Retired Air Force general takes Bush to task on Iraq

LAKE OSWEGO — Tony McPeak, a four-star general who headed the U.S. Air Force during Desert Storm, believes that President Bush should publicly admit personal failure and restart diplomatic negotiations for a possible war against Iraq.

McPeak, who retired to Oregon in 1995, says Bush has botched the crucial process of building a coalition, of enlisting the United Nations and of rebuilding Afghanistan as a model of reconstruction.

“The world would breathe a sigh of relief, and we’d go back and do it right” if Bush admitted failure, says the 67-year-old McPeak. “I mean, the world would fall in love with this guy. It’s not that hard to fix.”

McPeak served four years on the Joint Chiefs of Staff advising Bush’s father and then President Clinton after flying 269 Vietnam combat missions and participating in the Thunderbirds, the elite aerobatic team. He is also a graduate of Grants Pass High School.

Despite his military career, McPeak questions Bush’s priorities as the president confronts terrorism, North Korea and Saddam Hussein. It makes him worry about a return to federal budget deficits and about declining goodwill toward the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

“I pray that America will last another thousand years, and during all of that time we’re a pre-eminent power,” says McPeak. “To do that, you have to understand the world in a more sophisticated way. You make your friends many and your enemies few.”

As chief of staff from 1990 to 1994, McPeak accomplished the biggest reorganization of the Air Force in its history. He believes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be dramatically transforming the military to confront the new terrorist threat, slashing redundancy and cutting heavy Army divisions in favor of agile special forces.

Guarding the Washington Monument with Stinger missiles, McPeak says, is “amateur hour.”

McPeak thinks U.S. forces may well encounter biological weapons in Iraq but not chemical munitions, which are difficult to deploy.

Airstrikes would wipe out Baghdad’s communications system again, McPeak says.

Close combat in Baghdad would be stupid, he says, despite what Army generals may advocate.

“We’ve already radicalized 99 percent of the Arabs in the world,” he said. “We’ll get the holdouts if we start doing hand-to-hand combat in Baghdad.”