Most Military Officers Reject Bush's Strategy on Iraq

A sizable segment of military officers agree that five years of wrong priorities and wrong decisions in the war in Iraq has left America less safe. In a Foreign Policy magazine survey of more than 3,400 military officers, ranked major and above, 60 percent said that the U.S. military is weaker today than it was five years ago. More than half blame the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than three-quarters said that the Bush administration set "unreasonable" goals for the war. While the survey did not asked whether they approved going into Iraq in the first place, they were asked what the military needed in the future to win the war on terror. Seventy-three percent said the U.S. must improve its intelligence capacity.

"Active-duty officers and those who have retired within the past year give a much higher priority to nonmilitary tools, including more robust diplomacy, developing a force of deployable civilian experts, and increasing foreign-aid programs," the magazine said.