Turnabout is Fair Play: Obama Picks Shinseki to Head Veterans Affairs

General Eric Shinseki, the first Asian American commander to attain the Army's 4-star rank, was essentially ushered into retirement for offering Congress a blunt assessment of the number of troops it would take to secure Iraq in the aftermath of a then-theoretical war.

Shinseki's ouster, especially in the wake of all that went wrong in Iraq, seemed to epitomize all that was wrong with a Donald Rumsfeld-led Defense Department, and gave further ammunition to those who claimed W. was a president in a plastic bubble, not interested in hearing dissenting views.

Well, president-elect Barack Obama has decided that the 66-year-old Shinseki is too young and too prescient to be spending the September of his years on a golf course. So, in a corrective of sorts, he has asked the general to get back to work. This time, he'll be heading up The Department of Veterans Affairs. Here's what Obama had to say about Shinseki:

"No one will ever doubt that this former chief of staff has the courage to stand up for our troops and our veterans. No one will ever question whether he will fight hard enough to make sure that they have the support they need."

The announcement came on the 67th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Both Obama and Shinseki grew up in Hawai'i.