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'The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure,' said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. 'As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out.'
The Iraq war created fissures in the United States' counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new generation of al Qaeda recruits. Many of his government colleagues, he said, thought Iraq was an 'ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy.'
'I continue to be puzzled by it,' said Beers, who did not oppose the war but thought it should have been fought with a broader coalition. 'Why was it such a policy priority?' The official rationale was the search for weapons of mass destruction, he said, 'although the evidence was pretty qualified, if you listened carefully.'
He thinks the war in Afghanistan was a job begun, then abandoned. Rather than destroying al Qaeda terrorists, the fighting only dispersed them. The flow of aid has been slow and the U.S. military presence is too small, he said. 'Terrorists move around the country with ease. We don't even know what's going on. Osama bin Laden could be almost anywhere in Afghanistan,' he said.
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However it was viewed inside the administration, onlookers saw it as a rare Washington event. 'I can't think of a single example in the last 30 years of a person who has done something so extreme,' said Paul C. Light, a scholar with the Brookings Institution. 'He's not just declaring that he's a Democrat. He's declaring that he's a Kerry Democrat, and the way he wants to make a difference in the world is to get his former boss out of office.'
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