The public record is a wonderful thing
Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni is one of a handful of former generals who are demanding that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resign for stuff that happened three years ago. Unfortunately, Zinni apparently doesn't follow the lead of former Gen. George Washington. Zinni can tell a lie, or, if not a lie, he can conveniently forget things.
Former Clinton CENTCOM commander, Anthony Zinni — the most prominent of the retired generals attacking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — now says that, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, "What bothered me ... [was that] 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."
But in early 2000, Zinni told Congress "Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region," adding, "Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, [and] retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions ... Even if Baghdad reversed its course and surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to replace agents and munitions within weeks or months."
I've not seen any response by Zinni to his mutally exclusive takes on Iraq's WMDs.
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To be fair to Gen. Zinni, it should be pointed out that in his testimony to Congress he was speaking not for himself, but for the official position of the Defense Department. It is possible, even reasonable, to suggest that he had private doubts about that official position, but presented it all the same, as his role required.
Should he have resigned rather than present a point of view he had doubts about? Were we to adopt that standard, we'd be without flag officers -- or without officers at all: I know, as I was an Army officer for 14 years, and there wasn't a comrade who didn't disagree with some aspect of official policy or strategy. But we saluted smartly and carried it out all the same.
That said, a host of complications follows hard on this "retired generals revolt." Does it undermine our war effort? Does the administration have to select a Defense Secretary that meets the approval of Zinni, Batiste, Swannack and company?
And, that said, there is something wonderful that during wartime such a public debate can even occur. It could never happen in Cuba, or Venezuela, or, for that matter, Saddam's Iraq -- and who couldn't extend that list by 15 states or so? It's the marvel of an open society.
I believe that Zinni only decided that he doubted the intelligence after it turned out the intelligence was wrong. Practically everybody believed Saddam was hiding biological, chemical and to a lesser extent, nuclear, programs -- the 20/20 hindsight is just too politically convenient.
You're right that Zinni is free to speak now that he's retired, but I think when he comes out and makes these statements he has a duty to seriously and credibly explain his earlier comments -- not to simply ignore them. It would also help rebut charges of opportunism if he could in detail he could explain why he didn't believe, deep down, what he was telling Congress.
I believe there is also a duty for officers, if they truly believe they are being ordered to mislead or lie to Congress, to resign. Zinni today sounds like he was knew what he was doing was ethically and legally wrong, but he did it anyway. The "good soldier" excuse -- especially at his level -- doesn't wash.
Likewise, if you look at Zinni's 2000 testimony, it jibes with what the Iraq Survey Group report concluded -- that Iraq never gave up on having bio/chem/nuclear weapons and had the infrastructure in place to start creating them again as soon as the sanctions regime was lifted.
I'd agree that Zinni loses much credibility for failing to acknowledge and explain his 2000 remarks. He should, and if he fails to, he has no standing to be taken seriously.
While officers indeed have a duty to resign if they think they are being ordered to mislead or do anything else illegal or unethical, my experience, which ranges from platoon leader through staffwork at a MACOM, taught me that the lines are not always so bright. Frequently I would disagree with my superiors' judgements or interpretation of data, some of which I thought were dreadfully wrong, but I still recognized it was their call to make, and military misjudgement isn't really a crime -- at least not in our Army. (It has been, of course, at many times and places, from ancient Greece through Stalin's Red Army and beyond).
I think the standard that's really being applied to Zinni, et al, is not "resign if you are think you are being ordered to act illegally or dishonestly" but rather "resign if you disagree," and I don't think that's a fair standard.
FWIW, the dissident retirees haven't convinced me that the SecDef should step down, but I think that their claims of strategic missteps is a fair cop. Those get made in every war, though. Imagine if the Continental Congress had fired Washington for his blunder of trying to hold New York, or if Marshall had been called on the carpet over Anzio (or abandoning the Phillipines in '42). That's no way to run a war.