Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- General George Casey faces a military man's nightmare, fire on both flanks, when he goes before the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow for a hearing on his nomination to be U.S. Army chief of staff.

Democrats who oppose President George W. Bush's Iraq troop buildup are likely to ask Casey how he can support it after earlier saying more forces were unnecessary. Republicans who favor adding troops plan to ask the departing U.S. commander in Iraq why he stuck with a flawed battle plan long after it was failing. And lawmakers of both parties may question whether he was candid with them in the past.

The collective weight of these issues may damage Casey's effectiveness even if he wins confirmation, said W. Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Department and a retired Army Special Forces colonel.

``The beef is that he did not show the kind of integrity to be expected from a chief of staff of the Army. And he failed,'' Lang said in an interview, adding: ``A failed general should not be rewarded for failure.''

Casey's defenders say he inherited a strategic vacuum when he arrived in Iraq in 2004 and responded by developing a realistic plan centered on training Iraqi security forces to counter a growing Sunni insurgency. They say that if the plan failed, it was because Casey wasn't given sufficient personnel to carry it out.

`Out of Chaos'

``First, General Casey brought order out of chaos,'' said Kalev Sepp, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, who served on Casey's Iraq strategy team. ``Second, he created a strategy where there had been none. Third, he reoriented the field army from a conventional warfare mindset toward counterinsurgency.''

Casey is politically vulnerable because he is one of the last of the senior Pentagon officials who ran the war still in government. Donald Rumsfeld was forced out as defense secretary last year and General John Abizaid, Casey's immediate superior as head of Central Command, is retiring.

That leaves Casey, 58, as the target for lawmakers from both parties who are frustrated with the course of the conflict and eager to show disaffected voters they are now exercising oversight powers.

Republican Objections

Two Republican senators -- John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have been the most vocal skeptics about Bush's nomination of Casey. The chief of staff, while not in the direct chain of command, has overall administrative responsibility for the functioning of the 502,000- member Army.

``I have very serious concerns about General Casey's nomination,'' McCain said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' on Jan. 21. ``I'm concerned about failed leadership, the message that sends to the rest of the military.''

Graham, like McCain an advocate of sending more troops, said his concern centers on whether promoting Casey would help or hurt the new strategy of deploying more forces and using them to secure Baghdad. ``He needs to be held accountable for past mistakes,'' Graham said in an interview.

Retired Army General Jack Keane, who advised the administration on its new Iraq plan, said Casey's main mistake was to remain wedded to his original plan even after events demonstrated its shortcomings.

Violence Mounts

Casey's plan was based on training Iraqi forces to take over security in Baghdad and other troubled areas, Keane said in testimony to two congressional committees earlier this month. By early 2006 at the latest, it should have been clear to Casey and his superiors that the mounting violence between Sunnis and Shiites had made the plan unworkable, Keane testified.

``We knew that the military strategy was failing, and we should have started to make an adjustment to it,'' Keane told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 25. ``We were not protecting the people ourselves. The Iraqis could not.''

Sepp said in an interview that Casey's plan would have worked if he had gotten enough personnel to train Iraqi units rapidly. The problem was that the backbone of the training mission -- Army captains and senior sergeants -- were also in great demand to lead combat forces, and Casey's superiors never provided enough of them, he said.

``He took the forces that he was provided,'' Sepp said. ``His strategy was absolutely sound and correct. It was not properly resourced with personnel, either the numbers or the quality necessary.''

Assessments

Sepp said he doesn't know if Casey asked Rumsfeld or Abizaid for more resources. That question, which is likely to come up at tomorrow's hearing, leads to two broader issues: whether Casey was candid in his earlier assessments of the conflict, and whether he has contradicted himself by first opposing a troop buildup and now accepting it.

In mid-2005, Casey said ``fairly substantial'' U.S. troop withdrawals could be possible by early 2006 because of the progress being made in training Iraqis and developing a political structure.

The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who opposes the troop buildup, has signaled that he will use Casey's previous statements against adding forces to probe the wisdom of that policy.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at kfireman1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 31, 2007 00:02 EST