Wednesday, April 19

Zinni on Rumsfeld

I liked General (USMC) Tony Zinni's book 'Battle Ready' (with Tom Clancy). So I'm interested in what he has to say.

Here's his take on Rumsfeld from these notes via Mark .

Rumsfeld's responsible. The military accepts responsibility when things go wrong, trying to apply the lessons they learn. What happened in this case? Rumsfeld discarded 10 years of planning toward a true occupation. We needed to take on reconstruction and to control access to Iraq, both from without and within. It was going to take a long time. But Rumsfeld had a cavalier attitude about it, discarding it all as "on-the-shelf, stale old plans," even though the military is constantly updating its "old plans" so that they do not get "stale." The assumptions in the plans were dismissed by Rumsfeld as too negative. The problem of no planning was symbolized when General Garner's group got lost as they made their way into Iraq from Kuwait. Then came the CPA. And Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army. We had communicated with them for years, (promising them their continued existence if they cooperated).

 A pretty stinging indictment...

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