rssNot-Ambassador Zinni Unloads to Laura Rozen
Wednesday, February 04, 2009 at 7:47 pm
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That story Barbara Slavin broke about retired Marine Gen. Tony Zinni being promised the next ambassadorship to Iraq only to have the offer abruptly rescinded? Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen got Zinni on the phone and he absolutely unloaded.
Zinni told Rozen: President Obama spoke to Zinni personally; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had him to the State Department a week ago; and then he had to read in The Washington Post that Chris Hill was getting the job.
Is Zinni, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, bitter? You tell me:
[National security adviser Jim] Jones asked him if he would like to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Zinni said. “I said, ‘You can stick that with whatever other offers,” Zinni recalled, saying he had used more colorful language with Jones. Asked Jones’s response and if he was apologetic, Zinni said, “Jones was not too concerned. He laughed about it.”
According to Rozen, Zinni and Jones, both Marine generals, have been friends for 30 years. Wow.
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Pingback posted February 5, 2009 @ 9:10 am
[...] With a raft of unanswered questions confronting US policy in Afghanistan, a new problem has bobbed to the surface: Russia, and it’s apparent move to convince Krygyzstan to expel American forces from an air base crucial to supplying growing operations in Afghanistan. An enduring problem continues to trouble US hopes in Iraq: violence. After largely peaceful provincial elections last week, tribal leaders in Anbar are vowing violence if the ballots don’t go their way. Final results will be known in a couple of weeks. There was also some friction in US quarters over who President Obama would actually appoint as ambassador to Iraq. [...]
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