Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice announced Tuesday that Zalmay Khalilzad has been officially nominated to replace John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq. Khalilzad has been serving as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. He was a leading backer of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and has close ties to neo-conservatives in Washington. In 1998 he co-signed a letter to President Clinton sent by the Project for the New American Century calling for regime change in Iraq. Other signers of the letter included Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.