Posted on 04/02/2006 9:38:54 PM PDT by Prost1
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former senior US military commander, Anthony Zinni, called for the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over critical mistakes made in the Iraq war.
Zinni, who headed the US Central Command from 1997 to 2000, was asked if anyone should lose their job over how Washington has managed its Iraq policy.
"Secretary of defense to begin with," he told NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
"Integrity and getting on with the mission and doing it right is more important than loyalty. Both are great traits, but integrity, honesty and performance and competence have to outweigh, in this business, loyalty," the former Marine Corps general said.
Zinni has called for a high-level shake-up at the Pentagon since late 2003, the same year the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What is not disclosed is how much money Zinni has made since retirement from his Arab friends. We know Colin Powell became an overnight multi-millionaire because he had to disclose his net worth when he became SecState.
Zinni, on the other hand, is a Director of several US companies involved in Pentagon business and Security.
A full disclosure is most appropriate!
Where was he when Clinton bombed aspirin factories and Chinese embassies.
Zinni is a putz.
"Where was he when Clinton bombed aspirin factories and Chinese embassies?"
CinC of Centcom, I believe....but that was ok.
It did not disturb his relationships with the Saudis and other Shieks.
Is Zinni a foreign lobbyist? Does he work for the Saudis or earn money from the Saudis or other Arabs as Colin Powell and other former military leaders/government officials?
Full Disclosure!
With the lead-in you provided the detractors deserve a full investigation prior to any scrutiny of Rummy.
"A full disclosure is most appropriate!" applies to them most appropriately and helps prove the value of the adage that "the guilty dog barks first".
As I recall Rumsfeld thought there were some generals who needed firing. I think Zinni was one of them.
"Zinni, who has close ties to Colin Powell and the Oil Shieks, has never been happy with the Iraq foreign policy."
However, I tend to agree with the General, at least to the point where I believe that the execution of the Iraq invasion was poorly handled.
Anyone who's studied Iraq, even for a quick seminar, should've seen lots of these problems coming. Quite frankly, we're finding out why it took a SOB like Saddam to stay in power, much less run the place. The tribal and ethnic rivalries were simmering, and once the lid was off those old scores were bound to be settled. Anyone in their right mind would've seen the Iranian interferance.
I got the feeling going into the war that the Administration was spending almost all of its time thinking about how to win the combat, a little time selling the idea to the American people, and absolutely no time thinking about what life would be like after the combat phase.
Zinni should have been s***canned over the Cole but he had already retired.
As a matter of full-disclosure.
I know Zinni was a 4star Marine General and the Centcom chief following Gulf War 1.
I also know after he retired, he became a board member of several defense and intelligence agencies and has had extensive trips to the middle east visiting the oil emirates.
I also know that Zinni has never supported military action to depose Saddam or democratize the middle east. This would shake up the emirates and kingdoms (his benefactors, I believe).
I also believe he is one of Colin Powell's spokesman and Rumsfeld knows who is directing this latest attack.
While the Dems yell about Haliburton, they never make a peep about Rockefeller! Rockefeller/Saudi Crude.
Powell, Zinni and associates (Kissinger, et al).
The waters are murky and deep because our "patriots" are so fond of our real enemies.
From my point of view, it has appeared that the Bush administration weighed it's actions heavily on what the commanders in the field said they needed.
I've seen some things I didn't quite feel comfortable with over the past few years, but I don't think any war campaign is waged perfectly. Situations morph and operations are adapted.
If Bush had taken some of the actions current detractors might have suggested, when they failed those same detractors would have been damning Bush for not taking the actions he actually did.
Of course the Bush administration hasn't met with 100% success. Will any campaign lasting more than six months? No. There will be great successes and painful losses.
If I thought Bush were guility of negligence, or Rumsfeld was an incompetent, I'd be the one to air my views. As of this date, I still cannot do so.
I think this administration has done it's level best to conduct the most appropriate campaign in Iraq that it could, and to this point I agree with it and support the team completely.
I tink our troops are for the most part well served by the Bush team. I wish I could say the same for the anti-Bush anti-war forces, who for a little face time are willing to sell our troops down the river without a second thought.
No I'm not buying it that they are doing this for the troops. Voicing differences in public is a poor way to increase support for this administration's policy, and the resultant support for troops. The terrorists see this carping, and realize that we are not unified.
That is the message that simply cannot be sent in time of war, providing you want to win.
"several defense and intelligence agencies..."
omitted "companies". Zinni is on the Board of Directors of companies doing defense and intell business.
Ether we win it and change the course of history for the better. Or, we cut and run like Zinni and others like him are wont to do, and we will have more 9/11's for the foreseeable future.
I personally don't care what anyone thinks or what/who gets broken or killed as long as it is noone in these United States.
Noone is all knowing to the point that they could have predicted what would happen after Saddam was eliminated. He, like Tito, kept the lid on all the factions through multiple means including fear. So the place fell apart. There was nothing there anyway.
"They could have run 10,000 different simulations of post combat Iraq and still not have foreseen what the experience is now."
Aw, c'mon.
Like no one would see that the Kurds, Shiites and Sunis wouldn't rise up against one another? No one could foresee the various factions and tribes within those groups settling old scores?
This part of the world hadn't governed itself in over a thousand years before they got their independence, and even then what they got was a country drawn up by Brits and Frogs who had no clue what they were doing.
One couldn't foresee the hedgerows, but they sure could foresee the surrender of the Vichy French, and the reprisals that followed, non?
The Iraq campaign continues to be an overall success IMO.
All challenges of this magnitude are subject to ups and downs.
Our leadership has been steady and our troops are skilled, valiant and professional.
That is a winning combination in a campaign of endurance.
Tony Koltz not Bernard Trainor.
Hey, I've seen some predictions from several years before the invasion that turned out to be fairly accurate, but so what? Neither they nor anyone else had a silver bullet to make it work. So the complaints about "planning for the peace" still amount to hand-wringing that invasion never should have been attempted in the first place. And that goes back to what would be the consequences of Saddam still in power in 2006? Not good.
Every leftist said this before the war and there hasn't been anything close to the organized conflict they predicted. Much blame can be affixed to errors in filling the post-Saddam vacuum at a faster pace.
3 weeks to Baghdad not short enough for you?
Anyone who's studied Iraq, even for a quick seminar, should've seen lots of these problems coming.
And who says Rumsfeld "didn't see" them coming? Maybe he saw them coming all right but made the (correct) strategic decision to focus on potential problems he deemed to be orders of magnitude larger. As a result we've taken the hill, but we haven't trimmed the bushes on the way up, and so you're chastising Rummy after the fact for failing to "see coming" the fact that the bushes would grow.
The tribal and ethnic rivalries were simmering, and once the lid was off those old scores were bound to be settled.
I tend to agree with you, but now (in case you haven't noticed) your entire comment has become self-nullifying. If the old scores were "bound to be settled" then what difference would it make if Rummy, or anyone, saw them coming, and what sort of "planning" could have possibly made the whole thing better "handled", in your eyes?
I got the feeling going into the war that the Administration was spending almost all of its time thinking about how to win the combat, a little time selling the idea to the American people, and absolutely no time thinking about what life would be like after the combat phase.
That's called "prioritizing", and it's part of what they're supposed to do.
Should have have just assumed they'd win the combat phase, and spent all their time staring at electricity grids?
;-)
This isn't 'news'.
Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up'
May 21, 2004
he says senior officials at the Pentagon are guilty of dereliction of duty
http://tinyurl.com/r7mvt
In the book, Zinni writes: "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."
Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as "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.
Let me just restate my point for emphasis: so you saw it coming, the real question is, so what?
What conclusion do you think follows from "foreseeing" the score-settling and sectarianism?
I believe I foresaw it just fine. But it didn't change my opinion about anything and if I had been in Rummy's position I don't see how "foreseeing" it would have me made do anything differently. What would it have made you do differently, I wonder? Do you know?
I don't remember anyone asking this jerk for 'his opinion'.
"I think he ran on a moderate ticket, and that's my leaning -- I'm kind of a Lugar-Hagel-Powell guy," he (Zinni) says, listing three Republicans associated with centrist foreign policy positions.
"In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never -- not once -- did it say, 'He (Saddam) has WMD.' "
Of course the administration saw this before they invaded. But they weren't so naive to say it in public.
With Muslim suicide bombers killing other Muslims, dysfunctional Muslim culture is exposed to the light of day. Muslims can no longer scapegoat the West for Islam's own self-inflicted chaos and poverty. In the meantime, a lot of Al Qaeda and other crazies are being killed.
Just be patient.
I think we all saw that including our leadership.
How heavy handed could we have been on the Ba'athists if we wanted to have the Sunni's cooperate? The Ba'athists have pushed the Sunni's to rebellion, easily playing on the occupation aspects. Again, come down hard on the Ba'athists. ( I mean killin' them like the Nazi werewolve groups) and totally alienate the Sunni's or play it close to the vest and out last the Ba'athist insurgency. Fallujia is a good example. We could have gone in hard that March and totally flattened the place or back off and try to be more surgical in our methods like we did later that year..
The Kurds for the most part have been playing by the rules. They could have pushed hard for independence but they mostly have not.
And even the Shia have tried to play by the template but pressure from Iranian influence and Al Queada attacks have been a strong temptation to retaliate against the Sunni.
Of course there were many variables in the post invasion planning and yes as it has turned out many solutions done on the fly. For instance, maybe the Brits could have done a better job of shutting their area of the border near Basra. Maybe the Brits could have played a little more hard a** on their Shia sector and riddled out the Iranian influences. Maybe the coalition should have engaged 300,000 troops instead of 150,000+. what if.. what if..
Bottom line is, I think we are in pretty good position today. The political process still exists. Al Queada in Iraq is severely damaged and the Sunni Ba'athists in my perspective are starting to run out of steam.
Are we still losing soldiers? Unfortunately so. Would we still be losing soldiers, if we had more boots at first, more plans to cutoff Iranian influence and Ba'athist rebellion, unfortunately I believe probably so.
To me the greatest tragedy of this campaign has been the unrelenting assault from the anti-war left and their media allies.
If this campaign was reported upon differently and a united front was seen from the American politic. Our enemies would be throughly demoralized and they would see little hope and therefore would be further vanquished than they are.
Hard to draw war plans up that also included the 24/7 4 month coverage of traitor Sheehan and her sycophant leftist media and political allies. People who have given aid and comfort to the enemy. People that have given our enemies the will to fight. Those are the people that have prolonged the campaign far more than any miscalculations by our commanders.
At 0745 ET:
Call-In
War in Iraq
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Washington, District of Columbia (United States)
ID: 191879 - 2 - 04/03/2006 - 0:45 - No Sale
Zinni, Anthony C. Commander in Chief (1997-2000), U.S. Central Command
General Anthony Zinni (Ret.) talks about his book "The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose," published by Palgrave Macmillan. He was formerly the commander of the U.S. Central Command, 1997-2000, and talks about the war in Iraq. Topics include his opinion of the current U.S. policy towards Iraq, military strategy, and any future withdrawal of U.S. troops.
He must not have had TS access. No wonder Rummy shitcanned him.
He was responsible for all the contingency plans for Centcom.
Rummy probably had him retire.
Zinni retired in August of 2000.
He would be the general that failed to kill bin Laden, during Clinton's reign.
Also failed to retaliate for the ship Cole disaster.
General BIG NOTHING.
He must have "Planned" his retirement then.
I did enough tours in the AOR. If his warplans had been up to par, they would have taken them off the shelf and updated them.
We should have been in Iraq at the same time as Afghanistan.
Nice to see his plans were current.
And the bombings and deaths in Riyadh (Saudi Guard Bureau) and Dharan (USAF Barracks).
The State/Embassy bombings were also on his watch.
Maybe I'm destined for the short-bus here, but I really don't understand how effecting occupation of a country with a military the size of Iraq's and maintaining a 3+ year occupation with slightly more than 2,000 fatalities to date can be considered a 'failure'.
Can somebody please clue me in to where the supposed 'failure' is here?
More importantly, where was he when Clark bombed the Chinese Embassy?
Zinni gained my respect (and saved alot of our boys) by pouring water all over Gen. Downings (see Chalabi) plan of sending in a handful of SpecOps and dissidents. Zinni said it would be our "Bay of Goats."
It pains me to no end to see Marines in such a cowardly light. Zinni is a little bitch and hindsight is always 20/20.
Actually, the only part of the post-invasion phase that really caught us off guard was the looting and rioting.
It wasn't expected that the Iraqis would go lawless at the first opportunity to the degree that they did, as fast as they did. The bulk of our occupation forces and administrative services contingent weren't ready to move because nobody planned for the complete collapse of Iraq's army as quickly as it did. If the Iraqi army had held in there and put up a long term fight and held us off for 2 months, the rest of the plan would've gone smoothly on schedule. Instead we were caught off guard with how weak the enemy turned out to be compared to our planned for scenarios.
Other than that, the rest of the post-invasion planning was pretty decent.
I watched the interview. IMHO - The problem with his argument is that Zinni sees the "highest" strategic decisions being 1) That there were WMD 2) How to invade.
I think the real HIGHEST level strategic decision resulted from this type of basic discussion among 3 to 5 people (short version):
- Iraq with a nuke is unacceptable as it would become even more agressive and it's mere possession of a nuke threatens the world.
- Iraq will likely either develop or buy (North Korea) a nuke in the next 12 years.
- If a Democrat is elected President in 2004 or 2008, the problem will not be dealt with, and IRAQ WILL HAVE A NUKE. Then America, the West, and the world will be in jeopardy. This alone is enough reason to overthrow Saddam. And, there is Congressional support.
- 9/11 changes everything. We no longer have to worry about how the leaders and people of the ME feel about us eliminating the WMD threat from Iraq.
- We have a problem that must be dealt with and the terrorists have made a mistake and presented us with an opportunistic moment to deal with it.
Strategic Decision: Do we "seize the moment" and deal with the Iraq WMD problem (present or future) now, rather than pass it to the Dems, who will almost certainly fail to properly deal with it.
I think this is what some reporter's are getting at when they ask, "Why did you go to war with Iraq?"
Its not just a feeling, this is totally true.
All the emphasis was on toppling Saddam, there was no work at all put into phase 4 until after phase 3 the toppling of Saddam.
The fact was there were many in the American political leadership who felt that with Saddam gone the Iraqis will quickly form a new government.
An A message if you are going to mention the Second World War as a example, then the examples were in the post reconstruction. In both West Germany and Japan.
Before DDay we were training up administrators who were going to take over positions in West Germany and Japan.
For those who don't know the phases.
Phase 1 :Troop buildup.
Phase 2: Air war.
Phase 3 : Ground War.
Phase 4 : Pacification and Stabilization.
The sad fact was there was no plan in operation for phase 4 there was not even any form of prepartion for a plan.
As for they could have run 10,000 different simulations of post combat and still not have foreseen what the experience is now.
That is complete and utter rubbish both British and American military leadership and intelligence assets were stating that without a proper phase 4 and the troops to carry it out the situation was going to develop along the lines it did.
The sad fact was the military were not listened to because it was not politically expedient.
Also look up articles that debated this very subject on FR when the idea of invaded Iraq was first mooted.
You will find that plenty of people had an idea of what was coming and the best way to prepare for it.
Zinni was the one who was booted 'cause he was a Clinton lackey, wasn't he?
Zinni is angling to be SecDef in the next Democratic administration. Think about it. He's held several high military commands, plus he was some sort of an envoy for Clinton when Slick was trying to force a peace settlement in the Middle East. I don't think he's quite suited to work at State since he's primarily been on the military side of things (though that didn't stop Colin Powell).
Another big problem was that the 4th ID was not allowed into the game by the Turks. It seemed that no one seriously believed that the Turks would not ultimately allow the US to pass through even though they had been making noises all along that they wouldn't. Last minute political maneuvers fell flat. This was a much more straight-forward problem that Powell & Company couldn't seem to get their arms around.
Even the best war plans don't survive the first shot.
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