The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved Gen. George Casey, the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, as the next Army chief of staff despite criticism of his performance as a war commander, Reuters reported. The Senate voted 83-14 to confirm Casey, who last week told senators he did not believe U.S. policy in Iraq had failed. Casey's defenders, many of them Democrats who are critics of the Iraq war, said he could not be made a scapegoat for all that had gone wrong in the conflict. Even President George W. Bush recently referred to the Iraq policy under Casey as "maybe a slow failure" as he made his case for his new plan to send in 21,500 more troops. Casey, asked about this, said he would call it "slow progress."
