Posted on 05/09/2006 7:51:33 PM PDT by SCHROLL
just wondering if any one has a link to what his casualty projections were in his plan for Iraq. Any one know? Seems that it might be a way to challenge his version of things.
I'd like a link to what I saw on tv a few yers ago of Arafat trapped like a rat in his Ramahdi compund crying like a bitch for general Zeeneee.
If anyone has it, please post a link.
Huh
well Zinni is going around saying how wrong Bush and Rummy are, so I'd like to see how he says doing things his way would have cost us casualtywise. Odds are most likely in Bush and Rummy's favor. I'd like to have Zinni's own words to throw in the face of his new found worshipers. Maybe if it's thrown into the public debate, people will see exactly what an a$$hat Zinni is.
Seems to me a wise man once said something about going to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had....
Wiki has this:
Opinions on 2003 invasion of Iraq
In the late 1990s, Zinni said that the U.S. risked entering a "Bay of Goats" if it relied on exiles such as the Iraqi National Congress to liberate Iraq, a reference to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
In May 2004, his memoir (Battle Ready), co-authored with noted military writer Tom Clancy, was published. It featured stinging criticism of the planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more specifically, the post-battle planning. In a widely reported speech at a dinner in May 2004, Zinni detailed 10 serious criticisms of the rationale and execution of the war, summarised below:
1) The war planners "misjudged the success of containment" - the existing policy of trade sanctions and maintaining troops in the area.
2) The "strategy was flawed" - the strategy being that invading, occupying, and setting up a new government in Iraq would help solve the broader conflicts in the Middle East. Zinni "couldn't believe what I was hearing about the benefits of this strategic move."
3) The Bush administration "had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support." Zinni said that "the books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence (that supported the claims made to support the need for war) was not there."
4) The war planners failed "to internationalize the effort," by gaining the support of allies or unambiguously gaining UN endorsement of an invasion.
5) The "fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task." Zinni clarified this in his speech to mean the broader task of creating a free, democratic, and functional Iraq.
6) The sixth mistake was "propping up and trusting the exiles." The exiles Zinni refers to are groups like the Iraqi National Congress and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi.
7) Zinni criticised the "lack of planning" - not so much for the military confrontation, the planning of which he praised fulsomely, but for the post-war stablization and reconstruction of Iraq.
8) "The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground." Zinni, in his former position, had devised a battle plan for conquering and occupying Iraq in the 1990s, which featured far more troops, as did alternative plans presented to Donald Rumsfeld before the war. The extra troops were needed to "freeze the security situation because we knew the chaos that would result once we uprooted an authoritarian regime like Saddam's."
9) "The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there." Zinni criticises what he views as the lack of staff, skills, experience, and clear structure in the Coalition Provisional Authority.
10) According to Zinni, "that ad hoc organization has failed", "leading to the 10th mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground". These bad decisions include the excessive zeal in "de-Baathification," removing people only peripherally involved in the Baath Party who were Baathists purely to be permitted to conduct their profession or business, the decision to disband the Iraqi army.
The estimates of casualties for a war in Iraq under CENTCOM's (Gen Zinni's 1997) plan were 10,000 - 20,000 Americans killed in 90 days. That much I do know. So anyone who believes this is an incompetently run campaign doesn't know what the projections were and what the assumptions underlying them were (and I'm not privy to all those items either -- but I DO know the casualty figures were 10K-20K in 90 days. I had a friend who worked on the QDR and he definitively told me so. I was shocked [incensed is more like it] that we would plan for those kind of losses and refuse to tell the American people we were doing so. And that is what I remember about those two gentlemen. They are wrong and should be ashamed of themselves.)
I'm not sure how much I trust that. It's second- or third-hand hearsay.
Would Zinni have given a sweetheart deal to the Nazis too?
Oh, that's right. The fact that their COUNTRY was destroyed probably made it easier.
Wise point.
Guarenteed to have been overlooked by the media.
You latin types are always on top of things.
Rehabilitating a Rogue: Libya's WMD Reversal and Lessons for U.S. Policy
These two explanations, while plausible, have sidelined the role of deliberate, long-term US policies toward Libya that likely facilitated Qadhafi's WMD reversal. Three additional factors affected Libya's WMD reversal. First, in addition to the pressures exerted by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Qadhafi had reason to foresee greater security benefits to be gained by closer ties with the United States and the West. In particular, Libya's concern about al Qaeda influenced its desire to ally with the United States. Second, while seeking an end to the stifling US and UN sanctions for economic motives, Qadhafi also sought to end Libya's pariah status. Qadhafi's concern about his own reputation and Libya's international image and credibility motivated his decision. Third, the Pam Am 103 victims' families and their advocates on Capitol Hill wielded agenda-setting influence, strengthening the negotiating position of the United States vis-à-vis Libya. Each of these factors reflects one of three US foreign policy approaches applied toward Libya over the past 15 years. Each factor also yields implications for current and future US national security strategies, offering prescriptive lessons to policymakers confronting rogue regimes acquiring WMD programs.
Has he always been this shallow?
May 2004? 20/20 hidnsight.
I'd be more impressed with his 1999 plans to prevent say, USS Cole bombing... or how he would have solved the riddle of Saddam's terrorist sponsorship, oil-for-food scam, or WMD pursuit some other way *before* it happened ...
There were *lots* of plans to say 'get Bin Laden' but they never happened.
that's more along the lines of what I'm looking for if I could find a link to the DOD version of it, that'd be great.
Other than numbers 1,3, and 4. He's on the mark.
1) The war planners "misjudged the success of containment" - the existing policy of trade sanctions and maintaining troops in the area.
Not even clear what this means, let alone how it has any bearing on the actual war plan.
2) The "strategy was flawed" - the strategy being that invading, occupying, and setting up a new government in Iraq would help solve the broader conflicts in the Middle East.
Whoa there! This isn't a criticism of the war plan, it's a criticism of the (supposed) "Neocon Grand Strategy". Zinni's entitled to his opinion about that of course but let's not mix apples & oranges and pretend that Zinni's policy disagreement equates to a criticism of the war plan.
3) The Bush administration "had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support."
So far, the closest thing we have to an actual criticism; one could legitimately claim that if the rationale was "false", that unduly risked undermining public support for the war when the truth came out. I don't happen to think the rationale was "false", but at least this is a substantive critique (not really a military one, but a political one).
4) The war planners failed "to internationalize the effort," by gaining the support of allies or unambiguously gaining UN endorsement of an invasion.
Argh! Another non-critique critique. I mean yes, it's true that we did not convince France, Germany etc. to help us to invade Iraq. But that's a lament about reality, not a "criticism of the execution of the war". We asked, and they didn't want to. That's reality. "We should have gotten them to fight with us" is not a critique, it's a lament. Yes 'twould've been nice, but they! didn't! want! to! "Get countries XYZ to fight with us" is NOT a 'war plan', it's a hope for a war plan. They might not want to! Argh.
5) The "fifth mistake was that we underestimated the task." Zinni clarified this in his speech to mean the broader task of creating a free, democratic, and functional Iraq.
Bleh. Could this be any more vague and sloppy? Is he just trying to stretch the list to 10 cuz that's a nice round number?
6) The sixth mistake was "propping up and trusting the exiles." The exiles Zinni refers to are groups like the Iraqi National Congress and its controversial leader Ahmed Chalabi.
Ok, another (the second) substantive critique, but it's a baldface assertion. How/why was it a "mistake"? In what sense did we "trust" them? To do what? With what bad results? It's also a critique that's primarily political rather than military in nature. Wasn't this guy a general? Is all this political/bureaucratic stuff the worst he can say about a war? If so, I'd have to say we must've done all right....
7) Zinni criticised the "lack of planning" - not so much for the military confrontation, the planning of which he praised fulsomely, but for the post-war stablization and reconstruction of Iraq.
It's pretty easy to criticize the "lack of planning". Would be much more interesting to state what a good "plan for the post-war stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq" might look like. I've always wondered what sort of magical "plan" people imagine could have been constructed which would have prevented all bad things from happening. For example, what sort of "plan" exactly would have prevented the dethroned, resentful Sunni minority from embracing insurgency?
8) "The eighth problem was the insufficiency of military forces on the ground."
Heh. I knew this was coming. We should have used more troops than we had available - got it.
9) "The ninth problem has been the ad hoc organization we threw in there."
You know, this really smells like a vaguely-melded rehash of many of the previous items. Didn't he already say "bad plan", "shouldn't have trusted Chalabi", "no plan"? Is he going to keep stretching out this list of "mistakes" by just repeating "bad plan" over and over again?
leading to the 10th mistake, and that's a series of bad decisions on the ground [de-Baathification]"
Oh-kay. The 1st - 9th mistakes were "bad plan", the 10th mistake is "bad decisions from bad plan". Et cetera, ad infinitum. Talk about substantive. I guess there's one substantive example (de-Baathification) to chew on.
But really, let me boil it all down to the core of the argument for y'all:
1. I don't like Neocons.
2. We should have invaded with more troops than we could spare.
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