It is an honor to be able to speak to you and to be able to participate here at this conference. I thought my best contribution and maybe response to questions would be from a joint perspective and a joint force commander’s view of air power. I have spent the last 10 years and all of my general officer time in joint billets. The one time I was a commander of a Marine Expeditionary Force, I spent the vast majority of that time as a JTF [Joint Task Force] commander, operationally or in exercises and things where we had joint responsibility. It has been 10 years since I’ve had the myopic blinders of a single service approach to anything, and this sometimes presents a problem, even in my own service because they make assumptions about where you stand or where you sit on issues and make assumptions about how you believe in things. And that, of course, changes, especially if you have a decade of that kind of responsibility. I would view myself now as a passionate believer in joint and coalition operations as the only way to fight the fight.

I was extremely comfortable with [Lieutenant] General [Michael] Short’s presentation here because he has hit on the key aspects of what makes a coalition operate – trust, being able to share with our coalition partners what we need to do, and what we intend to do, and then proper use and respect and employment of their forces. We live that day in and day out in the joint world as a joint force commander and as a coalition force commander. We live under strange arrangements. And we live under no real doctrine. We salute joint doctrine and we say there is something out there called joint doctrine, but really there isn’t. We don’t have a code that is solidified as the services have. Sometimes we have a problem in trying to get these four or five -- if you add special operations and others, five -- service views of things, sometimes dimensional views of things like whether it is airpower which can cross the spectrum of several services, naval power, ground power and try to hammer it together and try to make it come together. I like to think that we are carpenters or plumbers that get a big tool belt and on that tool belt are just a whole bunch of things: hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, whatever. When we see a job, we try to get the right tool, have respect for our tools, have respect for using it the right way – I don’t want to be banging a nail with my pliers or trying to take a screw out with my hammer -- and do it right, make sure I respect that tool and what it was intended for. Use them in the right ways and combinations, do some jobs where I only require one tool to get it done and get the job done successfully. My obligation is to define the job.

I want to go back to another point that General Short made that I think is critically important, and that is: defining the objective in military terms. We CINCs [Commanders in Chief] receive political objectives, and usually a political objective is shaped in political terms. And to be acceptable, there is usually compromise and softening, and the words may have meaning to diplomats, but usually they are so broad or vague, they are hard to translate into what our people need, hard and fast definite action verbs. When someone tells you to demonstrate resolve, to monitor something or whatever, we need more specificity.

I want to tell you that the buck stops here with the CINC. That is the obligation the CINC has – to define those terms for our component commanders to make sure they can translate that into military action. Let me take one exception to one thing Mike [Short] said. I would never ever have an airman go up to Camp David to brief the air campaign. I would never ever have an infantryman or artilleryman go up to Camp David to brief the ground campaign. I would never ever have a sailor in my theater go to Camp David and brief the naval campaign. If I can’t do it, I ought to be fired. I have been at Camp David with the President of the United States. I have rolled out a master air attack plan and walked him through that. How does a grunt get to that position? I am not an airman. I have been scared to death in the back seat of an F-16. Out at Whiteman [Air Force Base] I went up in a B-2 and got a chance to bring it around and fly it and go through the simulation. No panic, Mike, everything is O.K. I didn’t break anything. That pilot was very careful as to what I was allowed to touch. I will tell you something. We can no longer afford joint force commanders or those in a joint force that think narrowly or think in terms of the uniform they bring in there. I am proud of this uniform, don’t get me wrong. Back in the First World War, when the Marines put together a brigade, it was deemed that they didn’t have anyone capable of running a force that size, and we had an Army brigadier general that was in charge of the Marine brigade and command. At the end of it, he said, still at heart he was an old cavalryman, but he proudly wore his Marine globe and anchor. That was an expression of jointness. I proudly wear what I think is the designation and insignia of all our services. I stand for every service song and everything else. That is not just playing to the audience. That is because basically what I have out there are Americans, men and women, children of our American citizens, they are all wearing the same uniform, when you think about it. You all owe them the same. You need to understand what they do for a living and what they bring to the fight and what they contribute and how best to use their capability and when to use the right capability.

Joint education has been a problem for us. We don’t do a good job of training people for this job that I hold right now. I have had a lot of OJTs [On-The-Job Training]. You’ve heard of the "Provide Hopes," "Continue Hopes," the -- "Abandon Hopes" is probably the next one, come July. All those things have been joint. I have had the benefit of being around some great people. They are of all services but particularly for your service. One was already mentioned: Jim Jamerson [General James L. Jamerson], who taught me a helluva a lot as a young brigadier about airpower, its uses, its limitations and the way to handle that. I was his deputy in an operation that turned into an air-only operation after the ground forces left. I was the last grunt left around. Jim sat me down and said, "If you are going to be the deputy of this operation, and it is all about air, you had better damn right well understand what you are talking about and what you are doing." And I said, "I am all ears, tell me what I have to do." "The first thing," he said, "is I am having a two-holer F-16 come down here. You are going to get in the back seat, and you are going to go out with that young captain, and you are going to find out what his life is like in that cockpit and get an appreciation for his world." It is a lot different from my world in very basic terms -- in speed and decision making. There are things that you can read about, but if you want that visceral feel, you need to be up there doing it. You need to get that sense. We also had a carrier in support. He made me go out to the carrier and do enough traps and cats [catapult landings and takeoffs] before I realized I had enough of that. I don’t need to get that down. The rest of it is easier.

My point is, he wanted me to start from that level and then work up to understand the broader, maybe more difficult, things in how to plan and conduct an air campaign and then how to make that air campaign fit into everything else you are doing, be it naval, air, ground combinations thereof, the political side of that dimension.

I am really amazed at debates about whether you can do something with just one dimension of our capability. Of course, you can. I don’t know any serious joint force commander that wouldn’t stand up here and say, could I accomplish my mission with only air. Certainly you can. I’ve seen it. We’ve done it. You’ve heard one example here in Kosovo. The second thing I would say is, so what? Why is that a big deal? It is the carpenter who does the whole job with one tool. Why not? If it is efficient and it is effective, you do it that way. I’ve learned over the course of my time as a joint force commander that there are a few jobs that are like that. You usually need certain combinations of what you have arrayed before you. That is the norm. But you still can do it with one dimension. You don’t try to do it to prove something. Then I think you would make a bad mistake if you tried to misuse the tool. That is how you end up with casualties or end up with a mission that isn’t successful or as successful as it should be.

The other point I’d like to make - and one that gets lost as to whether something is better or worse, ground is better than air or naval is better than ground or whatever - is that when one supports another, we have operations sometimes where the point of main effort, the focus of main effort is air and the success of the air campaign is enhanced when you can use other things: naval, ground, special operations to promote and enhance it. There are times when air served that role to promote and push the main effort or the focus. But again, normally it is some combination, it is some spread. There are times in the campaign when the main effort shifts back and forth. Much like a carpenter or a director of an orchestra, your job is to make sure you’ve got that balance and know when to play one and when to play another.

We end up with this problem of trying to blend doctrines. I believe service doctrine gives me the 80 percent solution. I end up with Army-Air Force-Navy-Marines-Coast Guard-special ops guys who come in and say, according to our doctrine, created inside the Beltway for programmatic reasons or our local doctrine center for whatever reasons, this is the way you should fight us. Normally, 80 percent of the time, that can be accommodated, and it is right. The other 20 percent you normally have to bend, shape, ask for a little flexibility or at the extreme, very rarely, break somebody’s doctrinal tenet.

As a joint force commander, I’ve done that to my own service, and believe me, it is tough coming home when you do that. I did that, and I got a lot of hate mail. The Marine thought police were after my butt. But I am happy to announce that every service has been pissed off at me at one time or another. I think that is a measure of success. I will tell you honestly up here, I have never had a service component who didn’t agree with a decision that was made. I never had a situation where I did something to a service component commander who didn’t have a complete opportunity to tell me if there was a better way. As a matter of fact, 99.9 percent of the time, the service component was coming to me and saying we’ve got to bend and be flexible. I am blessed with some great component commanders. Obviously, one here in Chuck Wald [Lt. Gen. Charles F. Wald]. My component commanders have built CENTCOM’S [Central Command] joint way to fight. I haven’t. I haven’t dictated anything to them. When I became CINC, I asked our component commanders to get together and start a process of defining certain things, like Joint Fires for us. I was about to publish something from the headquarters. Hal Hornburg [Lt. Gen. Hal M. Hornburg], [LTG] Tommy Franks, my Army component commander, my Marine component commander, [VAdm. Charles W. Moore] and before him Tom Fargo, my Navy component commander, they got together, locked themselves in a back room with a lot of black eyes, bloody noses. I kept checking in once in awhile saying, “Do I have to weigh in?” -- They said “stay out of it”. At the end, they produced our joint fires SOP [Standard Operating Procedure]. Not one time did I have to weigh in and make a decision or arbitrate on the joint fires standing operating procedure that we have. They produced it. They convinced me one-on-one that they could live with it, and they haven’t compromised any part of what they need to win on that battlefield or haven’t compromised anything that would endanger their people. They could make it work. They took it on the road. I have never stood before an audience and given a pitch about our joint fires approach. My component commanders have.

If you went to the joint flag officers course in Maxwell [Air Force Base], you would see Hal Hornburg and Tommy Franks. I have been up to the Naval War College right after Tommy Franks and my Navy component commander Willie Moore or at the Air War College where Hal Hornburg and Willie Moore together were giving the pitch. It has worked. We have tried to get through some of the hurdles we have in jointness. Let me say things about my joint period view of air power and then expand on them and get into what it means for the other components. I am not playing to the audience here. In some of these things, I want to talk a bit more about what the implications may be.

My view: air power has played the most significant role in operations since the end of the Cold War. Any one that is honest about that, any joint force commander cannot deny that. Kosovo, "Desert Storm," the smaller operations we’ve seen like "Desert Fox" and "Desert Strike" and those things, basically, you have seen the major role being played by air power. There is good news to that and there is bad news to that. I want to talk about that. Good news and bad news for both the services involved in aerospace power and those not involved.

The second point I would make is that air power has made the most significant technological and conceptual developments that have helped us in this period, moreso than the other dimensions. If you think about it, my components fight as joint functional components - JFACC [Joint Force Air Component Commander], JFLCC [Joint Force Land Component Commader], JFMCC [Joint Force Maritime Component Commander], those kind of things. What was the first? The first thing that we bit of and had to fight through was the JFACC. There is a lot of blood on the floor. We are just now coming to grips with JFLIC. But JFACC is history; we’ve got it. Johnny Jumper [Gen. John P. Jumper] called me up one day when I was a I MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] commander out there. We had a bunch of iron majors who were getting ready for an exercise and internal look at Centcom. Johnny says these are majors who didn’t have a lot of joint time. And right away swords were drawn - green guys and blue guys. He called me up and said, "Hey, we’ve got to get in there and straighten these guys out. We’ve come too far to let these guys take a step backwards." Absolutely right, and obviously the ability to accommodate every need that we had, every requirement, was met in the JFACC concept in the way and procedures that we handled it. That was true in Korea with Howell Estes [Gen. Howell M. Estes, III]. That was true with Johnny Jumper in Centcom.

Now, you hear nothing about JFACC. I don’t hear any gripes or complaints or some fears or lack of trust. That has been a long time--my guess is 15 years, plus--of us working through some hard times to get to that point. We are just now beginning that process on the ground side. My point is, procedurally, we are farther ahead of the game in joint operations on the air side than we were before, because we bit the bullet and took the hard road earlier, and we’ve gotten now over that hurdle.

I am also dealing with joint theater support commands, joint logistics, and that is going to be the next bear that I am going to leave for my successor if I can get through this land component command [issue], which I think we are almost there. Clearly, technologically the greatest advancements have been made on the air side. Certainly to this audience, I don’t need to tick them off. But precision ordnance, stand-off weapon systems, increase in ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] capabilities, space-based systems and what they give us in terms of accuracy, command and control, visibility of the battlefield.

As a matter of fact, we are almost victims of this rapid technological growth because the expectations are so great now: zero casualties, perfect execution, completely flawless, and the CINCs have to suffer through that because that is becoming the expectation because we’ve gotten that good. That is something that has occurred in my mind post-Cold War. People look at Iraq and look at Iraq after "Desert Storm," and I am constantly asked about the Iraqi military versus ours. There has been so many changes on our side, especially in this technology, that our advantages have far outweighed where he [Saddam Hussein] has gone. He has obviously lost a lot in force structure. His technology has stagnated. Ours has increased on this side. What things like sensor-fuzed munitions, precision ordnance, we can do a lot more with fewer assets. Frankly, sometimes, we have trouble convincing our own people of that. People want a certain force structure for confidence, as opposed to looking hard at the mission and then looking at where we are in our capability and adjusting the force structure to mission. Mike [Ryan] and I talk a lot about this. We don’t need as much to do the same sorts of things. I would add to that, things like proof in the pudding in our global reach mission, proof in the pudding in our ability to deploy and get to the scene of the crime in a short time and meet the requirement, which has been demonstrated, certainly in our theater and in the Kosovo campaign. We saw both executed extremely well.

The third point I would make regarding airpower is that airpower has had to make the greatest adaptation, and it has had the greatest effect, particularly on the Air Force. The Cold War had a model for the way the Air Force should be configured, not only in terms of its force structure, but also its basing and also its mindset. What I’ve seen over the last 10 years is a radical change in the demands that the environment, situation and joint force commander have placed on the U.S. Air Force. We demand that you be expeditionary now, build very bare-based environments, and do this on a short term. This has required significant change in our entire approach. I have seen this change handled exceptionally well.

The latest piece to this, which I feel is exactly on the mark is the AEF [Aerospace Expeditionary Force] concept. I think the AEF concept is a clear, dramatic, bold recognition of the way the environment is out there and the way the Air Force is going to have to fight. Will it be painful to implement? You bet. Look, my service went through this post-Vietnam. We ran a unit deployment program, and we basically did what you are doing, restructuring ourselves to meet the needs of expeditionary warfare. There are little gremlins and little demons out there that are going to pop their heads up, which you are going to have to deal with. But the big chunks will work, and the philosophy is right. It certainly suits my theater of operations, and it fits exactly what we need to have happen. I salute the Air Force, and I salute General Ryan for making that change. That means that every airman’s head has to be turned around. This fits what the requirement is that is going to have to be laid on them.

I was a little bit bothered by this morning’s pitch on the nine myths--not pitch, I think it is great. But at this point in life that we have to have that sort of defense of a campaign that was successful! We have a tendency in this country to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We won. I looked at this from a grandstand seat. It wasn’t my AOR [Area of Responsibility], but if I got it right, we won and we didn’t take any battle casualties. The guy caved in. We did it without having to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. We proved our technological superiority; we wowed everybody, and I can give you some stories about the after effects and how it affected us - and we are complaining about it. I have got to figure that one out.

Most infantrymen I know, when the guy drops the bomb and takes out the position in front of him and they don’t have to attack the hill, they tend to cheer. At least I did in Vietnam, and my troops did, because the lieutenant organizing the attack on the Hill is probably not going to build as much confidence as the F-4 taking the thing out to begin with. I am worried now a little bit about how we make these approaches, how we build the joint team and the mutual respect and this appreciation. I don’t see this as a zero-sum game. I don’t see that if one dimension wins, the other dimension loses. We have a need for all of it.

We can question - and that is the job of people in Washington - how much of what you need. But we have to be extremely careful that we don’t become our own internal adversaries. I will say something that I am extremely proud of. I do not believe in Central Command that we have any problems with that. The respect between our components, I can tell you after "Desert Fox," being out there on the ground with the soldiers and Marines after "Desert Fox" and the performance of the Air Force, Navy and Marine air on those targets, the cheers that went up from those kids on the ground says it all. Whether people back inside the Beltway or people back in the doctrine centers are going to run around or those that have poison pens in think tanks are going to write something negative, I can tell you the reaction of the guy that has to live out there. Because we have that kind of capability and that kind of dedication, it made their job easier, so those young people who were on the front lines between the Kuwaiti and the Iraqi border didn’t have to do anything because of it.

Let me give you some concerns that I have. The first concern I have, and I have already mentioned this, is that we have raised expectations. We can be so good that we could have our leadership and our American people think this is the rule and not the exception. We have done so well in my theater of operations and in Kosovo that we have put the bar up here. Right now today we have an air campaign going on in my theater in the Southern no-fly zone and in the Northern no-fly zone. Since December of 1998, we have effectively destroyed 30 percent of Saddam’s air defense capability across the board - missile systems, triple A [Anti-Aircraft Artillery], radars, command and control, etc.--methodically, precisely, carefully, with minimal if any collateral damage. We’ve done it politically extremely well, low-key. It is ho-hum. It’s page 23 next to ladies’ lingerie in the newspaper. No one is noticing it. It fits all the requirements. Slowly but surely this guy is losing. He loses face. He loses capability. He loses the propaganda war. Slowly but surely he is leaving his forces completely uncovered and naked in both areas. Slowly but surely we are implementing this campaign.

Now, if we lost a plane, if we had one pilot taken, you can imagine the reaction here and there. This [no losses] has become an expectation - a helluva expectation. Since 1991, in the north, and 1992, in the south, we have been flying these missions. In the south, we have flown well over 200,000 sorties into Iraq and never lost a plane or a pilot over the skies of Iraq since we’ve been doing it. That is a helluva testimony to what we can do. My concern is, that is the expectation now. We are that good, and not all combat and confrontation and all conflict is going to be that way, which leads me to my second concern.

There is a myth that you need to add, a number 10. You did, as a matter of fact - it was in there. That we have enough of a technological advantage and we don’t need to pursue more. Bad myth. That is almost prejudicial, to think there are people out there who aren’t as smart as us; that there are people out there who can’t create the kind of technology or the kind of capability that can catch up or close the gap or narrow it. Why would we want it to be narrowed? Even if we had that advantage. I am a believer that that advantage isn’t as great as people are led to believe. I am a supporter of the F-22. Mike knows that. I signed a letter to everybody concerned on that. That is not a favor to Mike Ryan. That is because I as a CINC want to keep this kind of edge. We can’t pay today’s bill at the price of tomorrow’s capability. You can’t rob modernization to fix the problems you have today. We can’t afford to do that in any service.

The other concern I have is one you’d logically understand and that is the pace of these operations and what it is doing to our people. We don’t have the resources to meet the strategy. It’s plain and simple. I don’t know how to put it anyway else. We don’t have enough people, we don’t have enough force structure, we don’t have the right kinds of things we need to meet this strategy. We can be more efficient in some of the things that we have to do, especially in base realignment and other areas to readjust what we do have, but we are woefully under resourced and under manned in all of our services. Something has got to give. People are voting with their feet across the board. We have got to change it. I don’t think you can change the strategy. The logical and easy and simple thing to say is, and we are about to be in an election year here, well, we’ll change the strategy. We’ll become less committed in the world. I don’t understand that. When you are the world’s only superpower, when our economic and security interests involve everybody in the world and we are the only ones who can make those guarantees and protect them, then you’ve got to make the commitment. It is in our interest. It meets our values. It meets our way of life, and it meets our own very hard core material interests, be they economic or security.

We have to change. There was no peace dividend. Somebody’s got to wake up and smell the coffee. There was no peace dividend. What we ended up with after the Cold War was chaos. It is getting worse. The number of failed or incapable states are going to grow. The growth of extremism. The danger now with things like weapons of mass destruction. We are going to have a WMD event. Mark my words. Will it be on the battlefield or will it be back here in Tampa or New York City? I don’t know. But we will have one, and that is going to be a wake-up call. It is a dangerous world out there. We need to make the commitment and understand that if we want to maintain our position in the world, then we need the capability to provide for the world to be a safe place, to be a place that is stable. That is done with the right kind of military force. We can no longer do this on the backs of our people because we are breaking those backs, and you can’t just throw pay at them, and you can’t just throw a few benefits at them. That is important. They deserve the quality of life, they deserve the benefits and pay, but they deserve more than that. They deserve to go into action with the right kind of equipment, with the right force structure. They deserve the time away from home to be balanced with their ability to build the kind of American family they want to. They deserve to be challenged in the right way and not asked to do things that are impossible. We can’t live on the backs of our young men and women, and we’ve got to come to that realization.

I am also concerned about the imbalance we may begin to have with our different components. I mentioned that I feel clearly that on the aerospace side, and on the airpower side, we have obviously moved out ahead very swiftly - technologically, conceptually, otherwise. We need to do more in the other dimensions, particularly on the ground side. I applaud General Shinseki’s [Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army] approach and General Jones’ [Gen. James L. Jones, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps] approach to re-look and revamp. It is time on the ground side to do that. It is time to re-look at where they are. They certainly realize the problems they had. One of them is in deployability. Tony Robertson [Gen. Charles T. Robertson, CINC, U.S. Transportation Command] fully knows that he is getting tasked impossibly about getting everywhere he needs to get with what he has and to manage the day-to-day business of the world. Strategic lift is a short fall. It’s my number one concern as a CINC, clearly at the top of my list again this year. We have got to accommodate that. We have got to get lighter, faster, more lethal on the ground. We have got to figure ways to change mindsets. The ground side, and I am a ground officer, obviously, is the most hidebound, the toughest to change. We’d still be on horseback if you left it up to them, charging the machine-gun nest. It is an old and steeped-in-tradition element or dimension and the toughest to change around. I can tell you in my service, if you go after the 13-man rifle squad, they’ll shoot you. It has got to be 13 men. Why? Because it has always been 13 men. Those are the kinds of mindsets that have to change.

Let me finish up by saying that the enemy - all those enemies out there are going to come at us asymmetrically, a word that is very popular right now, but they know, from "Desert Storm," that they can’t beat us straight up with something sort of like what we had, a little bit of air, a little bit of ground, a little bit of naval, and all that. They are trying to find the leverage points. Asymmetry means that there are places where we are vulnerable. Obviously, missiles are a good answer. WMD, a good answer for that. Terrorism, acts of extremism, good answer for them. Cheap, low-tech hard to deal with things: mines that you can throw into the sea that are very cheap. Fast patrol boats with missiles on them that are hard to pick up on radar. These are the kinds of things that are going to be leveraged out there. Some of them are low-tech. Some of them are very focused high-tech. Some of them are more political and cultural, like religious extremism as a way of asymmetrically attacking us. That is the future. That is what we are going to have to deal with.

The missions that we are about to face are going to be different. There will be regional threats - the Iraqs, Irans, North Koreas, maybe Chinas, and we will have to deal with them the way we have and basically the way we have modeled ourselves. But there is a whole set of other missions that are going to whack us in the face. As I said before, we are going to face more failed or incapable threats. We have a Jihadism brewing right now in the heart of South Asia that is going to reach out globally and touch us. Extremism that is going to have to be handled very carefully in the way we react to it. Terrorism is just one manifestation of it. We are going to have to deal with catastrophic humanitarian disasters out there, disasters of the environment which are impending. In my AOR it is going to be things like water. But we have very fragile and vulnerable populations out there. We have part of the continent of Africa. I don’t have a good feeling in my heart for where things could go there in the future. International crime, drugs. They are starting to come together. The largest producer of opium right now is Afghanistan, tied to the Taliban, tied to Osama bin Laden and the terrorist trade, and obviously international crime is beginning to get looped into this whole mess. We are going to have a role in that. It is not just a police effort any more.

Are we organized right? Shaped right? How do we play in that? We can’t just every once in a while lob a TLAM [Tomahawk Land Attack Missile] just to let them know we are around. Sometimes that kind of heavy hammer approach doesn’t work. It is going to mean adjustments for all of us.

Let me again thank you for the chance to talk to you here. I tried to give you a once-over-the-world, at least from a joint commander’s perspective. I want to tell you that I am served by the greatest air component command in the world, represented by Chuck Wald here. As I told Hal Hornburg at the change of command, they have never ever let me down. Never even come close. Every time we had to do something, I never had to provide anything other than the broadest of mission guidance. The product that came back up, whether it was targeting, whether it was the read of the intent of the commander, whether it was the diplomatic connection to our coalition partners out there, could not be finer. They are our lead engagement tool. They are our hammer when we are out there. They stay in bed with the CINC. I certainly could not ask any more. I want to thank Mike for giving me that kind of support. The Chief of Staff of the Air Force calls me up about once every other week to make sure I have what I need. He slaps me on the back and he says, "Hey bubba, do you need anything from us?" It warms a CINC’s heart to hear a chief of staff say that. Thank you.

(Q&A Session)

General Shaud I want to take you up on something that came up in your talk. As a CINC watches other theaters and observes operations, the question would be, as you observe the Kosovo campaign, how did that influence your thinking? Your operations? Your planning in your theater?

General Zinni We worried during the campaign. Just prior to the campaign Saddam [Hussein] had some connection with [Slobodan] Milosevic. We saw a Serb group visit Baghdad. We thought that as this campaign looked like it was going to heat up and actually did, that it may be leveraged by Saddam in some way. He would see the opportunity to take advantage of this. We also worried, because of the size of the commitment, that we might have forces pulled from us that might make the risk or enticement to him. I don’t feel Saddam was able to get off the ground. I do believe, without any proof, that he was looking for a way to leverage this in some way.

A couple of things worked to our advantage. One, we were helping a beleaguered Moslem population, so Saddam couldn’t use that. He obviously was siding with the enemy of the oppressed Moslem population. That didn’t give him much traction in our region or much help or much sympathy, so he had to be careful with that. If he looked for military options and how to leverage them, the fact that we were able to do Kosovo but still maintain what we needed -- and there is Korea and other places around the world -- we never were drawn down to the point that we feel we couldn’t handle the mission. We lost some assets, but none that I felt made the risk unacceptable, and clearly every morning when he woke up and he saw "Northern Watch" and "Southern Watch," that was a reminder that he couldn’t be too adventuresome.

I didn’t think he had the capability. I didn’t think he had the moral ground to stand on to do anything. I think the net loss to him would be greater, although I do think he thought about it long and hard. We never saw any action out of him.

General Shaud In terms of the campaign itself, did that have any impact on the way you would plan your campaign in your theater?

General Zinni First of all, let me tell you the differences in the theater, because this is important. Then let me come directly to your question. Our theater is a little different in that, ever since "Desert Storm," we have put a microscope on Iraq. I have target books, and "Desert Fox" showed that. We knew through which window to put the ordnance and which building and who was there and what would happen. The greatest effect that "Desert Fox" had might have been two targets, the Ba’ath party headquarters and the intelligence headquarters and house of pain. During "Desert Fox" at night, we actually saw Iraqi wedding parties in the street during the attacks, fully confident in their own mind that there wasn’t going to be any collateral damage on them. We had that feedback intelligence-wise from inside there. That is a product of 10 years of studying your targets and developing and being able to do the servicing on those targets -- planning that extremely well. That is a little different than suddenly having the mission hit you and getting into an area where you haven’t had that kind of ISR focus, that kind of intelligence focus for that long a period of time. It made our situations a little bit different.

We saw things in Kosovo that we had in the plan but which we had never executed. One was the B-2, for example. The B-2 is in our plans. As a matter of fact, there was a part of "Desert Fox" that, had it continued on, the B-1, B-2 would have first showed its legs in our theater, but it turned out much to our disappointment to have to be over there in Kosovo. We watched the performance. I went to Whiteman to fly the B-2. It wasn’t just to go out there and get a flight. I spent two days out there. One day going through the lessons learned, the after-action and everything else. It was extremely impressive. We were able to bring that back in and understand better and polish up our plans on the things that have already been delivered. There were a number of things. I think the air defenses there were stiffer than what they might be faced with where we were. Looking at some of the tactics and the packaging for handling the air defenses, we don’t know that Saddam isn’t going to be able to pick up more or better or more capable systems. Obviously his systems are reaching block obsolescence. But if that turns out to be a problem, we’ve got to re-think our calibration on that, and this is a way of looking out at what had been there. A blend of a little bit of understanding our differences and drawing from those lessons is what we did.

General Shaud Discuss the impact of information operations on your theater plans?

General Zinni When we started, 1998 was a year of crisis for us. We had "Desert Thunder 1," "Desert Thunder 2," "Desert Viper," "Desert Fox" that spanned the entire year. Obviously, "Desert Fox" led to putting ordnance on the ground. "Desert Viper" came within eight minutes. That is why these hairs are grey. Within 8 minutes of TLAMs pinning up, the President said to shut it all down. We got test communications to eight ships. "Desert Thunder," where we built up and thought we were going to see something even much greater where we actually had to deploy ground forces to Kuwait. As these things were building up, normally what you would do as a commander, you are getting your daily briefs, you are going through your process, your targeting board is meeting, and we are getting the coordination done and you are thinking in traditional terms that on H-hour of D-day, the fight will begin. But every day I was getting a brief on the number of attacks on our systems. And right from the beginning, as tensions went up, and then continuously, you could put an upward curve, the attacks increased on our classified and unclassified systems. What struck me, and I made this comment, was that we were probably days or even weeks away from actually firing the first shot, but we were already at war.

We are already at the information war. We are already under attack, and we are already defending our networks, successfully, fortunately. That struck me, that the information war will begin on day one or the information war may be continuous, and we are engaged in it day to day. Because we still get attacks now, and we still monitor. Nowhere like when it picks up. We don’t understand all the aspects of information war because it is an all-encompassing thing where we’ve thrown everything in it from psyops [psychological operations] to computer defense and everything else. And by being that broad, it is too difficult to manage. But we need to understand it. We fought an information war on anthrax and anthrax vaccination. That was an information war, an information campaign from my headquarters. I’ve had my six shots. Nothing has fallen off and nothing has grown on. I have testified to that effect, but that is not good enough. There is a lot of well-intentioned misinformation. There is some real information that distorts the facts. There is some bad information deliberately planted. There is another example of information war that we deal with day to day. We aren’t good at creating an information warfare campaign, because our system is so open and transparent and leaks a lot. Anything we do is bound to maybe not be successful, because the intent and the actions could be leaked. We are not going to be good at the offense on this. We had better be extremely capable in all the elements of the defense on this because we are in it now.

General Shaud How do you size up Iran after the recent elections in which a significant number of moderates were elected?

General Zinni Iran is a country that is going to come to an internal confrontation between the moderates and the hard-liners. It is inevitable. The form of that confrontation is a question - will it be a violent confrontation? Will you see the universities riot? Will you see demonstrations on the street? Will you see a quiet confrontation where suddenly the moderates gain enough power that they reach in and begin to patrol some of the most serious aspects of the objectives of the revolution, meaning weapons of mass destruction program, missile program, development of their military, their intelligence service, which is still actively supporting terrorists and targeting us? Their Islamic Revolutionary Guard element is the most radical and enforcers of the objectives of the revolution. The hardliners still maintain control of those, and the Council of Guardians still rules above the moderates, despite all these gains. Eventually, the question becomes, will the gains of the moderates and the social changes and political changes that [Iranian President Mohammad] Khatami is allowed to make on behalf of the moderates be enough for the Iranian people? Will it affect the economy? Will it affect their desire to be more secular in a way that they are satisfied with and the hard liners can maintain the line? If it isn’t and they can’t, and then it starts bumping up against that wall of things that are not touchable by moderates regardless of popular support, the first time we begin to see infiltration into those areas, and an attempt to control, we are going to see a confrontation. Whether it is violent or not is the question. I feel we need to wait and see and hold back. There is a euphoric feeling that we ought to rush out and grab the nearest Iranian and hug him. I say "Be careful." It is not time yet, and they are still the most dangerous country in our region.

General Shaud Are you satisfied by the current rules of engagement with respect to operations over Iraq?

General Zinni I am very satisfied with the rules of engagement. I feel I was given more authority and leeway than I even needed. I kept getting asked if I needed more. That freedom of action, that authority being given to us to conduct business the way we have now, has allowed this degree of success. I am allowed to call the shots. No one has put a timeline on me. If somebody shoots at us today, we don’t have to respond in 24 hours, 48 hours. No limit. You shot at us, we’ll go get you. We’ll get you on our terms. I can come back and get you on our terms. I don’t have to do something where we are not quite configured right, it isn’t the best time but I am limited because of the rules of engagement or some artificial timeline. I have been given maximum leeway to make the bad guy pay the most for this, and I could not ask for more.

I would make one criticism of the "Southern Watch" and "Northern Watch" setup. This is nobody’s fault. It is the way it evolved. You can’t have two CINCs operating in one country. There should be - "Northern Watch" should be under CENTCOM’s either operational or tactical control. It has nothing to do with the way it is conducted in the north. It has nothing to do with the performance up there. We have to live in the region. We understand the regional dynamics. We have to make sure this is blended, and it has to be more than cooperation. I do think you have got to have one CINC in charge, even though the other CINC is better positioned to be in support of. We have been in support of EUCOM [European Command] and operations in Rwanda and in support of PACOM [Pacific Command] and other areas. They have all been in support of us many more times. But we need to keep that relationship and not split a country in half and have two different views that the Kurds belong to EUCOM and the Shiia and Sunnis belong to CENTCOM. That isn’t going to work and adds more problems than we need. Thank you.

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