Posted on 04/18/2006 10:38:57 AM PDT by Carl/NewsMax
Former CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni - who has called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign because of his alleged incompetence in running the Iraq war - admitted six years ago that he made the disastrous decision to have the U.S.S. Cole use the port of Aden, Yemen for refueling, where the ship was blown up by al Qaeda terrorists.
Worse still, at least one report indicates that Gen. Zinni may have played a role in an August 1998 leak that tipped off Osama bin Laden to an impending U.S. cruise missile attack - allowing the top terrorist to escape.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in October 2000, a week after the Cole attack, the then-recently retired Zinni said: "I pass that buck on to nobody."
The Rumsfeld critic explained that he personally signed off on berthing the Cole in Yemen even though "their coast is a sieve for terrorists."
"The threat conditions in Aden were better than elsewhere," he insisted, citing risk assessments for Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
Gen. Zinni said that cutbacks in the size of the Navy's fleet during the Clinton years made it necessary to use regional ports for refueling, noting: "Ten years ago, we did all refueling at sea" using Navy oilers.
Still, prior to the Cole attack, there's no record that Gen. Zinni ever complained about Clinton era defense cuts.
In what may be an even more troubling development, a report indicates that the leading Rumsfeld critic may have inadvertently played a role in tipping off Osama bin Laden to an impending U.S. cruise missile attack two years before the Cole episode.
Two days after President Clinton ordered the attack on bin Laden's encampment in Khost Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported:
"Kuwait's Al-Watan newspaper, quoting unidentified sources in London today, reported that Pakistan leaked to bin Laden news about an impending U.S. strike. The sources said the leak was aimed at limiting casualties, so that bin Laden would have less justification for a counterattack.
"A Pakistani government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of the U.S. Central Command, was in Peshawar the day before the attack to meet with Pakistani officials.
"Other Pakistani sources said Zinni came with a team of U.S. intelligence experts whose task was to pinpoint the camps and determine bin Laden's exact whereabouts."
Try him for treason!
As the saying goes ...a short pencil is a lot better than a long memory.
Apparently too many of the whiners can be tripped by their own quotes. Thanks for doing the work the MSM refuses to do (to liberals).
And now this general is found to have been sharing intel with Pakistanis on OBL's location?
Are these two different times?
Carl....PASS THIS ON TO RUSH AND MICHAEL MEDVED AND SEAN AND TONY AND HUGH HEWITT!!!!!!! This is HUGE!!!.
And the press is worried about the Plame nonsense?! We could have obliterated OBL long before 9-11, and this SOB has the gall to criticize Rummy?
Just D*MN!!!!
Carl, Zinni is also anti-Israel....can you write about that fact also?? Thanks.
I'm betting that Clinton ordered the leak because he didn't really want to go to the trouble (and face criticism) of actually getting Bin Laden...he just wanted to look like he was trying.
What was it that I remember Zinni for other than being one of the newly-annointed Six Generals of Discontent.
He did something else, worked on the Israeli - Palestinian thing maybe? I just cannot recall.
In a hairbrained scheme that was personally approved by then-President Clinton, the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.
You and your team do great work.
Oops!
Yet another reason to elect a socialist democrat. We could elect another Klinton and downsize the entire military force, decommission all our ships, mothball all our tanks and planes, and put the troops to working in national parks and city parks picking up trash and cutting grass and weeds. This would be PERFECT!!! /sarcasm on and hot!
"Gen. Zinni may have played a role in an August 1998 leak that tipped off Osama bin Laden to an impending U.S. cruise missile attack - allowing the top terrorist to escape..."
Nice.../s
Presiding over a Know-Nothing Do-Nothing Administration!
...that is unless you were a Branch Davidian or a little boy from Cuba.
Clinton also spent more on procuring Anthrax vaccine for troops rotating through CENTCOM than he did on Body Armor.
Zinni the Pooh ran CENTCOM.
I guess that depends on your definition of "blown up."
Did it sink, like the ships at Pearl Harbor, as a result of being blown up?
When JFK's entire cabinet expressed thier individual points of view on a matter during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, he listened and announced that the vote was 9 to 1 (his)and thus, the majority of one carried the decision. Harry Truman did the same regarding the relief from command of General MacArthur, he was the lone voice in the cabinet room for that result.
The supervailing point being that staff and advisors are there to be the collective Devil's Advocate for the position that differs from the boss. And, after considering their views, the boss makes a decision on his own since the ''buck'' stops with him. In Rumsfeld's case, he wouldn't even listen and punished any officer with a pre-decision differing point of view than that widely known by the group to be that of the boss. It would be the rare senior staff officer who hadn't served under a superior having a similar management methodology. It would also be the rare agency, operational entity or unit that saw such a superior's survival after a series of his unilateral decisons made in direct contradiction to the senior staff experts in any given area of operations, logistics or policy, they get replaced after a pattern of failure develops.
OMG
Bump
Talk about treason!
I have long considered 9/11 to be slick willie's legacy.
Every time he went to the area and met with Arafat there was an increased number of attacks against Israeli citizens.
Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.
..................
Or a resident of Belgrade.
Back during the Clinton years, the deal was to "take responsibility" for screw ups, but no penalty would ever be applied. It was all window-dressing for the Evening News.
Remember Janet Reno "taking responsibility" for the Waco debacle? Did she ever pay a price for that? In fact, she was hailed as a hero for being so forthright. Who cares if she burned all those kids to death? She came up with the right soundbite by the 5:30 deadline, so she was a hero!
Thousands and thoudands of ex Generals in civis.
A few are bitching. Such is life. Zunni is nobody anyway.
What book is he writing?
Zinni fell on his sword during his testimony for Slick Willie over the Cole but the question remains why didn't Zinnis' successor at CENTCOM, Tommy Franks, change the policy and ROEs in the three months that ensued after Zinni left CENTCOM in July and the Cole was attacked in October.
ROTFLMAO! As good as "Senator Bareback YoMama!"
Zinni was Powells' envoy not Slicks'.
The press doesn't give a flip about Flame. They use that case to distract from things like this.
Special Envoy who would sit there grinning like an idiot everytime Hamas would blow up a bus full of children when he was in Jerusalem. I can't remember exactly when that was.
Written. He is, as we speak, on a book tour for a tome he collaborated on with Tom Clancy.
WhAT? Have you never heard of Posse Comitatis? Not to mention the putting of the "Heart & Soul" (Ilegales) of America out of those jobs? Put the military to work picking up trash in Tehran. That will show Ahmedine-jihad that we mean no harm.
So, did Clinton give orders to Zinni to tip off Osama??? My guess is that he did.....TWO TRAITORS!! HANG EM HIGH!!
Powell is ANOTHER anti-Israel guy.
Tom Clancy has gone over to the Dark side also.
In the Department of Defense there are:
34 - four star generals/admirals
124 - three star generals/admirals
278 - two star generals/admirals
439 - one star generals/admirals
Throw in the U.S. Coast Guard and you have 900 generals and admirals on active duty today. This is roughly the same number of generals/admirals who were on active duty in WWII when our military was 12,000,000 strong.
Given that on any given year 15-20% of those generals/admirals will retire each year it doesn't take much figuring to realize that the number of generals calling for Secretary Rumsfeld to resign is laughable.
They could have just as easily used a friendly port in the U.A.E. like Jabal Ali, which we used freely during GW1. The more I hear about Zinni, the more I'm glad he's not an active duty Marine general.
Sounds like too many damn generals to me.
That does it. Tom has sold his last book, video game, and movie to me. A pox on you Clancy.
Aden is quite a ways from Jebel Ali, but I am wondering if going into Aqabah Jordan, Djibouti, Muskat Oman, Hurghada Egypt wouldn't have been better. I think the truth of the matter is that the Cole went into Aden for only one reason, to show the flag.
You are correct, he was appointed by Powell and lasted about one year in that capacity as minister of peace.
Powell pushed for a cease fire in the first gulf war. Complained about seeing 'brothers' shot by the coaltion forces.
Powell was ALWAYS Bush's weakest link....still is....he's PATHETIC!
As usual, you are quite mistaken. The book with Clancy, Battle Ready, was published in 2004. The current book he is hawking, The Battle for Peace, was written with Tony Koltz.
His dedication to this country takes second place to his thoughts of the same 'global test' that kerry thought was such a great idea.
What would have been better was refueling at sea.
Yes, Powell is a globalist because of his EGO....America just isn't big enough for him.
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