colleagues.

General Tommy Franks, the commander of coalition forces during the Iraq war, crossed swords frequently with Mr Feith, whom he described in his biography as “the dumbest guy on the planet”.

Mr Rumsfeld, whose relationship with Mr Feith was sometimes uneasy, described the former lawyer as “creative, well-organised and energetic”.

One of the main criticisms of Mr Feith was that, as head of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, he was a brilliant theorist whose ideas were unfounded or impractical.

The initially secret unit became a parallel intelligence apparatus that critics say boiled unsubstantiated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda into fact.

This analysis was fed to Dick Cheney via the Vice-President’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, and informed much of the Bush Administration’s presentation of its case for war.

Mr Feith was also responsible for the short-lived Office of Strategic Influence, which proposed inventing “news items” and passing them on to foreign media outlets as part of Pentagon efforts to influence public opinion around the world.

Mr Feith will stay in the post until summer while Bush officials search for a replacement.

Condoleezza Rice made her debut at the State Department yesterday. The 66th Secretary of State assured her army of career diplomats, who felt elbowed aside by the Pentagon during the first Bush term, that they would be in the forefront of US foreign policymaking.

Officials said that Ms Rice would make her first overseas trip next week. The visit will include seven European capitals as well as Turkey, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

However, her first day was slightly tarnished by the 13 senators who opposed her confirmation. Only once, in 1825, did an incoming Secretary of State attract more “no” votes.

Democrats on Capitol Hill, criticised by party rank and file for a generally supine performance in the past four years, used Ms Rice’s confirmation hearings to begin an assault on the Bush Administration for the Iraq war and its aftermath.

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