He says he was doing consulting work for the CIA and the military, which makes sense since he was in charge of CENTCOM before. I guess that is the reason why the House asked him to testify.

This is from the Meet the Press transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: I want to bring you back to August 26, 2002. The Veterans of Foreign War had a convention, a meeting. Vice President Cheney was the guest speaker. You were honored, as you can see the medal around your neck there. This is what the vice president said on that day.

(Videotape, August 26, 2002):

VICE PRES. DICK CHENEY: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is not doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: After that event, The Washington Post captured your thinking in a conversation with you. “Cheney’s certitude bewildered [retired General Tony] Zinni. ... ‘In my time at CENTCOM, I watched the intelligence, and never - not once - did it say, “He has WMD.”’ Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and the military. ‘I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I’d say to analysts, “Where’s the threat?”’ Their response, he recalls, was, ‘Silence.’ Zinni’s concern deepened as Cheney pressed on. ... Zinni’s conclusion as he slowly walked off the stage was that the Bush administration was determined to go to war. A moment later, he had another, equally chilling thought: ‘These guys don’t understand what they’re getting into.’”
=====

He was in charge of containing Saddam in the 90s, i.e. he is angry that politicians don't think containment works anymore, which is one more motivation to be against the war:

ZINNI: Now, I’d be the first to say we had to assume he had WMD left over that wasn’t accounted for: artillery rounds, chemical rounds, a SCUD missile or two. But these things, over time, degrade. These things did not present operational or strategic level threats at best. Plus, we were watching Saddam with an army that had caved in. It was nothing like the Gulf War army. It was a shell of its former self. We knew we could go through it quickly. We’d stripped away his air defenses. He was at our mercy. We had air superiority before we even—or actually air supremacy before we would even start an operation. So to say that this threat was imminent or grave and gathering, seemed like a great exaggeration to me.

MR. RUSSERT: The president, the secretary of state, all said he was not contained, he was not in a box, that he was a madman.

GEN. ZINNI: Well, I think that’s—that is an insult to the troops who, for 10 years, ran the containment: those brave pilots who flew the no-fly zones, those sailors who enforced the maritime intercept operations, our soldiers and Marines that were on the ground out there that responded to every crisis, our support for the efforts of the inspectors that were in there. You know, we—we had less troops on a day-to-day basis out there than go to work at the Pentagon every day doing this. And these were not assigned troops to CENTCOM. These were troops that rotated in and out. We had allies out there that helped foot the bill for this, $300 million dollars to $500 million dollars a year supporting us with bases, supporting us with overflights, supporting us with assistance in kind, joining us in places like Somalia and the Balkans when we required coalition troops. I thought the containment worked remarkably well, and it was a tribute to our troops and how they handled it.

Franz, thank you.
I have read the summary and scanned the conclusions.

I don't think they criticize Zinni's viewpoint. I got the impression they agree with Zinni's charges about "true dereliction, negligence, and irresponsibility."

A remarkable paper. Seems to be a balaneced paper with the thesis according to the foreword:

"Though they conclude that critics have made a number of telling points against the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, they argue that the most serious problems facing Iraq and its American occupiers—criminal anarchy and lawlessness, a raging insurgency, and a society divided into rival and antagonistic groups—were virtually inevitable consequences that flowed from
the act of war itself. Military and civilian planners were culpable in
failing to plan for certain tasks, but the most serious problems had
no good solution."

Sure, there would still be problems and severe challenges in Iraq today, if those mistakes had not been made.

The authors, however, also acknowledge that things in Iraq would be much better if those mistakes had not been made. Or less mistakes would have been made.

And they acknowledge that some of those mistakes were BIG.

They write: "Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was, in basic respects, a test of the
theory that civilians must intervene in the military planning process and force their perspectives down the chain of command.59 Secretary Rumsfeld did this in the first instance by starting the bidding for the forces committed to the invasion at 75,000 troops and intimating that a smaller number would be entirely adequate. Events have shown that the number was ludicrously small in relation to the tasks given to U.S. forces, and that Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was right in seeing the need for much larger numbers. On this crucial
question, certainly, the record of Iraq war planning does nothing to advance the case for civilian activism."

Zinni knew the military plans and is angry that the civilians threw away the military plans.

The military does great work. They are professional, experienced, cautious, careful, smart etc. Civilians don't have this experience and knowledge.
The CEO of a hospital should not tell a neuro surgeon how to operate.

Zinni and I refer to the military plans made in the 90s. Zinni was in charge of CENTCOM till 2000.

"There is no war that cannot be justly criticized for political, strategic and tactical errors...."

Sure! Why do you criticize Zinni then?

Re your last sentence: Do you doubt General Zinni's integrity and patriotism?
Those who defend the Iraq war might have political and commercial interests as well or they just don't want to lose their job.

You don't have any other criticism of this post or General Zinni?

Thank you, Joe!

> As to the failures of the current
> “Rumsfeld Doctrine” this is in fact the Clinton Doctrine
> because it is the force structure developed by the Clinton

Zinni was in charge under Clinton and saw different plans with a larger force.

> Administration using the Reagan weapon systems. So when the
> US Army goes from 18 active divisions to 10, a lot of plans
> are going to change and so is the execution of those plans.
> This is the real change in doctrine.

a) So why did Shinsheki consider it possible to use more forces?
b) If you think the US did not have enough troops, why did you decide to fight this war of choice already in 2003?
c) Did the Republican controlled Congress strongly oppose the reduction of army divisions in the 90s?
d) Did the Bush administration do anything to increase the number of army divisions, when they took over in January 2001?

> military. Both POTUS’s gave these campaigns their complete
> support and allowed the military to execute their plans to
> accomplish the mission. This is more about the civilian
> leadership trusting the professionalism and competence of the
> military than some contrived choice between the two.

The army study says otherwise. The civilians changed the military plans. Read the comments above.

Re Franks: Didn't he resign just after the end of major combat operations? It seems to me he did not want to have anything to do with winning the peace.

> But then again I defer all of this to real war planners who
> seem to have both a greater understanding and insight of
> operations in Iraq than I do.

I did not make any of my own arguments, but quoted a former CENTCOM commander and an army study, i.e. guys with great understanding and insights.

You would help us, if you would link to any independent expert who thinks the Iraq war was well planned and Zinni's charges are wrong.

We are hear to learn!