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Iraq focus imperils US, ex-Pentagon official says
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
11/02/05 -- -- WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- The United States risks losing
sight of some key foreign policy issues, including relations with
China and the Muslim world, because of its "single-minded focus" on
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a former senior Pentagon official
said.
"We have to put the search radar on again for the rest of the
world," said Suzanne Patrick, who resigned as defense undersecretary
for industrial policy in July.
She was the latest of a number of former officials to criticize the
Bush administration, which is on the defensive over the war in Iraq
and domestic issues including mounting gas prices and its slow
response to Hurricane Katrina.
"After four years of single-minded focus on the global war on terror
we must be careful that we're not missing other things going on in
the world," she said in an interview with Reuters.
Patrick said the United States was making policies toward China and
other key issues in "an ad hoc, sort of reflexive" way because it
lacked a coherent national strategic plan.
During her four years at the Pentagon, Patrick said she saw poor
coordination among agencies such as the Pentagon, Treasury and State
Department and said military policies often did not reflect economic
or political considerations and vice versa.
Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and chief of staff for
former Secretary of State Colin Powell, last month blasted the
administration's national security decision-making process. He said
there was a "cabal" including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that held sway over policy.
Other former officials who have openly criticized the Bush
administration recently include Brent Scowcroft, the national
security adviser for Bush's father when he was president, and former
White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.
Patrick blasted the Pentagon's management of its biggest weapons
programs, saying the Defense Acquisition Board tends to look at
individual weapons programs rather than taking a broader view of the
military's ability to fight and win wars.
"At no point is the enterprise truly managed," she added.
"There's much less coherence in the Defense Department than there
could be if only some of the widely available practices in industry
were applied," she said, noting Rumsfeld had made little headway in
his drive to make the Pentagon function more like a business, mainly
due to his focus on the Iraq war.
Pentagon officials were not immediately available to comment on the
remarks by Patrick, who has also been a Wall Street analyst and a
civilian U.S. Navy employee.
© Reuters 2005.
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