WASHINGTON President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be the next Veterans Affairs secretary, turning to a former Army principal bodily substance of staff once vilified through the Bush administration for questioning its Iraq contention strategy.

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Obama will announce the preference of Shinseki, the first Army four-star general of Japanese-American ancestry, at a news conference Sunday in Chicago. He will be the first Asian-American to hold the post of Veterans Affairs secretary, adding to the growing diversity of Obama’sitting Cabinet.

“I think that General Shinseki is exactly the equitable person who is going to be practical to make sure that we honor our forces when they approach home,” Obama before-mentioned in an conference with NBC’s “Meet the Press” to be broadcast Sunday.

NBC released a transcript of the interview after The Associated Press reported that Shinseki was Obama’s pick.

Shinseki’s tenure as Army chief of staff from 1999 to 2003 was marked by constant tensions with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that boiled over in 2003 whereas Shinseki testified to Congress that it power take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the invasion.

Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, belittled the estimate as “wildly off the characterize” and the general was marginalized and later retired from the Army. But Shinseki’session words proved foretelling after President George W. Bush in early 2007 announced a “surge” of additional troops to Iraq after miscalculating the numbers needed to main stock sectarian violence.

Obama uttered he chose Shinseki for the VA post because he “was not oblique” in predicting that the U.S. will need more troops in Iraq than Rumsfeld believed at the time.

“When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and I think all over how for a like reason many veterans around the geographical division are struggling plane more than those who have not served - higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance hurt rates, medical care that is inadequate - it breaks my heart,” Obama told NBC.

Shinseki, 66, is slated to take the helm of the management’s second largest agency, that was roundly criticized during the Bush administration for underestimating the amount of funding needed to handle thousands of injured veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thousands of veterans currently endure six-month waits for disability benefits, despite promises by passing from hand to hand VA Secretary James Peake and his predecessor, Jim Nicholson, to reduce delays. The department also is scrambling to upgrade conduct technology systems near the front of new legislation providing for millions of dollars in new GI benefits takes effect next August.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, praised Shinseki while a “great choice” who will make an excellent VA secretary.

“I be delivered of great respect for General Shinseki’s judgment and abilities,” Akaka reported in a statement. “I am confident that he will use his judgment and experience to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and care they have earned in defense of our state. President-elect Obama is selecting a team that reflects our nation’s greatest strength, its dissimilarity, and I applaud him.”

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