NEW YORK, Dec 22: “The American Soldier” was named on Sunday as Time magazine Person of the Year, bumping off US President George Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Time’s Managing Editor Jim Kelly was quoted as saying that both Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld were candidates, but “‘the very messy aftermath of the war has made it clear that Washington’s policy was going to have to be carried out day by day by the soldiers on the ground”.

“We thought the title did not belong to those people who formulate the foreign policies of the United States but those who face bullets and grenades as they execute those policies.”

There was little disagreement in the magazine’s newsroom that the US-led invasion of Iraq was the year’s top story.