Post #128

Subject: Iraq, Real Reality, Pt. III

... from http://www.motherjones.com – smart, fearless journalism, an interview with General Anthony Zinni (usmc, retired), from October 2007. He was the CENTCOM commander who oversaw American troops in the Middle East from 1997 to 2000. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….

MotherJones: You hear the Democratic candidates talking about withdrawal, but they don't give timetables.

AZ: Yeah, but that's politics. Either it's based on political appeal or it's based on naiveté. We're not going to withdraw from the region. To pull out of Iraq would say we are inviting you to set up a sanctuary and a base of operations. The first time Al Qaeda in Iraq blows up our embassy in Amman, Jordan, guess what? We're back in. The first time the Iranian influence becomes so great that they begin to incite and meddle with the Shiites and start causing problems, guess what? We're gonna be back in.

[As well we should. “We will make no distinction between terrorist organizations and the governments that harbor them.” – the only good policy to come out of Washington in the past seven years. But yet George W. Bush ignores that. Why aren’t we in Pakistan? But the reason for MY opposition to the occupation is practical. Let’s bring our troops home and rest ‘em – get ‘em ready for other battles in the War on Terror.]

We have to take a stand, and we have to ensure our interests are protected; they're too important and they reverberate around the globe. Responsible political leaders back here understand that you can't extract yourself totally from the region. You know, we haven't left anywhere and come home since the beginning of World War II. We don't come home anymore. We're still in South Korea. We're still in Germany. We're still in Japan. We're still all over the world.

[Well, why are we still in Germany and Japan? Who are we fighting there? Al-Qaeda of the Axis!?! :p And what are our interests in South Korea? If North Korea overruns South Korea, so? Let’s have a debate about that. And, uh, Vietnam – we left there. The soft bombs of capitalism have produced a thriving economy, and Vietnam is no threat to us]

MJ: Do you see a significant drawdown in the situation you're describing?

AZ: Yes. I discourage giving a number because I think when you sort out the missions and the locations, you ought to let the Pentagon, the military, not the guys in suits but the guys in uniforms, make these decisions so we won't repeat the mistakes of the past. We contained Iraq and Iran with fewer troops than report to the Pentagon every day for work. The president said containment didn't work. I don't know what the hell he was seeing. But for a decade, unless something flared up, we had on average 23,000 troops in all of CENTCOM in the most volatile region in the world.

We also had our allies contribute to our presence out there. There was $300 to $500 million a year the Saudis and Kuwaitis paid us in in-kind assistance, fuel, food, water. The Saudis built a $450 billion complex to house our troops. We had a nice arrangement out there. Containment worked. And the proof is in the pudding that the president was wrong when he said containment didn't work: Saddam was no threat to his neighbors. He didn't have WMDs. He was contained by every definition of containment.

[Ha Ha – that’s Clintonian containment! :p]