General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

If we had to incur 5,000 casualties in the war on terror, they should
not have been incurred in Iraq.

Well, besides the fact that it's been one of the big financial and
logistical supporters of worldwide terror for a long, long time,

Source?


and
since it's right in the middle of a bunch of other countries that are
currently in the same nasty business, and since the secondary effects of
kicking out Saddam are really bloody obvious (Libya's change of heart
and the lack of Iraqi funds for Hamas are the two most glaring
examples)...

I don't know why you can't get that.

Because you're just wrong.


I don't know that just because you say it.

Many senior oficials are on the record saying something different from what you
say.

General Zinni:

"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."


Those 5,000 casualties are unnecessary.

Walt