wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Once again WNYC can only talk about Chenney and Rumsfeld. Pres, Obama is failing when are we discussing that.

The word "leadership" means, to certain individuals, "dominance" and "control". It is about putting yourself in a position over others. It really isn't about inspiring others to be the best they can be, or creating a situation where "everybody wins".

Anthony Zinni has been in the military since his graduation from Villanova in 1965. On what grounds can he possibly claim any expertise with regard to the American workforce, workers, business, etc.

I might as well write about organization and leadership in the military.

If his program is one of extending generalizations about the military to the private sector, God help us. Give us *one* example of a military success of the past 50 years. And tell us of the great successes of corporate America -- the financial collapse?

Is Wall Street foregoing financial compensation in favor of recognition?

Does Zinni have anything more than mythic platitudes to offer?

Pay vs recognition is not so much a generation issue but an age issue. When I graduated from college, the priorities were very different then when I have children.

Leadership?

Does Mr. Zinni mean the leaders of Wall Street, the leaders of the Bush administration?

And assumption of power by birthright? The Kennedy family, Bush family, the tremendously wealthy families of the US (Rockefellers, Fords, Kelloggs, etc.). How many members of Congress follow family members who were in Congress or can trace their luck in election to family connections (New York's Kirsten Gillebrand is an example of the latter).

This country has a nascent aristocracy already in place.

Anthony Zinni addressing these issues is absurd. He is arguably one of the American war criminals. (Certainly if the standards applied after WW2 were applied today, he could be prosecuted for war crimes.)

The US has been anything but honest and open. The Obama administration is doing almost exactly the same things to keep secret the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo and elsewhere.

We know -- conclusively -- that crimes at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were expressly authorized -- in writing -- by Donald Rumsfeld.

It is the sheerest most revolting nonsense to claim that these crimes were aberrations. The US systematically and with malice aforethought abused prisoners.

And this says nothing of the wholly fictitious pretense for war in Iraq in the first place -- a war in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. The US is responsible for those deaths. The very war itself is a crime against humanity. It was not defensive and it was entirely unjustified.

Disgusting.

Does General Zinni think that the United Nations can be saved, or does he think that the United Nations will need to be dismantled and replaced with an effective organization that does not add to the world's misery?