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Zinni: CentCom should stay put
By PAUL DE LA GARZA, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld makes it sound simple. The U.S. Central Command in Tampa should be based closer to the operations it runs overseas. Not all military minds agree. Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni says he sees nothing but bad coming out of a move. "I'm trying to figure out what you get out of this," Zinni, who was replaced by Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as CentCom commander two years ago, said in an interview Friday. "It would be a magnet for people who want to kill Americans overseas." Rumsfeld stirred the pot last week when he questioned the location of CentCom at MacDill Air Force Base. He said the difference in time zones between Tampa and CentCom's area of responsibility, which stretches from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East, "makes everything a little harder." He also wondered why CentCom isn't based in the region it covers, as are the European Command and the Pacific Command. Rumsfeld said no decision had been made on whether to move CentCom. Zinni, who has served as the Bush administration's special envoy to the Middle East, said that he has heard the arguments before but that they ring hollow. Every command, he pointed out, must deal with time zones, including the Pacific Command, whose area of responsibility runs from the western United States to Asia. As for location, only the European Command, located in Germany, is based on foreign soil. The European commander also serves as the supreme commander of NATO. The Pacific Command covers countries as far away as Japan, South Korea and India but is based in Hawaii. Referring to CentCom's Tampa location, Zinni said: "I could operate out of where it was. It didn't bother me. It was fine." He noted that the services already have forces forward deployed in the region available to CentCom. Franks repeatedly has said that technology allows him to run the war in Afghanistan out of MacDill without any problem. Adm. Craig Quigley, until a few months ago the CentCom spokesman, says Franks gets almost hourly briefings from commanders in the field and can get to them within minutes via telephone or video teleconference. With the help of remote-controlled unmanned aerial drones, he can see feeds of the war zone in a room adjacent to his office at headquarters. Franks also travels to the region regularly. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, says that in his various discussions with Franks, the general has never expressed a desire to move CentCom headquarters out of Tampa. He has talked about establishing a temporary headquarters in the region, but nothing permanent. Young, MacDill's biggest advocate in Congress, says he is convinced that CentCom headquarters will remain in Tampa. Rumsfeld, however, said Franks has been after him since the start of the Bush administration to have the headquarters moved to the region. Franks has not commented publicly since the issue came up last week. On Friday, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, met with senior staff to map out strategy to keep CentCom at MacDill. Nelson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, plans to enlist Young, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and other members of the Florida congressional delegation in the fight. The debate over CentCom's address is nothing new. Zinni said every new administration takes a shot at the Central Command. During the Clinton administration, for example, Defense Secretary William Cohen also pushed to have CentCom headquarters relocated. It was only after he saw a classified study on what it would take to make the move that he abandoned the idea, Zinni said. "It just becomes too hard when you surface all the issues," Zinni said. The three main obstacles to moving CentCom, Zinni said, are costs in the "hundreds of millions of dollars," security, and the impact on military personnel and their families. Saying he was thinking like a taxpayer, Zinni wondered where the money would come from, with the Pentagon budget and the economy already stressed. He also noted that during his tenure at CentCom, from August 1997 through July 2000, of the 25 countries in his area of responsibility only the island nation of Seychelles off the African coast did not have a terrorist threat. "Where do you put it?" Zinni said. "Find a garden spot there that's pristine and security safe." What happens, he asked, when the strategic picture changes and Iraq "goes away" and Iran, influenced by moderates, is no longer part of what the president has called the "axis of evil"? Would it still make sense to have CentCom headquarters in the Persian Gulf region? Moreover, Zinni said, a move into the volatile area could have a destabilizing political impact. "Now you plop a big headquarters there," he said, "and you'll be playing into the hands of people who say America's here to take over the land." If CentCom were to move to the region, families probably would have to stay behind because of issues like schools and housing, Zinni said. As a result, personnel would be rotating out of the region in one-year cycles, meaning there would be no continuity and no stability among CentCom staff. "They'd be miserable," Zinni said. "Why do you want to do that to them?" Indeed, a CentCom spokesman, who declined to be identified, said that quality of life in Tampa was a big draw for military personnel. He said staff and their families were happy attending local schools and churches, that they feel like a part of the community. The debate resumed because of plans announced by the Pentagon a few weeks ago to hold a military exercise in the region. In November, about a third of the CentCom staff, or 600 people, are to move to Qatar to test the ability to rapidly deploy a headquarters. According to published reports, the idea is to have a command center in place in case of war with Iraq. Having a so-called forward element in the region is not a bad idea, Zinni said. During the Persian Gulf War, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf established a headquarters in Saudi Arabia. Still, Zinni said he wouldn't be surprised if Rumsfeld decides to pack up CentCom and leave Tampa. "They do things that don't make sense to me," he said.
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