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Lanny_MacDonald · 08-25-2004, 09:44 AM

It had been a while since I'd been to this site and was shocked to see this document hanging out there. It's the smoking gun that has been ignored IMO. This is required reading for anyone who wants to know the truth about Iraq on all fronts. This document is a transcription of an address that retired General Anthony Zinni (the CENTCOM commander) gave to the Center for Defense Information, the long time publisher of The Defense Monitor, in regards to Iraq and the motivations for going there in the first place. It is completely non-partisan and spoken from the heart of a man who lived there and built up something that he was obviously proud of. The link is to the whole whole document, followed by some snippets and my thoughts on Zinni's comments.

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printve...am/document.cfm

"I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true."

I think this is the first time that I have heard the term containment since 9/11. Its interesting that the media has lost track of the base premise behind defense and that is containment of our enemy. Its a good thing that our military commanders appear to have that principle in mind, but it appears that it is lost on the existing president.

"We built a wonderful coalition, without any formal treaties, without any particular arrangement.

During that time, when we asked allies in that region to join us in other conflicts, like Somalia, they came. Egyptians came. Pakistanis came. The Saudis came. The Kuwaitis came. The Emirates came and provided forces. They joined us in the Balkans. They joined us elsewhere on operations when we needed them... We built a magnificent coalition of forces, without ever once signing a piece of paper."

Obviously there was a lot of goodwill and cooperation that was being built up in the region. It sounds like America was making some in roads into developing relations in the area and gaining a level of trust.

"And we contained Saddam. We watched his military shrink to less than half its size from the beginning of the Gulf War until the time I left command, not only shrinking in size, but dealing with obsolete equipment, ill-trained troops, dissatisfaction in the ranks, a lot of absenteeism. We didn't see the Iraqis as a formidable force. We saw them as a decaying force."

Wow. If this doesn't drive a spike right through the heart of anyone who thinks going into Iraq was the right thing to do then I don't know what else would. Oh, may this next snippet will do that for those who harken back to the WMD crutch.

"We couldn't account for all the weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors that were in there had to assume that the weapons of mass destruction that were in his original inventory that we could not account for, might still be there. So that was always a planning factor. But when you look hard at that, these were artillery shells, rocket rounds, that he would have to be hiding somewhere that were getting old. And if he had to bring them out and use them, think about this, he's got to move them to artillery positions, to battery positions, under total dominance of the air by the United States. I sure as hell wouldn't have been ... want to be that battery commander that said tomorrow you're going to get five truckloads of chemical weapons to be stored in your area to shoot. Not under the air power we brought down and the ability to interdict them. And these were tactical capabilities."

In other words, Saddam's threat of WMD was not a threat at all to anyone accorind to the military in the region. But was Saddam considered a threat by anyone in the region?

"We bombed him almost at will. No one in the region felt threatened by Saddam. No one in the region denied us our ability to conduct sanctions. Many countries joined us in sanctions enforcement, in the no-fly zones, and in the maritime intercept operations where we attempted to intercept his oil and gas smuggling."

I think that's a big resounding NO.

"A side note on that. The process of containment created an "alliance," which I would put in quotation marks, in the region. We located our forces in all six GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council countries. When we deployed, we made sure that we got everybody in the region pregnant when we acted, and deployed, and enforced sanctions. We deliberately put our troops in positions and operating out of bases where everybody had to make a political commitment. That was the rule and everybody understood it. And we built an arrangement out there, a security arrangement, through the enforcement of those sanctions, that I think helped us create stability. I think we made a mistake in not capitalizing on that. I think the Clinton doctrine and policy of engagement was right, but we never really got the resources or authority to do it to its fullest extent. I think there was a reluctant Congress to provide those kinds of resources, but that would have been cheaper by half. The idea to regionalize our problems and allow us to build the forces within a region that can deal with these problems, I think is a much more powerful idea. We could have done that in Africa, we could have done that in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and elsewhere."

Seems like they understood how to build an alliance and were effectively moving in the right direction.

"The idea that we will walk in and be met with open arms. The idea that we will have people that will glom on to democracy overnight. The idea that strategically we will reform, reshape, and change the Middle East by this action -- we've changed it all right."

I guess the flowers and dancing in the streets didn't happen? I guess that the whole exercise has done more to divide than unite the region in its battle against the tyrant?

"The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."

This says it all. Hussein was no threat. To anyone. Not to his neighbours and not to his own people. To no one, especially the United States.

"Why would we believe that we would not get it this time? Why would we believe that this time for some reason, unlike before, the inspectors would not call the shots honestly? The inspectors don't make judgments they just make reports of facts. We have Americans on inspection teams. Ralph Ekeus, Richard Butler, they always came across with an honest assessment of what was happening. Why, suddenly, was Mohamed El Baradei and Hans Blix suspect? And what was the rush to war?"

What was the rush? There was no threat of offensive, there were no weapons of mass destruction posing a threat, Hussein was contained, where was the need for war?

"The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London. We bought into their intelligence reports."

There's the intelligence that congress bought. No one else did.

"These exiles did not have credibility inside the country or in the region. Not only did they not have credibility, it was clear that the information they were providing us many times was not correct and accurate. We believed in them."

In other words, WTF were the pinheads in Washington thinking???

"I understood and knew that Gen. Franks and CENTCOM, would do their part. I knew damn right well the security piece would be taken care of, and I knew we had a good plan. I didn't hear anything that told me that they had the scope of planning for the political reconstruction, the economic reconstruction, social reconstruction, the development of building of infrastructure for that country. And I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has to that political, economic, social other parts, just a handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was patently ridiculous."

So the rush was on to go to war. They knew it would take three weeks to take apart the Iraqi resistence (Franks did it in 19 days), but had nothing in the can for the reconstruction. Obviously a well thought out situation. One thing was certain though, WHO was going to get the contracts for the rebuilding. THAT was decided upon very quickly. But the plan, it just wasn't there. One thing is for certain, the commanders in the area were not on board nor confident with the plan.

"I would do several things now. But clearly the first and most important thing you need is that UN resolution. That's been the model since the end of the Cold War, that has given us the basis and has given our allies the basis for joining us and helping us and provided the legitimacy we need.

We can't keep dropping paper on the UN, it's time for a group of adults, called the Perm Five, the permanent five members of the Security Council, to sit down and come up with some agreeable, mutually developed UN resolution that would allow other countries now to participate. And I think there are many out there at different levels, especially in the region, that would want to participate and help and before it comes too tough and too costly, we need to get them in."

Common sense approach. Get the world involved and make it everyone's problem. Just like they did in the Gulf and all the countries in the region. Zinni goes on to explain many ways that he would have gone about rebuilding security in Iraq, and its all great ideas that should have been implemented. But the politicians know how to do things better than those who do it for a living.

"We also have to stop the tough talk rhetoric. One thing you learn in this business is, don't say it unless you're going to do it. In this part of the world, strength matters. And if you say you are going to go in and wipe them out, you better do it. If you say you're going to do it and then you back off and find another solution, you have lost face."

Something Bush doesn't understand. He likes to talk tough, but doesn't have the resolve to make it happen.

"Our whole public relations effort out there has been a disaster. I read the newspapers from the region every night online, and if you watch Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, or even some of the more moderate stations out there, and you read the editorials in the newspaper, there is a different war being portrayed in that region. A different conflict than we're getting from Fox, CNN, CBS, et cetera."

No, really? Wow, I guess Cow better have a chat with the General and explain to him that the propaganda being shoved down our throats really isn't propaganda and is indeed a true relection of what is happening in Iraq.

"And we better get the two jibed somehow, because that has been a massive failure."

No, its been a complete and total success!!!

"And there again, we could use advice from the region as to how to go about it."

Are you crazy? What the hell would Arabs know about dealing with other Arabs???

"Look, the plan for the future of Iraq has to be done by Iraqis, by people in the region and by the international community not just handed to them by Americans."

Someone here has been saying that too. Not sure who that would be?

"And I was very supportive of this administration. Certainly Secretary Powell and those in the State Department that I respect tremendously. It was not my desire to see this administration fail. If anything, I had an allegiance and I think, owed them something for the trust they gave me.

When this started to come about and I realized that it was wrong. I realized that if I speak out, I lose either way. If I’m wrong, you know, another guy who couldn’t figure it out. If I’m right, it means we have casualties, lost treasure and our image around the world is destroyed.

It was a lose-lose proposition from the beginning. And so it was very painful to go down this road. I did not want to be right. I also knew by not being right, that was going to be painful too. But, it had to be said, because I can’t stand looking at the end of another news story and seeing the faces of those young kids."

Sounds like someone who knew the situation pretty well, knew the plan in place was dog shizzle and knew failure was ahead. Yet he stood by his duty for those that reported to him. A man of honor.

Finally...

"You know, if you have a strategy, and you believe in it, and you believe it’s the right strategy. Sell it on its merits to the American people. Make them think strategically and accept it or not. Don’t sell it on a Gulf of Tonkin or a WMD imminent threat because in the end, that’s going to come back and get you. "

Says it all.

08-25-2004, 09:44 AM	#1
Lanny_MacDonald Lifetime Suspension Join Date: Oct 2001 Exp:	It had been a while since I'd been to this site and was shocked to see this document hanging out there. It's the smoking gun that has been ignored IMO. This is required reading for anyone who wants to know the truth about Iraq on all fronts. This document is a transcription of an address that retired General Anthony Zinni (the CENTCOM commander) gave to the Center for Defense Information, the long time publisher of The Defense Monitor, in regards to Iraq and the motivations for going there in the first place. It is completely non-partisan and spoken from the heart of a man who lived there and built up something that he was obviously proud of. The link is to the whole whole document, followed by some snippets and my thoughts on Zinni's comments. http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printve...am/document.cfm "I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true." I think this is the first time that I have heard the term containment since 9/11. Its interesting that the media has lost track of the base premise behind defense and that is containment of our enemy. Its a good thing that our military commanders appear to have that principle in mind, but it appears that it is lost on the existing president. "We built a wonderful coalition, without any formal treaties, without any particular arrangement. During that time, when we asked allies in that region to join us in other conflicts, like Somalia, they came. Egyptians came. Pakistanis came. The Saudis came. The Kuwaitis came. The Emirates came and provided forces. They joined us in the Balkans. They joined us elsewhere on operations when we needed them... We built a magnificent coalition of forces, without ever once signing a piece of paper." Obviously there was a lot of goodwill and cooperation that was being built up in the region. It sounds like America was making some in roads into developing relations in the area and gaining a level of trust. "And we contained Saddam. We watched his military shrink to less than half its size from the beginning of the Gulf War until the time I left command, not only shrinking in size, but dealing with obsolete equipment, ill-trained troops, dissatisfaction in the ranks, a lot of absenteeism. We didn't see the Iraqis as a formidable force. We saw them as a decaying force." Wow. If this doesn't drive a spike right through the heart of anyone who thinks going into Iraq was the right thing to do then I don't know what else would. Oh, may this next snippet will do that for those who harken back to the WMD crutch. "We couldn't account for all the weapons of mass destruction. The inspectors that were in there had to assume that the weapons of mass destruction that were in his original inventory that we could not account for, might still be there. So that was always a planning factor. But when you look hard at that, these were artillery shells, rocket rounds, that he would have to be hiding somewhere that were getting old. And if he had to bring them out and use them, think about this, he's got to move them to artillery positions, to battery positions, under total dominance of the air by the United States. I sure as hell wouldn't have been ... want to be that battery commander that said tomorrow you're going to get five truckloads of chemical weapons to be stored in your area to shoot. Not under the air power we brought down and the ability to interdict them. And these were tactical capabilities." In other words, Saddam's threat of WMD was not a threat at all to anyone accorind to the military in the region. But was Saddam considered a threat by anyone in the region? "We bombed him almost at will. No one in the region felt threatened by Saddam. No one in the region denied us our ability to conduct sanctions. Many countries joined us in sanctions enforcement, in the no-fly zones, and in the maritime intercept operations where we attempted to intercept his oil and gas smuggling." I think that's a big resounding NO. "A side note on that. The process of containment created an "alliance," which I would put in quotation marks, in the region. We located our forces in all six GCC, Gulf Cooperation Council countries. When we deployed, we made sure that we got everybody in the region pregnant when we acted, and deployed, and enforced sanctions. We deliberately put our troops in positions and operating out of bases where everybody had to make a political commitment. That was the rule and everybody understood it. And we built an arrangement out there, a security arrangement, through the enforcement of those sanctions, that I think helped us create stability. I think we made a mistake in not capitalizing on that. I think the Clinton doctrine and policy of engagement was right, but we never really got the resources or authority to do it to its fullest extent. I think there was a reluctant Congress to provide those kinds of resources, but that would have been cheaper by half. The idea to regionalize our problems and allow us to build the forces within a region that can deal with these problems, I think is a much more powerful idea. We could have done that in Africa, we could have done that in the Middle East, in Central Asia, and elsewhere." Seems like they understood how to build an alliance and were effectively moving in the right direction. "The idea that we will walk in and be met with open arms. The idea that we will have people that will glom on to democracy overnight. The idea that strategically we will reform, reshape, and change the Middle East by this action -- we've changed it all right." I guess the flowers and dancing in the streets didn't happen? I guess that the whole exercise has done more to divide than unite the region in its battle against the tyrant? "The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those." This says it all. Hussein was no threat. To anyone. Not to his neighbours and not to his own people. To no one, especially the United States. "Why would we believe that we would not get it this time? Why would we believe that this time for some reason, unlike before, the inspectors would not call the shots honestly? The inspectors don't make judgments they just make reports of facts. We have Americans on inspection teams. Ralph Ekeus, Richard Butler, they always came across with an honest assessment of what was happening. Why, suddenly, was Mohamed El Baradei and Hans Blix suspect? And what was the rush to war?" What was the rush? There was no threat of offensive, there were no weapons of mass destruction posing a threat, Hussein was contained, where was the need for war? "The sixth mistake, and maybe the biggest one, was propping up and trusting the exiles, the infamous "Gucci Guerillas" from London. We bought into their intelligence reports." There's the intelligence that congress bought. No one else did. "These exiles did not have credibility inside the country or in the region. Not only did they not have credibility, it was clear that the information they were providing us many times was not correct and accurate. We believed in them." In other words, WTF were the pinheads in Washington thinking??? "I understood and knew that Gen. Franks and CENTCOM, would do their part. I knew damn right well the security piece would be taken care of, and I knew we had a good plan. I didn't hear anything that told me that they had the scope of planning for the political reconstruction, the economic reconstruction, social reconstruction, the development of building of infrastructure for that country. And I think that lack of planning, that idea that you can do this by the seat of the pants, reconstruct a country, to make decisions on the fly, to beam in on the side that has to that political, economic, social other parts, just a handful of people at the last minute to be able to do it was patently ridiculous." So the rush was on to go to war. They knew it would take three weeks to take apart the Iraqi resistence (Franks did it in 19 days), but had nothing in the can for the reconstruction. Obviously a well thought out situation. One thing was certain though, WHO was going to get the contracts for the rebuilding. THAT was decided upon very quickly. But the plan, it just wasn't there. One thing is for certain, the commanders in the area were not on board nor confident with the plan. "I would do several things now. But clearly the first and most important thing you need is that UN resolution. That's been the model since the end of the Cold War, that has given us the basis and has given our allies the basis for joining us and helping us and provided the legitimacy we need. We can't keep dropping paper on the UN, it's time for a group of adults, called the Perm Five, the permanent five members of the Security Council, to sit down and come up with some agreeable, mutually developed UN resolution that would allow other countries now to participate. And I think there are many out there at different levels, especially in the region, that would want to participate and help and before it comes too tough and too costly, we need to get them in." Common sense approach. Get the world involved and make it everyone's problem. Just like they did in the Gulf and all the countries in the region. Zinni goes on to explain many ways that he would have gone about rebuilding security in Iraq, and its all great ideas that should have been implemented. But the politicians know how to do things better than those who do it for a living. "We also have to stop the tough talk rhetoric. One thing you learn in this business is, don't say it unless you're going to do it. In this part of the world, strength matters. And if you say you are going to go in and wipe them out, you better do it. If you say you're going to do it and then you back off and find another solution, you have lost face." Something Bush doesn't understand. He likes to talk tough, but doesn't have the resolve to make it happen. "Our whole public relations effort out there has been a disaster. I read the newspapers from the region every night online, and if you watch Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, or even some of the more moderate stations out there, and you read the editorials in the newspaper, there is a different war being portrayed in that region. A different conflict than we're getting from Fox, CNN, CBS, et cetera." No, really? Wow, I guess Cow better have a chat with the General and explain to him that the propaganda being shoved down our throats really isn't propaganda and is indeed a true relection of what is happening in Iraq. "And we better get the two jibed somehow, because that has been a massive failure." No, its been a complete and total success!!! "And there again, we could use advice from the region as to how to go about it." Are you crazy? What the hell would Arabs know about dealing with other Arabs??? "Look, the plan for the future of Iraq has to be done by Iraqis, by people in the region and by the international community not just handed to them by Americans." Someone here has been saying that too. Not sure who that would be? "And I was very supportive of this administration. Certainly Secretary Powell and those in the State Department that I respect tremendously. It was not my desire to see this administration fail. If anything, I had an allegiance and I think, owed them something for the trust they gave me. When this started to come about and I realized that it was wrong. I realized that if I speak out, I lose either way. If I’m wrong, you know, another guy who couldn’t figure it out. If I’m right, it means we have casualties, lost treasure and our image around the world is destroyed. It was a lose-lose proposition from the beginning. And so it was very painful to go down this road. I did not want to be right. I also knew by not being right, that was going to be painful too. But, it had to be said, because I can’t stand looking at the end of another news story and seeing the faces of those young kids." Sounds like someone who knew the situation pretty well, knew the plan in place was dog shizzle and knew failure was ahead. Yet he stood by his duty for those that reported to him. A man of honor. Finally... "You know, if you have a strategy, and you believe in it, and you believe it’s the right strategy. Sell it on its merits to the American people. Make them think strategically and accept it or not. Don’t sell it on a Gulf of Tonkin or a WMD imminent threat because in the end, that’s going to come back and get you. " Says it all.