Iraq War Eroded U.S. Security, Former Diplomats Say

Wed Jun 16, 4:41 PM ET

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush led the United States into an ill-planned Iraq war that has weakened U.S. security, retired diplomats and military officers said on Wednesday in a direct challenge to one of Bush's main arguments for re-election.


"We all believe that current administration policies have failed in the primary responsibilities of preserving national security and providing world leadership," said a statement signed by the 27 retired officials. "We need a change."

The rare criticism by career officials came from a group that included members of both major political parties, a former CIA director, two former ambassadors to the Soviet Union and a retired chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In attacking Bush's national security record, they challenged a key Bush argument for his re-election against Democrat Sen. John Kerry, that the Iraq war has made America safer and that Bush is an effective wartime president.

"Our security has been weakened," the group said.

The former officials, some of whom said they had voted for Bush in 2000, said the Republican president manipulated intelligence on Iraq to lead the United States into an "ill-planned and costly war from which exit is uncertain."

Bush has maintained an "overbearing" approach to foreign policy that relied excessively on military power, spurned the concerns of traditional U.S. allies and disdained the United Nations, the group said.

"It justified the invasion of Iraq by manipulation of uncertain intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, and by a cynical campaign to persuade the public that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda and the attacks of September 11," it said. "The evidence did not support this argument."

"Never in the two and a quarter centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted," it added.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denied the Bush administration had forsaken diplomacy in favor of force, said it won four unanimous Security Council resolutions on Iraq and sought to dismiss the group's stance as a "political."

"As far as the facts of this administration's fight against terrorism with diplomatic, military, intelligence and law enforcement means ... This administration has a record that it is happy to stand on," he said.

The group, which included retired admiral Stansfield Turner who headed the Central Intelligence Agency under President Jimmy Carter, did not explicitly back Kerry in the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election.

But several members made clear that they believed the Massachusetts Democrat would do a better job than the Republican incumbent.

Retired Gen. Tony McPeak, a former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, said the Pentagon had only about half the troops in Iraq that were needed.

"Because of the Pollyannaish 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," said McPeak, who said he supported Bush in 2000 but was now advising Kerry.

Members also condemned Bush's Middle East policies and said claims Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction -- which have not been found -- had eroded U.S. credibility.