Who heard the fantastic interview with Zinni on NPR this morning?

Man was it a great interview.

I was about to take the Jack Russells out for their morning constitutional when I heard the interview start. I was so engrossed that I had to wait until it was over, ignoring the pups' plaintive whines as they were forced to hold their little bladders for another 3 minutes.

I had not yet read Zinni's remarks from the other day, but I have heard some local RW hateradio hosts admit that his criticism will not be so easy to dismiss or defuse (HA!) as Clarke, O'Neill, Wilson, etc. because he was a direct appointment of Bush as Middle East envoy, etc.

This guy is a great communicator - plainspoken without coming off like an incoherent mealymouthed hick like some residents of the White House I could mention.

His anecdote about his experience in Vietnam when a wounded Lance Corporal asked him "Captain, what are we doing here?" and his pat government-issue answer ('We're here to bring Jeffersonian democracy to the people of Vietnam') rang so false was very poignant.

This book ("Battle Ready") is yet another one to add to my must-read list.

Does anyone have a link to his speech from earlier this week? Thanks.

My alarm clock is set to NPR and hearing that interview was a great way to wake up!

I had seen people on here rave about him but had never ehard him myself. What a GREAT way to start the day. He MUST have a spot in the Kerry Admin.

Secretary of Defense. The guy's got a clear mind, understands the mission, what must be done to reach the objectives and knows how to get things done. Most of all, he is a man of integrity.

The guy pulls no punches.

My father in law was raving about his appearance on 60 Minutes, (which I missed), so I'm glad I got to hear the NPR interview.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml

could print it to pass along to folks. He lays out what Clinton and others strategy with Iraq was against the PNAC'ers and has some interesting thoughts and recommendations. You won't be disappointed.

Here's link and a snip:

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=2208&from_page=../index.cfm

May 22, 2004

Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004


I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true.



I was responsible, along with everybody from General Schwarzkopf to his two successors, that were my predecessors, myself, and my successor, General Franks, up until the war, we were responsible for containment. And I would like to explain a little bit about that containment, because I thought we did it pretty well, given the circumstances. And it began with Bush 41 accepting the UN resolution to conduct the war, staying within the framework of the UN resolution, and not after the war, going to Baghdad, breaking the coalition, ending up inheriting a country that I think he clearly saw would be a burden on us, our military, our treasure, and would break relations around the region, and would put him outside what he considered his international legitimacy for doing this - the resolution by which he operated and conducted the war, and the resolution by which we established the sanctions.



Administering those sanctions was done pretty effectively I thought. In the entire U.S. Central Command, in my time there, on any given day we had less troops in the entire region than show up to work at the Pentagon any morning. Think about that. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, carriers, squadrons, battalions. On any given day ... on an average day in CENTCOM, we had about 23,000 troops, soup to nuts. Logistics, fighters ... and we ran that with these 23,000 troops, the whole region. To top it off, those troops were not assigned to CENTCOM. In other words, that structure wasn't created to be part of CENTCOM, like the troops are in the Pacific Command or in the European Command, these were troops that were on rotation. They came from other places, from the United States, from Europe, from the Pacific region. And they rotated through. Ships rotated through, battalions came in and out, squadrons came in and out. So we never created a structure. We did it with borrowed troops, so we could up the rheostat or lower it when we needed to.

:yourock: