General Zinni tells it like it is

From Crooks and Liars.

Gen. Zinni was the second guest on "Meet the Press," today and was very powerful in his observations in the run up to the war, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush's loyalty to his people rather than to their performance which has been appalling by his standards. Russert let him give uninterrupted answers to his questions.

Video-WMP Video-QT

Zinni: ...I heard the case being built to go to war right away- I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof that I ever saw that Saddam had WMD....

(transcript via TP)

ZINNI: I saw the - what this town is known for, spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses or shading the context. We know the mushroom clouds and the other things that were all described that the media has covered well. I saw on the ground a sort of walking away from 10 years’ worth of planning. You know, ever since the end of the first Gulf War, there’s been planning by serious officers and planners and others, and policies put in place - 10 years' worth of planning were thrown away. Troop levels dismissed out of hand. Gen. Shinseki basically insulted for speaking the truth and giving an honest opinion.

The lack of cohesive approach to how we deal with the aftermath, the political, economic, social reconstruction of a nation, which is no small task. A belief in these exiles that anyone in the region, anyone that had any knowledge, would tell you were not credible on the ground. And on and on and on, decisions to disband the army that were not in the initial plans. There’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the Secretary of State say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policies made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves us, it will be them.

MTP now has a full transcript up and this is being well covered on Dkos.

The most telling thing is the Zinni is simply stating the truth. The claims by Bush, Cheney and even Powell that there was "No doubt" that Saddam had WMD and intended to use them against the U.S. was completely unfounded. This section here is especially telling...

MR. RUSSERT: I want to bring you back to August 26, 2002. The Veterans of Foreign War had a convention, a meeting. Vice President Cheney was the guest speaker. You were honored, as you can see the medal around your neck there. This is what the vice president said on that day.

(Videotape, August 26, 2002):

VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is not doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.

MR. RUSSERT: After that event, The Washington Post captured your thinking in a conversation with you. "Cheney's certitude bewildered [retired General Tony] Zinni. ... `In my time at CENTCOM, I watched the intelligence, and never - not once - did it say, "He has WMD."' Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and the military. `I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I'd say to analysts, "Where's the threat?"' Their response, he recalls, was, `Silence.' Zinni's concern deepened as Cheney pressed on. ... Zinni's conclusion as he slowly walked off the stage was that the Bush administration was determined to go to war. A moment later, he had another, equally chilling thought: `These guys don't understand what they're getting into.'" Why did you think that on that day?

GEN. ZINNI: Well, first of all, prior to that, I heard the president say because this--these rumors of debates and people pushing for this entry into Iraq that the president said, "Well, look, I'm going to listen to the debate, and then I'll look at the intelligence." First of all, I thought that was a little backwards, but I said, "Well, the president hasn't made up his mind to this point, and when he looks at the intelligence, takes an honest look at it, when he hears the debate, he'll realize that this isn't something that should be done now, and it should--and if you're going to do it, you would do it in a way to try to restart the United Nations process, go back to what President Bush 41 had done."

But what I heard on that stage today, or that day was not the case of restarting that process in any serious way. I heard the case being built to go to war right away. And what bothered me, I had been hearing about some of the assumptions on the planning, dismissal of the for--previous plans, and I was hearing a depiction of the intelligence that didn't fit what I knew. There was no solid proof, that I ever saw, that Saddam had WMD.

Now, I'd be the first to say we had to assume he had WMD left over that wasn't accounted for: artillery rounds, chemical rounds, a SCUD missile or two. But these things, over time, degrade. These things did not present operational or strategic level threats at best. Plus, we were watching Saddam with an army that had caved in. It was nothing like the Gulf War army. It was a shell of its former self. We knew we could go through it quickly. We'd stripped away his air defenses. He was at our mercy. We had air superiority before we even--or actually air supremacy before we would even start an operation. So to say that this threat was imminent or grave and gathering, seemed like a great exaggeration to me.

MR. RUSSERT: The president, the secretary of state, all said he was not contained, he was not in a box, that he was a madman.

GEN. ZINNI: Well, I think that's--that is an insult to the troops who, for 10 years, ran the containment: those brave pilots who flew the no-fly zones, those sailors who enforced the maritime intercept operations, our soldiers and Marines that were on the ground out there that responded to every crisis, our support for the efforts of the inspectors that were in there. You know, we--we had less troops on a day-to-day basis out there than go to work at the Pentagon every day doing this. And these were not assigned troops to CENTCOM. These were troops that rotated in and out. We had allies out there that helped foot the bill for this, $300 million dollars to $500 million dollars a year supporting us with bases, supporting us with overflights, supporting us with assistance in kind, joining us in places like Somalia and the Balkans when we required coalition troops. I thought the containment worked remarkably well, and it was a tribute to our troops and how they handled it.

Simply incredible.

Vyan