This guy is hemorrhaging bad news.
Reuters:
President Bush led the United States into an ill-planned Iraq war that weakened U.S. security, retired diplomats and military officers said on Wednesday in a 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 senior U.S. officials came from a group that included members of both major political parties, two former ambassadors to the Soviet Union and a retired chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff....
"Our security has been weakened," the group said.
The former officials, some of whom said they had voted for Bush, 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 U.S. traditional 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 (news - web sites) 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.
