"they've screwed up...heads should roll"--general anthony zinni, ret usmc
sunday night, the cbs newsmagazine '60 minutes' featured a steve kroft interview with retired general anthony zinni usmc, former commander-in-chief of us central command (in charge of all american forces in the middle east) and former special envoy to the middle east under george w bush.
zinni and tom clancy recently co-authored "Battle Ready": a book about his 40+ years of service as a warrior/diplomat. in the book, he blames senior civilian pentagon officials for having failed the president and the country. "in the lead up to the iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."
heres an except from the transcript of last night's broadcast, in which zinni explains why he and other military leaders opposed the bush/rumsfeld expedition in iraq:
"Zinni believes this was a war the generals didn’t want – but it was a war the civilians wanted.
“I can't speak for all generals, certainly. But I know we felt that this situation was contained. Saddam was effectively contained. The no-fly, no-drive zones. The sanctions that were imposed on him,” says Zinni.
“Now, at the same time, we had this war on terrorism. We were fighting al Qaeda. We were engaged in Afghanistan. We were looking at 'cells' in 60 countries. We were looking at threats that we were receiving information on and intelligence on. And I think most of the generals felt, let's deal with this one at a time. Let's deal with this threat from terrorism, from al Qaeda.”
zinni also blamed names:
"the neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.
“I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do,” says Zinni.
“And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.”
Adds Zinni: “I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from.”
Zinni said he believed their strategy was to change the Middle East and bring it into the 21st century.
“All sounds very good, all very noble. The trouble is the way they saw to go about this is unilateral aggressive intervention by the United States - the take down of Iraq as a priority,” adds Zinni. “And what we have become now in the United States, how we're viewed in this region is not an entity that's promising positive change. We are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.”
among the most serious bad calls he enumerated was rumsfeld's rejection of zinni's plan that called for 300,000 troops--nearly double what rumsfeld decided was adequate (300,000 was in line with that of former general shinseki).
the interview concluded with zinni explaining the reason why suppressing dissent in time of war is an inherently bad idea:
“It is part of your duty. Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else. And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result,” says Zinni.
“I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed? It’s leading down a path where we're not succeeding and accomplishing the missions we've set out to do.”
to read the entire transcript, go here: zinni transcript