What about Zinni? he got fired for truthtelling two years ago!

[buycitgo]

here
http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/08/23/remarkso.html

transcript of speech in Florida, august 2002

Attacking Iraq now will cause a lot of problems. I think the debate right now that's going on is very healthy. If you ask me my opinion, Gen. Scowcroft, Gen. Powell, Gen. Schwarzkopf, Gen. Zinni, maybe all see this the same way.

It might be interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and really hell-bent to go to war see it a different way. That's usually the way it is in history. (Crowd laughter.)

how ironic is this next passage, and how sad, cause he got FIRED for remarks like this

You could inherit the country of Iraq, if you're willing to do it — if our economy is so great that you're willing to put billions of dollars into reforming Iraq. If you want to put soldiers that are already stretched so thin all around the world and add them into a security force there forever, like we see in places like the Sinai. If you want to fight with other countries in the region to try to keep Iraq together as Kurds and Shiites try and split off, you're going to have to make a good case for that. And that's what I think has to be done, that's my honest opinion.

You're going to have to tell me the threat is there, right now. That immediate, that it takes the priority over all those things I've just mentioned ... I've just hit the tops of the waves.

(Person in audience speaks. Laughter.)

In fairness to President Bush, because I work for him — I don't get paid, though — in fairness to President Bush, President Bush has invited the debate and he allows anyone who has a view to speak to the debate. I mean, within his own administration you hear different views.

but, then, what did HE know?

ha

also, I read a transcript of the Inside Washington show, broadcast at about the same time as the above, in which Krauthammer, negatively prescient as he always is, predicted that, once we beat Iraq, it'd be all peaches and cream, that democracy would flourish in the ME like kudzu (my characterization)

Jack Germond, on the same show, basically said Krauthammer was full of SHIT about everything he said

two faced-lying COWARD

[buycitgo]

from september. 03

"A former U.S. commander for the Middle East who still consults for the State Department yesterday blasted the Bush administration's handling of postwar Iraq, saying it lacked a coherent strategy, a serious plan and sufficient resources.



"There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing."

In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?"

Zinni's comments were especially striking because he endorsed President Bush in the 2000 campaign, shortly after retiring from active duty, and serves as an adviser to the State Department on anti-terror initiatives in Indonesia and the Philippines. He preceded Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as chief of the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. military operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East."

read on, please
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27846-2003Sep4?language=printer

[annagull]

1. It's so maddening

Here you have Gen. Zinni, a man who knows combat, war, peace..Then you have idiots like Krauthammer who don''t know what the hell they are talking about, just ideaology. He must have been a lonely man in the * administraition.

[buycitgo]

2. got that, heh. now dig THIS, from Zinni's farewell speech to the USMC

what silk suited sleaze do you think he's talking about HERE:

But at the same time, there's the President, thinking out loud in a recent meeting and saying, "Why can't we ever drive a stake through the hearts of any of these guys? I look at Kim Jong Il; I look at Milosovic; I look at Saddam Hussein. Ever since the end of World War II, why haven't we been able to find a way to do this?" The answer, of course, is that you must have the political will--and that means the will of the administration, the Congress, and the American people. All must be united in a desire for action. Instead, however, we try to get results on the cheap.

There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with $97 million worth of AK-47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely. That's what can happen when we do things on the cheap.
http://www.rcaca.org/News-Zinni.htm

not Chalabi, by any chance, eh?

and who are those congressman, btw?

Now. here's why we're REALLY fucked, cause you can obviously apply these turf wars to the "intel" community. when you add in the total incompetence/underfunding of Homeland Security, we're luckier than hell nobody's tried to strike us yet.....we're sitting ducks:

There have been trends in law and policy making that have had a profound effect. The National Security Act of 1947, for example, set up the most dysfunctional, worst organisational approach to military affairs I could possibly imagine. In a near-perfect example of the Law of Unintended Consequences, it created a situation in which the biggest rival of any U. S. armed service is not a foreign adversary but another one of its sister U.S. services.

We teach our ensigns and second lieutenants to recognize that sister service as the enemy. It wants our money; it wants our force structure; it wants our recruits. So we rope ourselves into a system where we fight each other for money, programs, and weapon systems. We try to out-doctrine each other, by putting pedantic little anal apertures to work in doctrine centers, trying to find ways to ace out the other services and become the dominant service in some way.

[buycitgo]

3. JESUS F KEE=RYSTE

my hair is STILL standing on end:

My son will face non-traditional missions in messy places that will make Somalia look like a picnic. He will see a changed battlefield, with an accelerated tempo and greatly expanded knowledge base. He will witness a great drop in the sense of calling. People entering the military will not be imprinted with his code. They will not be candidates for priesthood; at best, they will be part-time lay ministers.

On his watch, my son is likely to see a weapon of mass destruction event. Another Pearl Harbor will occur in some city, somewhere in the world where Americans are gathered; when that nasty bug or gas or nuke is released it will forever change him and his institutions.

At that point, all the lip service paid to dealing with such an eventuality will be revealed for what it is--lip service. And he will have to deal with it for real. In its wake, I hope he gets to deal with yet another Goldwater-Nichols arrangement.

where are people like this, with a coherent VISION, when we need them?

oh, that's right, they get FIRED!

>>>>from the same speech, btw

to be fair, there are things in that speech I disagree with, but for a Marine general, this man is amazingly progressive

[annagull]

4. LOL, the "Bay of Goats"

There are congressmen today who want to fund the Iraqi Liberation Act, and let some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London gin up an expedition. We'll equip a thousand fighters and arm them with $97 million worth of AK-47s and insert them into Iraq. And what will we have? A Bay of Goats, most likely. That's what can happen when we do things on the cheap.
http://www.rcaca.org/News-Zinni.htm

:wow:

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5. ha ho!

missed the bay of goats bit

too busy

did you hear Nate Clay a minute ago

caller just hit all the pertinent topics re: 911 whitewash, CIA/Bush complicity/LIHOP!

very all-encompassing

he calls in every week with a VERY left POV

he's right on just about everything he says, too

[buycitgo]

6. "I'm not sure which planet they live on"

from salon, back when he and those other generals, including wes clark, showed what an insane quag for which we were headed

Now comes retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East, who has worked recently as the State Department's envoy to the region with a mission to encourage talks between Palestinians and Israelis. Zinni, a Purple Heart recipient who served in Vietnam and helped command forces in the Gulf War and in Somalia, spoke last Thursday in Washington at the Middle East Institute's annual conference and laid out his own reservations about a potential war with Iraq.

In a keynote address striking for its critical assessment of the Bush administration, Zinni stressed the need to get the Israeli-Palestinian peace process back on track, build a broad coalition against Iraq, create trust among allies in the region -- and put Saddam Hussein's threat in perspective.

He also took issue with hawks in and around the administration who downplay the importance of Arab sentiment in the region. "I'm not sure which planet they live on," Zinni said, "because it isn't the one that I travel." And he challenged their suggestion that installing a new Iraqi government will not be especially difficult. "God help us," he said, "if we think this transition will occur easily."

Following his speech, in an exchange moderated by former U.S. ambassador to Israel Edward Walker, Zinni answered questions from the audience. In that session he was even more pointed as he discussed the possible consequences of an attack on Iraq and why war should always be used only as a last resort.

there are TONS of people the media ignored, and still do

so disgusting
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:iSSSZeGsHfMJ:www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/10/17/zinni/+zinni+bush&hl=en&start=1&ie=UTF-8

[buycitgo]

7. jesus.....read this part. we screwed the pooch on EVERY one of his

caveats

every one

what a surprise, huh

total, irredeemable fuckups, these morans

remember, this is BEFORE the fact

this guy's got some crystal ball

Do you think the war is unavoidable? Do you think that we are rushing into the war with Iraq without studying the consequences?

I'm not convinced we need to do this now. I am convinced that we need to deal with Saddam down the road, but I think that the time is difficult because of the conditions in the region and all the other events that are going on. I believe that he can be deterred and is containable at this moment. As a matter of fact, I think the containment can be ratcheted up in a way that is acceptable to everybody.

I do think eventually Saddam has to be dealt with. That could happen in many ways. It could happen that he just withers on the vine, he passes on to the afterlife, something happens within Iraq that changes things, he becomes less powerful, or the inspectors that go in actually accomplish something and eliminate potential weapons of mass destruction -- but I doubt this -- that might be there.

The question becomes how to sort out your priorities and deal with them in a smart way that you get things done that need to be done first before you move on to things that are second and third.

If I were to give you my priority of things that can change for the better in this region, it is first and foremost the Middle East peace process and getting it back on track.

Second, it is ensuring that Iran's reformation or moderation continues on track and trying to help and support the people who are trying to make that change in the best way we can. That's going to take a lot of intelligence and careful work.

The third is to make sure those countries to which we have now committed ourselves to change, like Afghanistan and those in Central Asia, we invest what we need to in the way of resources there to make that change happen.

Fourth is to patch up these relationships that have become strained

Fifth is to reconnect to the people. We are talking past each other. The dialogue is heated. We have based this in things that are tough to compromise on, like religion and politics, and we need to reconnect in a different way. I would take those priorities before this one.

from the salon link

is he working for the dems now?

what is he doing?

GET him on TV, regardless

BEGALA!

CARVILLE!

and, Al Franken....how bout him for a regular commentator?

[leetrisck]

8. He's not the only one either -

remember Shimeski??? - I think there have been a total of 12 generals that got fired or quit because of disagreemtns with the Administration.

[buycitgo]

9. shinseki

got a list of those, by any chance?

shalikashvili...did he get fired, or quit?

and there's a general who's campaigning for Kerry.

which one is he?

there's another one who was working with Clarke under dumbo who said there was hardly any emphasis on terrorism when he was there

Kendall.....Kendrick?