Nothing black and white about the dead from the USS Cole.
They were good people and their souls are with god now
Pray for their families and continue the mission
The ship was refueling in stream away from docks for force protection reasons
Any reluctance to shoot on the part of deck sentries is attributable to the ship's chain of command not Zinni
Yeah they got blown up and 17 of them died. It's a shame
But do you honestly believe a CINC sat in his HQ and did nothing but track the USS Cole and issue it orders personally?
He was responsible for the Cole just like I was responsible for everything as a company and Battalion level commander
I wise old captain told me right before I took the flag that on any given day in my command something was ahppening that I was responsible for, didn't know about and could get me relieved.
All you can do is create a decent command climate, give the unit a good azimuth to work along and trust your people.
Zinni did that, his decision was fundamentally correct. It didn't work out. That's all. People died.
I'm sure it troubled him deeply, I'm also sure he had the hardness of characterto realize that he was not wrng and that Yemen is important to our national strategy in the middle east
So you want us to never go to Yemen again because there are terrorists there and they might strike us?