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In an indication of their growing estrangement with the Bush administration, neoconservatives are slamming the White House for failing to stop what they describe as an antisemitic campaign to marginalize them being conducted by the CIA and the State Department. This view was outlined in a memo circulating among neoconservative foreign policy analysts in Washington. Obtained by the Forward, the memo criticizes the White House for not refuting press reports on the FBI's investigation of Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin that suggest wrongdoing on the part of Jewish officials at the Defense Department. "If there is any truth to any of...

TAMPA — Her business card is utterly ordinary. No big titles. No hint of connections with the military and political elite. It lists her address, her phone number and her name in elegant script: "Honorable Jill G. Kelley." But the outsized portrait of herself that Kelley presents to the world will fit on no card. It's seen in her emails to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and others. She drops names. She mentions lunch at the White House in a casual aside, one of three visits she has made there in the last six weeks. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan...

Good morning everyone. A short post to get Freeper opinion. I saw former General Zinni on Fox News this morning and he came out in favor of the report released this week by Diane Feinstein. What is the word on Zinni? Was he a good commander? Was he anti Bush, pro Obama?

For years, Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine General who once ran U.S. Central Command, blistered the administration of George W. Bush for its handling of Iraq. Now Zinni is teeing up on President Barack Obama's approach in Iraq, saying he is "worried" by Obama's cautious approach to the current crisis and the Sunni insurgent group Islamic State. "My God, we are the most powerful nation in the world," says Zinni, who was widely reported to have been passed over for the ambassadorship to Iraq in 2009 by Obama. "This is a moment we have to act. How many Americans getting...

Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton (D) and former CENTCOM Commander Anthony Zinni told the Inter Press Service that they were paid to appear at recent events supporting the MEK, an Iranian opposition group currently considered a terrorist organization by the State Department. Hamilton and Zinni are among the many big time former government officials and military leaders who have appeared at recent pro-MEK events sponsored by a group called Executive Action, LLC. (The events true organizers remain unclear, Executive Action's CEO Neil Livingstone would only tell TPM they included Iranian American groups.) Speakers at the events have portrayed the MEK...

(CBS) The former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Anthony Zinni, warned that the deliberations over whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan - as many as 40,000, as suggested by General Stanley McChrystal - should not go on too much longer, lest the debate be viewed as indecision or weakness. On CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, Zinni said it was positive to have a strategic debate and to take all opinions into account. "But I think we have to be careful how long this goes on," he told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. "It could be seen not...

Former CENTCOM Commander Anthony Zinni said the Obama administration was dangerously close to “dithering” on Gen. McChrystal’s troop request ,saying “We’ve had a strategy since March… I don’t understand why we’re questioning his judgment at this point, and I just hope this doesn’t go on for much longer.”

Laura Rozen's The Washington Times' extraordinary report on just how badly Gen. Anthony Zinni feels he was treated by the Obama team is a mark of, above all, how close the foreign policy appointments -- hashed out between Clinton and Obama teams -- are being held. The upside of this, in theory, is relatively few leaks. The downside is lots of stress and uncertainty. And Zinni's not the only one in the dark. Former Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer, a major Obama backer and key surrogate on the campaign, is, last I heard, back at Princeton and telling friends he...

General Zinni gets undiplomatic treatment from Obama team Wed, 02/04/2009 - 5:22pm When retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Washington Times today that he was offered the job of U.S. ambassador to Iraq before being passed over in favor of diplomat Christopher Hill, he did not say that one of the outrages of the experience was that his friend of 30 years, fellow former Marine Corps commandant and now national security advisor James L. Jones had offered him the job, and then failed to tell him when the decision was changed. "Jones had called me before the inauguration and...

The Obama administration asked retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq but abruptly withdrew the appointment without explanation, Gen. Zinni said Tuesday. Gen. Zinni, a former commander of Central Command, told The Washington Times that he had been offered the job by the White House national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James Jones, two weeks ago and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed the offer on Jan. 26. "I started making arrangements," Gen. Zinni said, but became concerned because he heard nothing further from the State Department or White House. He called Gen. Jones...

Answer: A hell of a lot better than it would have if the left had had its way last year, although naturally he’s prohibited from saying so. But couple his response to the question with his point that withdrawal has to be conditions-based and it’s clear what he thinks the consequences of a significant U.S. drawdown in the near term would be. Good thing Barack Obama no longer favors one. He says he’ll have further recommendations for withdrawal — again, conditions permitting — next month, which could be quite the monkey wrench in the two parties’ convention messages, needless...

"Mike Allen of Politico.com just told me that indeed retired USMC General Anthony Zinni is near the top of the Obama list,..."

MJ: You hear the Democratic candidates talking about withdrawal, but they don't give timetables. AZ: Yeah, but that's politics. Either it's based on political appeal or it's based on naiveté. We're not going to withdraw from the region. To pull out of Iraq would say we are inviting you to set up a sanctuary and a base of operations. The first time Al Qaeda in Iraq blows up our embassy in Amman, Jordan, guess what? We're back in. The first time the Iranian influence becomes so great that they begin to incite and meddle with the Shiites and start causing...

American mediator Gen. Anthony Zinni, who met with Yasser Arafat yesterday, said about him, "I have never encountered such lack of trustworthiness in my life." He said it was a "waste of time to try to reach a serious agreement with Arafat," and will concentrate on talking with other top figures in the PA - probably a reference to Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, and others. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon breakfasted today with the European Union's Javier Solana, expressing his satisfaction with the EU's call for the dismantling of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The EU's statement of yesterday also called upon ...

Former US military leaders have called on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts. They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions. Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni. The report says the US "must become a more constructive partner" with other nations to fight global warming and...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and the U.S. likely will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report. The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts. "Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former U.S. Army chief of staff...

The elections were turned into a referendum (of sorts) on the war in Iraq - and the people have spoken. You and I -and the President might not like what was said - but it WAS said, and it's time to be practical-even if it means turning to someone in the opposition for advice.

In a recent interview on Meet the Press, retired General Anthony Zinni recycled the tired argument that President Bush didn’t need to oust Saddam Hussein and his scummy regime in Iraq. “Containment,” Zinni told Tim Russert, “worked remarkably well.” Well, yes, the policy of containment worked remarkably well, if by “remarkably well” you mean: 1. Saddam was left free to violate the terms of the cease-fire agreement which kept him in power after the 1991 Gulf War—violations which included kicking out United Nations weapons inspectors and firing on American aircraft patrolling no-fly zones. 2. Saddam stood in defiance of 17...

Zinni made a radical proposal to end the violence in Iraq: legitimise the militias and co-opt them by converting them into Territorial Guards. Their job would be to restore law and order and carry out various humanitarian and developmental tasks, with the national army providing back-up support In late April, more than a thousand anti-war activists prevented President George Bush from visiting the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, home campus of Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state. This was quite a come down from three years earlier, when Bush had declared to thunderous applause from hundreds of US sailors...

just wondering if any one has a link to what his casualty projections were in his plan for Iraq. Any one know? Seems that it might be a way to challenge his version of things.