One CEO's Dissent from War on Terror

[Egalitarian]

Jim Lobe-author

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (IPS) - Meet Richard Wade Vague. Tall, friendly, dressed in a dark, finely tailored suit, with a firm, confident handshake and a ready, if surprisingly modest, smile, he looks like the quintessential successful 51-year-old self-described "conservative" corporate executive that he is.

Co-founder and CEO of First USA Bank, which, until he sold it, was the single largest credit card firm in the United States, he not only voted for President George W. Bush in 2000, he raised a lot of cash for Bush's campaign coffers.

Now, six years later, Vague, who currently heads the fastest-growing credit card company in the U.S., Delaware-based Juniper Financial Corporation, is spending much of his time and resources on another enterprise -- trying to persuade other "conservative" businessmen around the country that Bush's "global war on terror" has been a disaster and rally them in favour of an entirely different approach.

"Simply put, U.S. policies and actions in Iraq and throughout the world have increased world terrorism," he wrote in a report released last week by American Respect, a website he founded already in 2003, and by the New America Foundation (NAF), an increasingly influential think tank of what it sometimes calls "the radical centre".

"War will not rid the world of terrorism," he argued in his 41-page report, "Terrorism: A Brief for Americans", some 50,000 copies of which have already been ordered for distribution to local business groups, such as chambers of commerce and Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions clubs around the nation, as well as to his colleagues in big business.

Complete article here:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36449

[Skittles]

1. he is trying to fix what he helped to break

but I really, really hope he feels the guilt