Retired Gen. Batiste lashes out on war

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — John Batiste has traveled a long way in four years, from commanding the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq to quitting the Army after 31 years in uniform, and, now, from overseeing a steel factory in Rochester to openly challenging President Bush on his management of the war.

"Mr. President, you did not listen," Batiste says in new TV ads being broadcast in Republican congressional districts as part of a $500,000 campaign financed by VoteVets.org. "You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril."

Those are inflammatory words from Batiste, a retired major general.

Many senior officers say privately that such talk makes them uncomfortable; they say that when your first name becomes "General," it is for the rest of your life. But Batiste says he has received no communications from current or former officers challenging his stance, although he occasionally gets an anonymous e-mail with the heading "Traitor."

Having quit the Army in anger over what he calls mismanagement of the Iraq war, he says he chose a second career far from Washington and the Pentagon so he could speak freely on military issues.

"I am outraged, as are the majority of Americans," he said. "I am a lifelong Republican. But it is past time for change."

Officials of VoteVets.org, an Internet-based veterans advocacy organization, say the TV ads, which challenge the president's argument that he listens to his commanders and say his Iraq policies endanger U.S. security, will run in the home districts of more than a dozen members of Congress.

Two other retired generals, Paul Eaton and Wesley Clark, speak in the VoteVets.org campaign's other ads.

In response, White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said: "We respectfully disagree." She said Bush confers routinely with senior officers, citing a meeting Thursday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a conversation last week with Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq.