Thomas McInerney

Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, USAF (Ret.), is director of NetStar Systems, and a Fox News pundit. He advocates military-led regime change in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Syria, and is a member of the Iran Policy Committee.

McInerney was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1959, and completed his pilot training in 1960. He served in the United States Air Force as a command pilot, with more than 4,500 flying hours. He completed four tours of duty in Vietnam, performed flight reconnaissance missions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and air escort missions in the West Berlin Air Corridor. McInerney earned a bachelor of science degree from the United States Military Academy in 1959 and an master's degree in international relations from George Washington University in 1972. He graduated from the Armed Forces Staff College in 1970 and from the National War College in 1973.

From March 1996 to December 1999, McInerney was Chief Executive Officer and President of Business Executives for National Security (BENS), a business association lobbying for greater commercial involvement in national defense programmes. From 1994, McInerney was Director of the Defense Performance Review (DPR), reporting to the Secretary of Defense. In that capacity, he led the Pentagon’s “reinventing government” effort, reducing government payrolls by contracting out work to private companies. NetStar Systems, the company he directs, is a supplier of secure intranet and knowledge base systems to the Defense and Intelligence sectors.

McInerney was implicated by the New York Times on April 20th, 2008 as being one of many military analysts with ties to private lobbying companies and military contractors used by the Pentagon to promote escalating military actions. Before the Iraq War McInerney appeared on Fox News with John Gibson to promote the Iraq War and said

"We are not going after the classical targets that we would in an invasion. It is a liberation, so we are not going to take down the infrastructure. We are not going to take down bridges. I have not seen the air campaign, but knowing, they know it is going to be a short war, it is going to be a violent war. Don't misunderstand me. It is not a cake walk, but it is going to be a very short war so why destroy those things so Bechtel has to come back in to build them up or some other construction company."Fox News with John Gibson

McInerney is now a very public proponent of pre-emptive war against Iran. At the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, McInerey described seeing a nuclear weapon sitting inside an unlocked Coke machine at a military base and how we have become too soft of a society. He then said,

"I believe I would kick off a 48 hour military campaign. This option says that we'll hit in 48 hours and it is limited to 48 hours because you want the Iranian people to know it is not after them. It is primarily their nuclear facilities. You can put them back at least five years. I'd lead it off with our new 30,000 lb bunker buster and a B-2 can drop two of them in the same hole. Ahmajinadad does not have a hole deep enough that can stop that. But I'd put 70 stealth aircraft and 400 non-stealth, in 48 hours hit 2500 targets led by their nuclear, followed by their air defense, followed by their Shihab retalitory, their navy so they can not close the straits, their air force so they can not force-project out and their command and control. They have two command and control systems. One the IRG the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Core because they do not trust the regular army, navy and air force. Maybe we ought to exploit that. It goes all the way up to two chairman of the joints chief of staff to one defense minister."New Hampshire Institute of Politics Speech

McInerney also said,

"I want you to know what is the public available information. You can google it and you can find this information out, but you're not going to find it out from the mainstream media. Fox news doesn't let me do this kind of stuff. Now, they've let me give you the military option. I don't particularly want to use the military option. Now the one thing I can guarantee you is that we will not use ground forces. We will let the Iranian people do it. We'll use the model, we took Afghanistan down in two months. We only used 100 trigger pullers in Afghanistan. There are ways to take that government down and the Iranian people want to."New Hampshire Institute of Politics Speech

Books

*Thomas McInerney and Paul E. Vallely, "", Regnery Publishing, February 1, 2004 ISBN 0-89526-066-2

External links

* [http://www.netstarsys.com/family/mcinerney.html Thomas McInerney biographical note] , NetStar Systems, accessed February 2005.
* [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june99/casualties_5-14.html Interview with Thomas McInerney and Lt. General Gard from 1999]

ee also

*WMD theories in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War