By Lisa Mascaro

Wed, Mar 19, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Washington — The general who led the Marine Corps during the run-up to the Iraq war is now working on national security from another angle: trying to convince the next administration that the country needs a comprehensive plan for energy.

Gen. James L. Jones, who retired last year after 40 years in uniform, strode Tuesday into Washington’s posh Hay Adams Hotel for breakfast, a place near his new office where morning coffee goes for $4.75 a cup. It was the morning before the five-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

Jones still looked very much a Marine, with his close-cropped hair and his mostly steel-straight frame under a charcoal pinstriped suit. He settled in for eggs and grits.

Securing the nation’s energy future — that is, dealing with the stubborn reality that worldwide demand for power and fuel will eventually outpace supply — is an initiative the next president “has got to have up there at the very top,” he said.

Jones has been meeting with the presidential candidates in his new job at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s just-launched Institute for 21st Century Energy. “The United States right now is seen as part of the problem, not part of the solution,” he said. He wants to reverse that.

Even though Jones no longer wears the uniform, he is still often called on to assess the national defense situation. The questions turn to those that might be asked of a military man.

The flow of oil from Iraq was supposed to finance that country’s reconstruction, but remains below prewar levels. The price of a barrel of crude has soared to record highs, above $100.

“I will grant there was a lot of miscalculation in Iraq,” said the general, whose final post was head of European Command and supreme allied commander of NATO. “Iraq is important, and we need to fix that, get it right, but it’s not the silver bullet.”

The institute’s energy plan is a business-friendly approach that contains many elements already rejected by the environmental community. It includes continued reliance on new coal-fired power plants that have been rejected for Nevada by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The institute calls for renewable energy development but warns against taxing oil companies, a tactic Democrats have tried to fund renewable power development.

The institute also says there is a need for new nuclear plants. The chamber has long been a big backer of the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The institute agrees, calling Yucca “well-suited” as a repository, a position counter to the state of Nevada’s assertion that the site is flawed.

Jones wants to push these issues center stage, and he said that no new president should sit down to discuss national security without the energy secretary by his side.

Jones underscored his point by suggesting that some of the billions this country sends to the Middle East each year for oil “is coming back to us” in the form of terrorism.

“I’m quite sure the inside joke in the terrorist organizations is we’re paying for our own destruction,” he said.

It’s hard for a reporter to let the conversation close without asking the general whether he thinks it was right to go into Iraq.

“Whether we should have or shouldn’t have, we are,” he said. “Our job now is to bring it to a close.”

And his new job is just beginning.