Zinni wants to have it both ways (it was a mistake to invade, and invasion was executed poorly, but now... yada-yada) and give cover to Hillary, expecting that he will be rewarded by post of SecDef or JCoS or NSA if she becomes President - because at least some troops will still have to be there, and they don't want the bloodshed and the news of such be laid squarely on them.
So when the question becomes not all-in or all-out but how many troops, they have a cover.
Hillary plaid it very cautiously until now, but she is being forced by Moveon and similar moonbats into a more radical position to ward off Obama insurgency, and so for the first time she had to actually vote "NON" on the Iraq funding. She will have a "middle-of-the-road" excuse, though - "benchmarks not tough enough" and other pablum of the same kind.
plaid=played
True. Zinni and most of the other retired flag officers who have spoken out against the war and/or the Bush Administration have played a dangerous game. In order to get their fifteen minutes of "venting" out in front of the public, they have damaged and disrupted what they know to be a necessary effort to defeat terrorism. Their experience tells them what a disaster a precipitous and total withdrawal from Iraq would be, but now they're owned by the antiwar movement.