Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Rick Faurot]

Ex-Bush supporter endorses Kerry
Retired Air Force general appears in TV ad for senator
ELLYN FERGUSON
Statesman Journal
August 21, 2004

WASHINGTON — Battling attacks on presidential candidate John Kerry’s war record, Democrats today will begin running a television ad in Oregon and 20 other states featuring former Republican and retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak of Oregon.

McPeak, who lives in Lake Oswego, said that Kerry has a “real strategy to make America safer” and would be a better leader than President Bush.

The Democratic ad starts airing today on national cable networks and local media markets in states the Democratic National Committee thinks are competitive. The independent expenditure arm of the DNC is paying for the ad but by law cannot coordinate such actions with the Kerry campaign.

In the ad, which was filmed Thursday, McPeak says that he endorsed Bush in 2000 but is backing Kerry now.

“Nothing is more important to me than protecting America,” says McPeak, a fighter pilot in Vietnam who rose to leadership in the Persian Gulf War in 1991. “John Kerry has the strength and common sense we need in a commander in chief.”

McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff under the first President Bush and President Clinton, told reporters Friday that he had been impressed with Kerry’s toughness and integrity in his official dealings with him through the years.

McPeak said he broke with the president regarding the war in Iraq.

“What I’m against is amateur hour (in Iraq) — the sloppiness in the postwar phase,” he said

http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=85466
http://www.usndemvet.com/blog/archives/002007.html