General Zinni: Grave Mistakes Of The Iraq War

[demgrrrll]

This is a copy of the speech General Zinni gave on 5/12/2004
Point by point he takes apart the Bush administration and
the grievous errors that were made by Bush. Long read but worth it.
Wonderful must read material. Bush is going down. I found this linked by in Atrios comments.

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

[wtmusic]

1. Um...starting it

#1

[kaitykaity]

2. So much reading, so little time.

Thanks for the link. :)

[NMDemDist2]

3. dupe see

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x50946

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[kaitykaity]

5. kick

:kick:

[TacticalPeek]

6. Zinni: A Patriot Acts.

The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."

I predicted that the fighting would be over, the organized resistance in three weeks. To Tommy Franks' credit, he did it in 19 days. He beat my prediction. He did a magnificent job, as did our troops. But the rationale that we faced an imminent threat, or a serious threat, was ridiculous. Now, wherever history lays that, whether the intelligence was flawed or it was exaggerated, remains to be seen. I have my own opinions.

[TacticalPeek]

7. Kick.

:kick: