Frustrated Scowcroft Assails Neo-Cons, Cheney

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1025-05.htm

Published on Tuesday, October 25, 2005 by Inter Press Service

Frustrated Scowcroft Assails Neo-Cons, Cheney
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - One week after a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a blistering attack on foreign policy-making in the George W. Bush administration, Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under Bush's father, assailed neo-conservatives who persuaded the president to go to war in Iraq.

In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Scowcroft, whose relations with the Bush administration have been badly strained since he publicly warned against invading Iraq seven months before U.S. troops crossed over from Kuwait, argued that the invasion was counter-productive.

"This was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism," Scowcroft told the magazine, adding that the war risked moving public opinion against any new foreign policy commitments for some time, just as the Vietnam War did during the late-1970s and through the 1980s.

"Vietnam was visceral in the American people," said Scrowcroft, who also served as national security adviser in the mid-1970s under former President Gerald Ford. "This was a really bitter period, and it turned us against foreign-policy adventures deeply. This is not that deep, (but) …we're moving in that direction."


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