Just caught the beginning of Zinni on Charlie Rose. He's said it all before so I'm not bothering to listen. What I find really annoying is the obligatory, "I'm glad Saddam is removed but..." line that Zinni begins with like all the others. Of course he adds, if we had finished Al Qaeda first, if we had gotten UN approval, if we had gotten international cooperation, yada, yada. Then he adds for good measure that Bush 41 didn't go to Baghdad for good reason.
Great. So, in fact, you disapprove heartily of Saddam's being removed, don't you, General Zinni? You just listed 3 impossible conditions (tried & proved) as absolute prerequesites.
Now, Zinni was against the war beforehand, and he should be honest enough to stay against it now. He favored leaving a "contained" Saddam in place, and if by now or a few years hence we found that Saddam had bought a nuke from Pakistan or North Korea, why, that would be all the more reason to leave him alone.
It's just a disingenous comparison of likely alternatives. |
