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
"Cohen also noted that General Anthony Zinni, then head of CENTCOM, was concerned that a major bombing campaign would cause domestic unrest in Pakistan (where bin Laden enjoyed strong support among extremists) and hurt the U.S. military's relationship with that nation."
Zinni didn't want to offend Muslim Pakistan.
What! And offend his Pakistani Muslim friends?
The State Department Arabists curry combed Zinni's tail feathers under Clinton, then they got cut off under Bush- for good reason.
Way to go Sean...nail Madeline Halfbrights pet generals arse to the wall.
So, do you believe this will swing the Jewish vote to the Republcans in November? Just curious...
Waaaah. Why do they hate us?
This is apparently how Zinni "views" us too.
The rest of the world had better start worrying about what we think of them.
"I think the American people were conned into this," he says. Referring to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the Johnson administration claimed that U.S. Navy ships had been subjected to an unprovoked attack by North Vietnam, he says, "The Gulf of Tonkin and the case for WMD and terrorism is synonymous in my mind."Likewise, he says, the goal of transforming the Middle East by imposing democracy by force reminds him of the "domino theory" in the 1960s that the United States had to win in Vietnam to prevent the rest of Southeast Asia from falling into communist hands.
And that brings him back to Wolfowitz and his neoconservative allies as the root of the problem. "I don't know where the neocons came from -- that wasn't the platform they ran on," he says. "Somehow, the neocons captured the president. They captured the vice president." - SOURCE FR thread
It was like watching the air let out of a balloon. I hope Chalabi has Zinnis name on a Saddam oil contract.
He's long gone.
He's actually the only person in the list of usual suspect who actually was a "neo con" in the 1980's.
Bush Gains with Jewish Vote (The Inevitable Legacy of Cynthia McKinney, Fritz Hollings, etcetera...)
Who's he working for now? Saudi think tank?
He might not know that he was selectively naming the Jewish people in the admin - just fed the line.
Based on the events of the past few days, I have come to the following conclusions:
1: The Dhimmicrats have decided to go after the Arab vote by attacking Jews.
2: Zinni isplanning to enter politics as a Dhimmicrat.
Scum.
He's not gone enough, obviously. They should deport that bastard -- I have a lot of minor complaints about the Bush administration, but the role of Richard Perle in the U.S. government is the one issue that constitutes a legitimate grounds for impeachment, in my mind.
He's actually the only person in the list of usual suspect who actually was a "neo con" in the 1980's.
That's interesting . . . How are you defining the term "neo-con?"
LOL! What a fantastic phrase! May I steal it, please...? :)
Scum? He's the latest darling of the liberal left and our own defeatist freepers...they've been quoting him and singing his praises for several days.
Chalabi was no dummy, that info is in the right hands, I'm sure they probably already figured it out too. Clinton had interns, Bush has oil-for-food docs.
I can't believe I'm the first to think of it, but in this unlikely event use it with my blessing.
Zinni is a poor liar. He has chosen to be an enemy of the United States government while we are at war because of his Arabist affections.
And now we know where Zinni really stands...what a maroon
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