Actually I think the wacky postings are great because they demonstrate the
poor reasoning and disregard for the facts so common among the followers of
the left.

General Zinni is not on the left:

"In the book, Zinni writes: "In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later
conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility,
at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."

“I think there was dereliction in insufficient forces being put on the ground
and fully understanding the military dimensions of the plan. I think there was
dereliction in lack of planning,” says Zinni. “The president is owed the
finest strategic thinking. He is owed the finest operational planning. He is
owed the finest tactical execution on the ground. … He got the latter. He
didn’t get the first two.”

Zinni says Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time - with the wrong strategy.
And he was saying it before the U.S. invasion. In the months leading up to the
war, while still Middle East envoy, Zinni carried the message to Congress:
“This is, in my view, the worst time to take this on. And I don’t feel it
needs to be done now.”

But he wasn’t the only former military leader with doubts about the invasion
of Iraq. Former General and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former
Centcom Commander Norman Schwarzkopf, former NATO Commander Wesley Clark, and
former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki all voiced their reservations.

Zinni believes this was a war the generals didn’t want – but it was a war
the civilians wanted.

“I can't speak for all generals, certainly. But I know we felt that this
situation was contained. Saddam was effectively contained. The no-fly, no-drive
zones. The sanctions that were imposed on him,” says Zinni."

General Hoar is not on the left:

Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (USMC-ret.), a four-star general, was Commander in
Chief, U.S. Central Command (1991-94), commanding the U.S. forces in the
Persian Gulf after the 1991 war. He also served in the Vietnam War, as a
battalion and brigade advisor with the Vietnamese Marines. He was
interviewed by Jeffrey Steinberg on May 6, 2004.

EIR: You were one of the people who had been critical before the
outbreak of fighting, over whether or not the situation warranted going
to war. I believe you also had some rather accurate warnings about what
might happen, as the war unfolded, especially after the hot phase.
What's your thinking on these issues now, in hindsight, as we're over a
year past the formal fighting phase?

Hoar: There's small comfort in realizing that perhaps you were closer to
reality than the elected and appointed figures in the civilian
government. Those of us that have had some experience in the region over
the years, and don't necessarily have ulterior motivations, particularly
people that know very much about Iraq?and I don't necessarily put myself
in that category; specifically, I know a fair amount about the
political-military situation in the region, but know enough about Iraq
to know that any military operation and any subsequent reconstruction
efforts, to include the interjection of democracy, were going to be
extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible.

But, my major concern, Jeff, really was, that while I was in favor of
regime change, I was not in favor of it a year and a half or two years
ago, and certainly not these means. And the reason, of course, was the
much higher priorities: the protection of the United States through the
development of the Homeland Securities activities; the completion,
successfully, of the Afghanistan campaign; and the destruction of
al-Qaeda; all seem to me to be much higher priorities than going after
Iraq. And you know the arguments as well as I do: the weapons of mass
destruction, the threat to the United States, the connection between
al-Qaeda, and then finally, the reason was indicated that this was a
rogue regime, that punished its citizens, and its human rights record
was abysmal and so forth. We all know that story. The fact remains, that
this would have been a very difficult undertaking under the best of
circumstances, and unfortunately, with the exception of the Phase I
military operation, which terminated essentially with the end of
organized resistance over a year ago, the rest of it has been a
disaster.

EIR: I was at an event, where both Gen. [Anthony] Zinni [USMC-ret.] and
Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, spoke, and this
was about eight months before the outbreak of fighting, in March 2003,
and they both basically thought that the real troubles would begin after
the "hot phase" of combat, when American forces would be there as an
occupying force. And they rejected the neo-con and Cheney thesis, that
this would be a cakewalk and we'd be greeted as liberators."

Bush is a miserable failure.

Walt