America was "conned" into this war!

That dog just won't hunt Gimp.

In case you missed it, this is a political DEBATE forum that you posted a thread on.YOU posted the thread,not Gen. Zini and not LT.Col. Hackworth.If YOU were not prepared to debate the issue,you probably shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

If Gen. Zinni were here we could ask him just how it was that Pres. Bush "conned" him into bombin hell out of Iraq (sounds like war to me)a couple of years before he was even elected president.Truth is that he isn't here to answer questions or explain his position.YOU started the thread.YOU stated YOUR position.It's up to YOU to debate the issue or concede the point.

Looks like you've conceded the point.

[Gimpy]

there just a galderned minute feller!

YOU need to go back and RE-read the ORIGINAL post that started this whole "debate" as you call it. I posted an article from the Washington Post that was written by an "author" that I happen to agree with....... about a Retired Marine Corps General (Zinni) that I ALSO happen to agree with!

Here is ANOTHER quote from that "original article" that applies again!

QUOTE! ...."Zinni's passage from obedient general to outspoken opponent began in earnest in the unlikeliest of locations, the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was there in Nashville in August 2002 to receive the group's Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award, recognition for his 35 years in the Marine Corps.

Vice President Dick Cheney also was there, delivering a speech on foreign policy. Sitting on the stage behind the vice president, Zinni grew increasingly puzzled. He had endorsed Bush and Cheney two years earlier, just after he retired from his last military post as chief of the Central Command.

He was alarmed that day to hear Cheney make the argument for attacking Iraq on grounds that Zinni found questionable at best: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said. "There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us."

Cheney's claim baffling

Cheney's certitude bewildered Zinni. As Central Command chief, Zinni had been immersed in U.S. intelligence about Iraq. He was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts' doubts about Iraq's programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. "In my time at CENTCOM, I watched the intelligence, and never--not once--did it say, `He has WMD.'"

Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and the military.

"I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I'd say to analysts, `Where's the threat?'" Their response, he recalls, was silence. As he walked off the stage in Nashville, Zinni concluded that the Bush administration was determined to go to war. A moment later, he had another, equally chilling thought: "These guys don't understand what they are getting into."

This retired Marine commander is hardly a late-life convert to pacifism.

"I'm not saying there aren't parts of the world that don't need their ass kicked," he said, sitting in a hotel lobby in Pentagon City. "Afghanistan was the right thing to do," he added, referring to the U.S. invasion there in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime and its allies in Al Qaeda.

But he didn't see any need to invade Iraq. He didn't think Hussein was much of a worry anymore. "He was contained," he said. "He had a deteriorated military. He wasn't a threat to the region."

Zinni's concern deepened at a Senate hearing in February, six weeks before the war began. As he awaited his turn to testify, he listened to Pentagon and State Department officials talk vaguely about the "uncertainties" of a postwar Iraq. He began to think they were doing the wrong thing the wrong way. "I was listening to the panel and I realized, `These guys don't have a clue.'" " END QUOTE!


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So......................you see, I have NOT......and WILL NOT "concede" a damn thing!

I AGREE with the former CIC of CENTCOM (General Zinni) in his professional assesment of the situation he describes in his comments!

And, Col. Hackworth as well so far as that goes. These two gentlemen I believe offer much more "credibilty" and "expertise" regarding the subject matter than either YOU or ME!

Have a nice day!

:cd: