'Vote Bush out' voices grow louder in the US

TODAYonline: "Group of retired diplomats and military brass issues critical letter

Tay Tsen-Waye
waye@newstoday.com.sg

FIRST, it was the hatchet job by controversial film-maker Michael Moore � now, a group of 26 United States retired senior diplomats and military brass have joined voices in urging Americans to vote out President George W Bush in November.
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Increasingly rankled by Mr Bush's ineffectiveness in handling post-war Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the group has signed a letter arguing that his foreign policy has damaged America's national security, diminished her reputation abroad and isolated the nation.
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'We just felt things were so serious, that America's leadership role in the world has been attenuated to such a terrible degree by both the style and the substance of the administration's approach,' said Mr William Harrop, one of the group's principal organisers and a former ambassador to Israel and Kenya under President Bush's father.
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The signatories - who call themselves the Diplomats and Military Commanders for change - include 20 former US ambassadors, as well as senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations. They will release the document in Washington tomorrow.
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'A lot of people felt the work they had done over their lifetime, in trying to build a situation in which the United States was respected and could lead the rest of the world, was now undermined by this administration - by the arrogance, by the refusal to listen to others, the scorn for multilateral organisations,' Mr Harrop added, in a Los Angeles Times report.
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The latest public criticism of Mr Bush's foreign policy comes in the wake of mounting scepticism of his leadership - most lately captured in Mr Moore's provocative documentary,"