Retiring Marine Corps general says today's military is too small

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From Jamie McIntyre
CNN Military Affairs Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The retiring commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf said the military has been cut too much and would have trouble mounting another major operation on the scale of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"I think it definitely would be harder," said Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, in a Thursday interview with CNN on the eve of his retirement from the military.

Zinni is the latest critical voice in the ongoing debate on military readiness, which became one focus of the Republican National Convention.

MESSAGE BOARD The U.S. military    VIDEO CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre reports on General Tony Zinni's dim view of U.S. military readiness Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     ALSO Bush refuses to back down on military readiness assertion

The four-star general said he believes the United States could still win a major war like the one fought to oust Iraq from Kuwait, but that it would be more difficult with today's smaller military.

And Zinni told CNN that while the United States could carry out its stated goal of being able to win two major wars at once, it could do so only with great risk and high casualties in the second conflict.

Zinni, as head of the U.S. Central Command, was in charge of Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, the four-day air campaign waged by the United States and Britain in an effort to force Iraqi compliance with U.N. weapons inspectors.

Zinni says U.S. military cuts have gone too far

Zinni said the American military today is under-funded for the number of missions it's being asked to perform, everything from peacekeeping in the Balkans to containing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"I believe the military is too small for the current kinds of commitments we have," he said. "You either need to change the structure of the military and the size and the manning, or you need to change the strategy. I don't see the strategy changing significantly."

Zinni added, "We are the world's leader. We fill a void. There is no one out there that even comes close to filling the leadership role that we have, and some of the moral responsibilities that we have."

Specifically, Zinni argued the Army needs two more divisions, and all military branches need more money and personnel.

Zinni also says Persian Gulf commanders should have an aircraft carrier available 365 days a year. The Navy says it would have to go from 12 carriers to 15 to meet Zinni's standard.

Overall, Zinni's conclusions are backed up by the Pentagon's most recent report to Congress, which calls overall readiness "satisfactory," but cites deficiencies even among some of the military's "forward deployed, and first to fight forces."

But the Pentagon insists budget increases this year have stopped the readiness nose-dive.

"We have taken a lot of steps not only to arrest the decline in military spending, but in fact to reverse it," said Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon.

Zinni's parting shots aren't anything the Pentagon hasn't heard from other commanders, but coming as they do in the midst of a presidential campaign, they could play into the Republicans' strategy of portraying the Democrats as presiding over the decline of the U.S. military.

At the Republican National Convention last week, retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf noted that he had far more Army divisions to call on when he was planning for the Persian Gulf War.

At that time, there were 18 Army divisions, and a total of 2.2 million people in the U.S. armed forces.

But Schwarzkopf did not mention that the Republican administration of President Bush -- with current GOP vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney serving as Defense secretary -- was responsible for cutting the Army from 18 to 12 divisions as part of the post-Cold War reduction in the size of the U.S. military. That left 1.6 million men and women serving in the armed forces.

The Clinton administration made further cuts, reducing the Army to just 10 divisions. Now, there are 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. military.

Zinni said that number is too low.

"In the case of the Army, I would feel more comfortable with at least 12 divisions, maybe more," he said.

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January 24, 2000

General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC
The Pentagon
U.S. Marine Corps

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