Retired Marine general assails U.S. policy on Iraq

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/m...7m16zinni.html

Warnings ignored, says retired Marine
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
April 16, 2004

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud yesterday how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be caught off guard by the chaos in Iraq that has killed nearly 100 Americans in recent weeks and led to his announcement that 20,000 U.S. troops would be staying there instead of returning home as planned.

"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?"

At a Pentagon news briefing yesterday, Rumsfeld said he could not have estimated how many troops would be killed in the past week.

Zinni made his comments during an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune before giving a speech last night at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice as part of its distinguished lecturer series.

For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed.

"I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni said. "I think the president got some bad advice."

Known as the "Warrior Diplomat," Zinni is not a peace activist by nature or training, having led troops in Vietnam, commanded rescue operations in Somalia and directed strikes against Iraq and al Qaeda.

He once commanded the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.

Out of uniform, Zinni was a troubleshooter for the U.S. government in Africa, Asia and Europe and served as special envoy to the Middle East under the Bush administration for a time before his reservations over the Iraq war and its aftermath caused him to resign and oppose it.

Not even Zinni's resum? could shield him from the accusations that followed.

"I've been called a traitor and a turncoat for mentioning these things," said Zinni, 60. The problems in Iraq are being caused, he said, by poor planning and shortsightedness, such as disbanding the Iraqi army and being unable to provide security.

Zinni said the United States must now rely on the U.N. to pull its "chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq."

"We're betting on the U.N., who we blew off and ridiculed during the run-up to the war," Zinni said. "Now we're back with hat in hand. It would be funny if not for the lives lost."

Several things have to happen to get Iraq back on course, whether the U.N. decides to step in or not, Zinni said.

Improving security for American forces and the Iraqi people is at the top of the list followed closely by helping the working class with economic projects.

But it's not the lack of a comprehensive American plan for Iraq nor the surging violence that has cost allied troops their lives ? including about 30 Camp Pendleton Marines ? that most concerns Zinni.

"In the end, the Iraqis themselves have to want to rebuild their country more than we do," Zinni said. "But I don't see that right now. I see us doing everything.

"I spent two years in Vietnam, and I've seen this movie before," he said. "They have to be willing to do more or else it is never going to work."

Last night at the Kroc institute during his speech "From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table: Preventing Deadly Conflict," Zinni detailed the approach he believes the United States should take in the Middle East.

He told an overflow crowd that the United States tries to grapple with individual issues in Middle East instead of seeing them as elements of a broader question.

"We need to step back and get a grand strategy," he said.



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Wow.There's still somebody paying attention to what Gen.Zinni has to say?His dire forebodeings have proved to be so consistently wrong that it's almost good to see him get something-even this minor-right.

Seems to me that he just can't stand being out of the spotlight and will say or do just about anything to be back in-no matter how briefly.

[Gimpy]

His "dire forebodeings" have proved to be EXACTLY "on the money"!

This is from an address given by General Anthony Zinni, U.S. Marine Corps (retired) shortly after Bush declared an "end to major combat", nearly a YEAR AGO!

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"Whatever blood is poured onto the battlefield could be wasted if we don't follow it up with understanding what victory is."

"Right now the question that has to be answered is: does our military expand its role beyond the military aspect, or will we continue to stick it with this mission without the resources, the training, the cooperation from others or the lack of authority needed to get the job done? If you're going to make the military the governors out there, if you're going to make them the proconsuls, if they're going to be the humanitarians and the reconstructors, then legitimize it in some way. Because we can't go on breaking our military and doing things like we're doing now."

"This administration came in with an idea of transforming the military into something?God knows what?lighter, smaller, quicker, whatever. The bill payer was going to be ground units, heavy units. And now we have a shortage of exactly what we needed out there. Nobody listened to the CINCs. As a matter of fact, they got rid of our name; we couldn't even be called CINCs anymore. You know, we're no longer commanders-in-chief; we're combatant commanders, whatever the hell that means.

But you're at the edge of the empire and you see it firsthand. And you know what the requirement is. And we keep screaming back here into the system that we need more. We need to train our officers and leaders for a different kind of mission out there."

Let me just finish by saying that we should be?as I know you've heard plenty of times here?extremely proud of what our people did, and are doing out there, what our men and women in uniform did. It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties and the sacrifice that's being made. It also kills me when I hear someone say that, well, each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, they're insignificant statistically. Never should we let any political leaders utter those words.

This is the greatest treasure the United States has, our enlisted men and women. And when we put them into harm's way, it had better count for something. Not half-assed, inconclusive information that we "think" may make it necessary to send our troops into harms way! It can't be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn't thought out.

They should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting?our generals will take care of that?but for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept this, if we accept this level of sacrifice without that level of planning? Almost everyone in this room, of my contemporaries?our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam; where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And you're going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are. And remember, everyone of those young men and women that come back, or does not come back, is not a personal tragedy, it's a national tragedy.

**General Zinni has held numerous command and staff assignments with the U.S. Marine Corps that include platoon, company, battalion, regimental, Marine expeditionary unit, and Marine expeditionary force command. His staff assignments included service in operations, training, special operations, counter-terrorism and manpower billets. He has deployed to or served diplomatic missions in the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, the western Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.**

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Sounds like to me that General Zinni AND former Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki?s dire predictions of the results of the war with Iraq are profoundly accurate and right on the money!

Gimp

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New York Times
February 28, 2003

In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.

Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops.

At a Pentagon news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld echoed his deputy's comments. Neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz mentioned General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name. But both men were clearly irritated at the general's suggestion that a postwar Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American troops and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also expected to join a reconstruction effort.

"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said. General Shinseki gave his estimate in response to a question at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point ? something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers ? are probably a figure that would be required."

A spokesman for General Shinseki, Col. Joe Curtin, said today that the general stood by his estimate. "He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgment," Colonel Curtin said. General Shinseki is a former commander of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.

Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful."

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As I said before-----------------looks like to me that Zinni and Shinseki were BOTH RIGHT!

And..........................Wolfowitz and "Macna-Rummy" (or Rumsfeld if you prefer) were BOTH DEAD WRONG!

[Gimpy]

posting this Larry.

Maybe it'll open a few eyes (and minds) around here!