April 3, 2006
General Anthony Zinni was on Meet the Press
yesterday. He had lots of perceptive things to say, like "We just heard
the secretary of state say these were tactical mistakes. These were not
tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy
made back here," and "An election doesn’t equal democracy." As a
result, some, like those over at Daily KOS,
are over the moon about Zinni, calling for the Democrats to nominate
him for President (ignoring the fact that he's a Republican), praising
him to the heavens, etc. But there's nothing progressive in Zinni's
current position, it's just the usual "we're doing it wrong, let's
start doing it right, 'we can't let it fall apart', etc."
But the reason for the post is perhaps the most interesting thing Zinni had to say: "I
heard the case being built to go to war right away. And what bothered
me, I had been hearing about some of the assumptions on the planning,
dismissal of the for--previous plans, and I was hearing a depiction of
the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof,
that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD.
"Now, I'd be the first to
say we had to assume he had WMD left over that wasn't accounted for:
artillery rounds, chemical rounds, a SCUD missile or two. But these
things, over time, degrade. These things did not present operational or
strategic level threats at best.
"I saw it in the way the
intelligence was being portrayed. I knew the intelligence; I saw it
right up to the day of the war. I was asked at a Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing a month before the war if I thought the
threat was imminent. I didn't. Many of the people I know that were
involved in the intelligence side of this, or, or in the military felt
the same way. I saw the--what this town is known for: spin,
cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional
responses, or, or shading the, the context." All very
interesting. And Gen. Zinni was, in fact, arguing against invasion at
the time. For example, in a Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times
on Feb. 7, 2003 (I'm reading it in PDF format in a library database, so
no link), we read: "In an October [2002] speech to the Middle East
Institute, he added, '[If] we intend to solve this through violent
action, we're on the wrong course. First of all, I don't see that
that's necessary [Ed. note: legality having nothing to do with it, evidently].
Second of all, I think that war and violence are a very last resort.'"
So he was opposed to war, not on principle exactly, but as a practical
matter. It wasn't "necessary." But did General Zinni, who is now
perfectly willing to tell Tim Russert that there was no solid proof
that "Saddam" had WMD, say so publicly before the invasion? When Scott Ritter spoke before
the invasion about how any residual WMD that might be hiding in some
corner in Iraq would have been long-since degraded, did General Zinni
back him up? The answer to both of those questions, as far as I can
tell, is "no."
You might be wondering about the title of this
post. General Zinni, after all, isn't on his deathbed. No, but more
than 100,000 Iraqis and more than 2500 Americans and others, are. Or
were. They're dead now. Thanks to people like General Zinni, who kept
what they knew to themselves until it was long since too late.
|
