Bush's decision last month to transfer responsibility over postwar Iraq from the Defense Department to the National Security Council was widely (and rightly) seen as a rebuke to Donald Rumsfeld and a validation of the president's faith in Condoleezza Rice.

• Position: Who's Who

Bush's decision last month to transfer responsibility over postwar Iraq from the Defense Department to the National Security Council was widely (and rightly) seen as a rebuke to Donald Rumsfeld and a validation of the president's faith in Condoleezza Rice. Whether that faith proves justified will largely be determined by the skills of the four people on the NSC staff who will be essentially running the country through the new "Iraqi Stabilization Group" On the plus side, there's Gary Edson, who will be in charge of the Iraqi economy. Edson is known as a master of working the interagency process to come up with creative policy ideas; Bush's merit-based foreign-aid program, for instance, came out of Edson's office. Frances F. Townsend will be running counter-terrorism operations at the new group; a career bureaucrat and former advisor to Attorney General Janet Reno during the Clinton administration, Townsend is considered super-smart, low key, and non-ideological. Robert...