Former diplomats call for Bush ouster
Foreign policy damages nation, group says
From Paul Courson
CNN
Wednesday, June 16, 2004 Posted: 3:16 PM EDT (1916 GMT)
President Bush's foreign policy came under attack Wednesday from a group of former military commanders and diplomats.
cnn.com
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration's foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere has been a "disaster," and President Bush should not be re-elected, a group of former diplomats and military leaders say in a newly released statement.
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EXCERPT:
Although the group expressed alarm about the sidetracked Middle East "road map to peace" between Palestinians and Israelis, it was the U.S. handling of Iraq that helped crystallize the group's concern.
Retired Gen. Tony McPeak, a former U.S. Air Force chief of staff who had endorsed the Bush 2000 campaign, Wednesday said of Bush's Iraq policy, "Because of the Pollyannish assumptions that were made by the administration in going in there that ... bouquets would be thrown at us and so forth, we were totally unprepared for the post-combat occupation. And so you see here, unfolding in front of us, a terrible disaster."
McPeak headed the Air Force during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
The group acknowledged it takes a partisan stand in opposing Bush, but, as member William Harrop put it, "When there is one prominent rival to President Bush in this election, obviously we think Senator Kerry should be elected, but we are not here to speak for him. We are here to say there must be a change."
Harrop, a career diplomat who retired in 1994 after 40 years of foreign service, held ambassadorships to Guinea, Kenya and the Seychelles, Zaire, and Israel. |
