During the Downing Commission’s investigations, the commission’s approach to the command was open and nonjudgmental. But the Downing report was another thing. The tone of the report was much more fault and blame assigning than was warranted. And worse, many of the security steps that we were forced to implement impacted negatively on our mission.

What bothered me about the report (but the problem goes far beyond that, as I have made clear in later testimony to Congress) is its failure to understand that we live in a risky world. We have been stalked by terrorists. And they’re still after us. Yet in order to do our mission, we have to take risks. The only one hundred percent safe way to avoid them is not to go there. But if we’re going to be in the region, and we’re going to do our job, there is risk involved. We’re going to expose troops.

The mood back in the United States has been deeply frustrating, and that is: We have to make our force presence in the world one hundred percent safe for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. And if one soldier, sailor, air-man, or Marine is injured or lost to a terrorist activity, then we have to find somebody on our side to blame for it.

I can’t think of a more dysfunctional way to run military operations.

The job of implementing Downing Commission findings consumed much of Zinni’s time during the next year—and after.

IN THE MEANTIME, CENTCOM was a beehive of activity.

Containing Iraq was always a primary order of business; several flare-ups with Saddam after the Gulf War had required military responses. Usually these occurred while enforcing the no-fly and no-drive zones in Iraq. Iraqi tankers, however, were also smuggling sanction-busting oil down the gulf. U.S. Maritime Intercept Operations had grabbed a number of smugglers; but most had proved very hard to stop; they avoided American naval patrols by using Iranian territorial waters (and paying tolls to the Iranians).

The command had continued the longtime U.S. containment policy toward Iran (the other regional hegemon); and tensions there remained high. U.S. naval forces in the Gulf daily confronted hostile and aggressive Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard naval forces; their harassments and provocations could easily have sparked major confrontations.

The Gulf was not the only hot spot. There were others in East Africa and Southwest Asia. And the forever-crisis between Israelis and Palestinians impacted every country in the region, though it was not itself in CENTCOM’s AOR. The command constantly had to reevaluate and adapt itself to ever-changing realities and challenges.

After the Gulf War, Marine General Joe Hoar, the CENTCOM CINC who followed General Norman Schwarzkopf, launched a major effort to create strong relationships between the U.S. and friendly nations in the region; and built a solid foundation for military cooperation.