Public Sold Bill of Goods by Administration, Perot Says : Home front: Outspoken Dallas executive warns that combat is a matter of death and pain, not a ‘second Super Bowl.’

H. Ross Perot has a new mission: to persuade the nation not to go to war and to show the people they have been sold a bill of goods by the Bush Administration.

In speech after speech, Perot, one of the nation’s richest men, has been hammering home his message: that only Congress can declare war and that the Bush Administration has portrayed combat as more of a “second Super Bowl” than as pain and death.

“I have a keen understanding of what war is. It is not an athletic contest,” Perot said at his Dallas office Friday before leaving for Los Angeles and another talk show. “My greatest fear is that they will blow the whistle and the war will begin.”

Perot, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis who made his fortune in the computer business, seems an unlikely person to be a vocal opponent of a Persian Gulf war. His office is strewn with memorabilia given to him by armed forces organizations, and many of the pictures on his wall celebrate the American GI.

But as a longtime advocate of the American soldier, Perot said he pledged to himself after the Vietnam War that he would work against any conflict that did not have the full support of the nation.

“First, commit the nation, then you commit the troops,” he said.

Perot’s activities often have made him seem a super-patriot. In 1969, he loaded up two jets with food and Christmas packages and tried to deliver them to American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. In 1973, when anti-war sentiment was at its height, Perot underwrote a parade in San Francisco for former prisoners of war. Six years later, he organized a commando unit that freed two of his employees from a Tehran prison in the opening stages of the Iranian revolution.

But Perot has always been unpredictable. He said he has received thousands of letters since he started speaking out against war and that only three were negative.

“That’s a total disconnect from any cause I’ve been involved in,” he said. “I’ve always said that even if you give money to a church, at least 10% of the people are going to disapprove.”

Perot contends that the United States is in financial disarray and could ill-afford an extended conflict. He said the press has been “as limp-wristed as any time I can remember” in not challenging the Bush Administration on its strategy, and that the U.S. government had indeed helped Saddam Hussein build up his arsenal when he was at war with Iran.

“If the press had been on its toes in August, we wouldn’t be here right now,” he said.

Perot also said that returning the emir of Kuwait to power is hardly what he would call a “great cause,” and that a gulf war would really be about ensuring the flow of oil from the region.

“I can guarantee you that if the devil himself controlled Kuwait, the oil would still flow because that’s all they’ve got to sell.”

Perot said that attacking Iraq’s forces would further destabilize the Middle East and that there should be an Arab solution to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait.

“That’s where civilization started. But in all recorded history in that part of the world it has never been stable,” he said. “I don’t think a couple of prep school guys (President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III) are going to do it. King Hussein (of Jordan) was right when he said they need an Arab solution.”

Perot said he has no idea if his one-man campaign will help deter war, but he said he is urging everyone to send postcards to senators and congressman, urging opposition to the war.