The appointment of retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki as Veterans Affairs secretary might be seen as vindication for the former Army chief of staff who was publicly rebuked and belittled by the Bush administration for his assessment of necessary troop levels in Iraq.

But judging from his discreet and honorable conduct through the episode and later - even after his estimation proved correct - Shinseki would not share that view. The Kauai-born West Point graduate hasn't been one to re-fight past battles. Instead, he will focus on the matter at hand, advocating for better care and support for veterans than the struggling agency he is set to lead currently provides.

In nominating Shinseki, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a man who can empathize with older veterans and the more than 33,000 service members who have been injured or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. He served two combat tours in Vietnam and was wounded three times, losing part of his foot when he stepped on a land mine.

Shinseki had already been at odds with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz when, in answer to a question from Sen. Carl Levin, he said several hundred thousand troops would be needed to control Iraq after an invasion, contradicting what the Bush administration had planned. He also warned that ethnic tensions would follow and that U.S. troops would confront a long, demanding cleanup afterward.

Shinseki based his assessment on his direct experience on the ground in Vietnam and in post-combat occupation in the Balkans, but Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, civilian appointees who could not brook challenges, blasted his estimation as “;wildly off the mark,”; contending Iraqis would welcome Americans as liberators. More than five years into the Iraq war, it is clear that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were wrong.

When Shinseki retired - he was not given the usual second term as Army chief - neither Rumsfeld nor any senior civilian leader attended. The break with historical precedent was seen as a sign of disrespect.

Shinseki, however, tactfully declined to air any grievances, saying, “;I do not want to criticize while my soldiers are still bleeding and dying in Iraq.”;

Held in high regard by veterans and Hawaii's congressional delegation, the Japanese-American Shinseki widens the diversity of Obama's Cabinet appointees. That his nomination was announced on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, suffused the appointment with symbolism.

Shinseki's leadership abilities will serve him as well as his principled comportment has done throughout his military career. He will need all his skills to pull the government's second-largest agency from dysfunction.