General Zinni

From the Washington Post, a piece on General Anthony Zinni, a self-professed moderate Republican and former chief of the Central Command (U.S. Military Headquarters for African and the Middle East), now dismayed by the administration he endorsed in 2000:

[Gen. Zinni] was alarmed that day to hear Cheney make the argument for attacking Iraq on grounds that Zinni found questionable at best:

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney said. “There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

Cheney’s certitude bewildered Zinni. As chief of the Central Command, Zinni had been immersed in U.S. intelligence about Iraq. He was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts’ doubts about Iraq’s programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. “In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never — not once — did it say, ‘He has WMD.’ ”

The rest of the story is definitely worth reading.

AB

[Source corrected]