BUSH BASHING

Retired officials say Bush must go

A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.
"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.
Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington today, include 20 former US ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.
Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of US forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.
It is unusual for so many former high-level military officials and career diplomats to issue such an overtly political message during a presidential campaign.

Former ambassadors who have signed the joint statement include Jeffrey Davidow, William DePree, Charles Freeman Jr., William C. Harrop, Arthur Hartman, H. Allen Holmes, Samuel Lewis, Princeton Lyman, Jack Matlock Jr., Donald McHenry, Richard Murphy,
David Newsom, Phyllis Oakley, John Reinhardt, Ronald Spiers, Nicholas Veliotes and
Alexander Watson; and Adm. William Crowe, Gen. Joseph Hoar and Adm. Stansfield Turner.

[Now lets see haw many fall victim to one of those mysterious "skiing acidents"]