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Technically, Abizaid is the deputy commander for the war in Iraq, but he's much more than that. Pentagon insiders describe Abizaid as a rising star with the ear of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Some in the administration are talking about Abizaid as the next chief of the Army, or a possible transition leader of postwar Iraq. The latter scenario would make Abizaid the most visible Lebanese-American in the U.S. military since Cpl. Maxwell Clinger of the hit television series M*A*S*H. "It's as though the Army ordered someone out of central casting for this war," says Andrew Krepinevich, who attended West Point with Abizaid and now runs a think tank on the military.

A veteran of the Grenada and Kosovo conflicts with an Ivy League pedigree, Abizaid has an office at Central Command Forward headquarters here adjoining his boss, Gen. Tommy Franks. Abizaid's presence in Qatar enables Franks to visit the troops more frequently in Centcom's 25-country territory, which includes Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa as well as Iraq. On three separate screens (Franks has four), Abizaid can track the position of every American ship, plane, and tank in Iraq. His main job is to make sure all the disparate parts of the sprawling war machine work together. Abizaid advises Franks on important battlefield decisions such as when to bring in additional troops. "He believes," says a retired general who knows Abizaid, "in boots on the ground."

Abizaid's desire to join the military was sharpened during a tough upbringing. His mother died when he was a child, and his father-after falling ill himself–moved the family to rural Coleville, Calif., on the dry eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. In high school, Abizaid quarterbacked the football team and made the honor roll each and every year. His geography teacher recalled that during class he would draw imaginary nations and name them "Abizaidland." Under his senior picture in the yearbook, Abizaid used a proverb to express his career aspirations. "A thousand soldiers are easily got," Abizaid wrote, "but a single general is hard to find."

As a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., Abizaid earned the title "star man" for his performance in the classroom (a better than 3.67 grade point average) and on the training fields. In 1971, he wrote a paper predicting the turmoil in the Balkans that developed 25 years later. Abizaid started in the Army as a paratrooper and eventually commanded elite Army Rangers. Gen. Max Thurman, who later became Army chief of staff, noticed Abizaid as a young officer and helped direct him to key field assignments that could later pave his way to general. In 1983, Abizaid guided a Ranger rifle company in the Grenada invasion. He famously ordered a sergeant to drive a bulldozer at Cuban troops, a scene that was dramatized in Clint Eastwood's movie Heartbreak Ridge.

Abizaid also gained a unique perspective for a military officer by pursuing Arabic studies, graduating with a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard. In addition, he attended the University of Jordan in Amman on the foreign area officer program and Stanford on the U.S. Army War College fellowship. Senior military officials hope that Abizaid's academic credentials will give him added clout when he speaks out on the Middle East. "I would say, as a person who has studied the Arab world and loves the Arab world, that the majority of educated Arabs that I talk to know that Saddam Hussein has been a plague on the Arab world and on his own people, and they welcome his removal," Abizaid said at a recent Central Command briefing.

In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Abizaid learned firsthand the difficulties of keeping the peace among the fractious Kurds, Turks, and Sunnis in the northern third of Iraq. While serving under Maj. Gen. Jay Garner, who is now the head of civilian reconstruction for Iraq, Abizaid was the only Arabic speaker in the 3rd Battalion of the 325th Airborne. He found his negotiation skills tested as he and his men had to patrol the Kurdish sector for lingering Republican Guards.

Eight years later, Abizaid served as the major general in charge of the 1st Infantry Division (the "Big Red One" of World War II fame) in Kosovo. It was there that Abizaid had to deal with the brutal mishmash of ethnic and tribal rivalries that are likely to complicate any governance of postwar Iraq. The job this time, should part of it fall to Abizaid, won't be easy. Experts in the region don't expect Arabs to give Abizaid a break because he has an Arab heritage. Philip Habib, the Lebanese-American envoy during the Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982, tried to mediate, and it didn't make any difference, says Mouin Rabbani, Middle East analyst for the International Crisis Group. "I don't think Abizaid would be seen by Iraqis as representing their interests," Rabbani says. "At the end of the day, he would be seen representing Washington." And in today's Middle East, that would be no small impediment.

With Rick Newman, Mark Mazzetti, and Samantha Levine