Bush Support Eroding Among Military Due To "Competency Gap"
An increasing number of current and former military officials, defense industry executives, and homeland security professionals have grown disenchanted with the direction of President Bush's national security policies, and some are rallying around John F. Kerry, according to interviews with military and industry officials.
"I have been a Republican my entire adult life," said A. Martin Erim, the group's chairman and president of Defense Holdings Inc. in McLean, Va., which consults on mergers and acquisitions in the defense industry. "I voted for George W. Bush in the last election, but I have undergone a major transformation since 9/11 because of how the administration has handled things."
Republican defense industry executives such as Erim join the ranks of such former career civil servants as Richard A. Clarke, Bush's former counterterrorism czar; Rand Beers, another former National Security Council official now advising Kerry; Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence chief; and others who recently have expressed opposition to the president to whom they once reported.
Outspoken former officers such as Zinni, Hoar, Crowe, and Shalikashvili "are simply reflecting a widespread view that can't be expressed by active-duty officers," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank in Arlington, Va. Thompson said he voted for Bush in 2000 but has not decided whom he will support in November.
"There is a huge reservoir of resentment about how Rumsfeld has treated the military and conducted the war in Iraq," Thompson said.
A former senior official with the Pentagon added: "I am amazed at how much anger there is. It's popped up in the last month."
The frustration in military and intelligence circles springs from what some perceive as a ''competency gap," the belief that top administration officials are not up to the job of protecting America in the changing world.
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