Posted on 05/24/2004 7:23:03 PM PDT by SJackson
Senior Jewish Pentagon officials have come under attack from former special US envoy to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni, in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview to be broadcasted Monday night.
Although Israelis remember Zinni as Secretary of State Colin Powell's would-be broker of an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, he served before that as commander-in-chief of the US Central Command from 1997 to 2000 and was in charge of all US troops in the Middle East.
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Zinni has recently become a major critic of the Bush administration's Iraqi war, specifically the Pentagon's failure to advise the President properly.
"There has been poor strategic thinking in this," Zinni said. "There has been poor operational planning and execution on the ground. And to think that we are going to 'stay the course'; the course is headed over Niagara Falls. I think it's time to change course a little bit, or at least hold somebody responsible for putting you on this course. Because it's been a failure."
Zinni specifically aimed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, National Security Council member Eliot Abrams, and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby - a group of policymakers within the administration known as "the neo-conservatives" whom he claims saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel.
"I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington - has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do," says Zinni.
"Because I mentioned the neo-conservatives, who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, it's unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested."
Zinni said he believed their strategy was to change the Middle East and bring it into the 21st century.
"All sounds very good, all very noble. The trouble is the way they saw to go about this is unilateral aggressive intervention by the United States - the take down of Iraq as a priority," Zinni added. "And what we have become now in the United States, how we're viewed in this region is not an entity that's promising positive change. We are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in that part of the world."
Zinni said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz should accept responsibility for the Iraqi impasse and resign. "60 Minutes" said Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz had declined a request to respond to Zinni's remarks.
Several days ago, Senator Ernest Hollins accused President Bush of embarking on the Iraqi war to buy the Jewish vote. In a speech to the sentae last week, Hollins refused to retract his words and attacked the Jewish lobby AIPAC.
With Agencies
Zinni is (plainly) content to accept CBS' bald and unequivocal recounting of what was stated to them, in whatever footage didn't make final cut.
Bottom line: Zinni doesn't contest it...? Zinni either SAID it... or ENDORSES it.
And it's increasingly desperate attempts to wriggle away from this simple, real world assessment which most readily qualify, plainly, as "idiotic."
So what? I doubt he had a hand in the final editing.
Besides, that's not even relevant to my main point, which is as follows. Zinni primarily targeted Rumsfeld, who's not Jewish as far as I know. This thread is all about how Zinni is an anti-semite because on 60 Minutes he targeted nobody but Jews. Obviously that's just not true, as anyone who watches the 60 minutes clip can verify.
So what?
Well, here on this planet -- as opposed to, say, Bizarro-Earth -- implicit endorsement of bigotry is not normally considered any more admirable or defensible than explicit endorsement of same; simply the more cowardly option, is all. I'm sure I don't know how it's done in more eastern (or far eastern) climes, of course.
This thread is all about how Zinni is an anti-semite because on 60 Minutes he targeted nobody but Jews
Wildly incorrect. This thread is "about" Zinni's stated selecting (as per the U-N-C-O-N-T-E-S-T-E-D 60 Minutes piece), solely and specifically, of J-E-W-I-S-H individuals as operating under the penumbra of some shadowy, nebulous "conspiracy" actively against America's best interests.
Really: all of this yowling and wriggling on the part of Zinni's increasingly wild-eyed defenders is simply ludicrous, in the final analysis. Their (your) entire "argument," charitably, seems to boil down to: "... they didn't actually sjow THAT part of the tape, so it never really happened!" Nyaahh, nyaahh!"
Again, and finally: unless and until Zinni publicly disavows the 60M re-stating of his views, during said interview -- all you're doing, ultimately, is arm-waving, frantically, and hoping that others will mistake frenzy of motion for cogency of rebuttal.
Sadly: it ain't working.
Not correct. Zinni started off by putting the main blame on Rumsfeld, then ended by stating that he thinks Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should resign.
His criticisms of their machinations (to those of us who've paid attention to it) are quite fair, and if these pompous gentlemen operate under the notion that any criticism of their major league F-ups somehow equates to an attack on thier religion, then perhaps they should seek employment in fields with less responsibility, fields where their miscalculations don't result in the loss of American life and cost our Nation so greatly.
They blew it big time, they are laughinstocks deserving of every ounce of ridicule and contempt dished onto their plates. They should act with honor (a seemingly alien notion to them), accept responsibilty, and tender their collective resignations.
A sad demonstration (and object lesson), for my fellow FReepers, that some are born into dhimmitude; some aspire to dhimmitude; and some, ultimately, throw themselves headlong INTO dhimmitude.
Nope. That's just your spin. You obviously prefer to label the guy rather than address the substance of his comments. Suit yourself. Maybe the leftists can help you perfect this tactic. They *are* the masters.
Wrong again: ZINNI'S spin.
This isn't rocket science, surely. You've been "called" on the airy insubstantiality of your bluffed "rebuttal": namely, that the whole ramshackle thing rests, shakily, on the completely unproven by you wish/assumption -- bloviated as fact -- that 60 Minutes is (for some unspoken reason) lying about Zinni's comments; and that Zinni (again: no coherent explanation offered) is perfectly happy to allow them to do so, no matter what the cost to what we'll charitably refer to as His Good Name.
Can't offer even so much as a gnat's eyelash worth of hard, factual evidence in support of your dubious claims? **Yawn.** You're not the first to try your hand at such peddling, hereabouts; and I doubt very much you'll be the last.
You're just the one I happened to out-and-out bust doing it, is all.
"The Dhimmicrats"
That's good....that's real good!
If you were to do just a little bit of research on Mr. Perle and check out his biographical information, you'll find that he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1987.
While it is true that his most recent post on the Defense Policy Board was not considered a "Department of Defense" position, this was really a case of finding a loophole in Department of Defense regulations specifically for him. As head of the DPB he was privy to a substantial amount of highly classified information and had an enormous influence on U.S. foreign policy under this administration.
If you really want to see how disgraceful this man's role in the Bush administration is, consider this: He was appointed to that "advisory" position specifically because he could not obtain the security clearances needed to serve as an official employee of the Department of Defense.
What a gem. I'll save this one for posterity.
ISLAMABAD, Oct 7: Former US Centcom chief, General Anthony Zinni, is arriving here on Oct 24 in his capacity as a director of a multinational company which wants to invest in Pakistan's telecommunication industry.A Pakistani-American who is a partner in Gen Zinni's company, claims that the initial investment will be between $120 million to $150 million that might expand to $5 billion over a period of 10 years.
Wish I'd seen that. :)
It's accurate, yes, as far as it goes... but: it leaves so terribly, terribly much yet unspoken. :)
Like Rumsfeld?? And Cheney? And Rice?
Go back to screaming Go Pat Go, paleocons. That was funny stuff.
"Hannity is killing Zinni."
It was a great moment. Sean nailed him to the wall!
I certainly don't want to believe that about Paul Wolfowitz as I've always thought of him as an asset to this administration. So in order to try to understand this controversy a little better I waded through the excellent albeit very long article posted by Hipixs and extracted a few quotes to bring here:
His inclination to act derives, too, from his analytical style, a residue, perhaps, of the mathematician he started out to be. In almost any discussion, he tends to be the one focusing on the most often overlooked variable in decision making, the cost of not acting. On Iraq, that has now been taken up as a White House mantra.
He remains, by his own description, a ''bleeding heart'' on social issues and a civil libertarian.
Senator Henry M. Jackson, the pioneering Democratic hawk nicknamed Scoop, who believed in an American obligation to support democracies and in the willingness to use military force sometimes to accomplish that. (Jackson was also Richard Perle's mentor.) Wolfowitz, who switched parties during the Reagan administration, now describes himself as ''a Scoop Jackson Republican.''
''So if that's what you estimate the costs of action to be, then you have to have something more on the other side of the ledger than just the possession of weapons of mass destruction,'' he wrote. Whether that ''something more'' that would justify that greater sacrifice meant evidence that Iraq was on the verge of using its weapons, or the prospect of establishing Iraq as an outpost of democracy, or a smoking gun tying Iraq to Sept. 11, he did not specify. ''In the end, it has to come down to a careful weighing of things we can't know with precision, the costs of action versus the costs of inaction, the costs of action now versus the costs of action later.''
Could the areas in bold be where Shermy got the idea that Wolfie is a liberal dem?
It's interesting to me that in 2002, Wolfowitz was already downplaying the importance of finding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
BTW, newspapers are known to change headlines. If you do a google search for Jewish+Zinni you'll still see the original headline. And yes, tomorrow it may be gone.
Zinni: Criticism of Iraq war not spurred by anti-Semitism
Ha'aretz, Israel - 15 hours ago
... 60 Minutes" on Sunday, Zinni lambasted the handling of the war and laid the blame on several senior administration officials - all of whom happen to be Jewish. ...
Powell apologizes in writing for Iraq abuse; Former US general ... Albawaba Middle East News
Zinni slams Jewish Pentagon officials - Jerusalem Post
and more »
| Bush: Abu Ghraib prison to be demolished Jerusalem Post, Israel - 8 hours ago ... |
You can spray "sweet paint" all over it but Jews vote at least 80% Dem these days.
Not much diversity there.
Now, I've got some Jewish freepers proclaiming criticizing neoCons is anti-semitic by default.
I say bullshite to that.
Source, please.
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