Retired General Ricardo Sanchez, Commander of Coalition Ground Forces in Iraq between June 2003 and June 2004, now blasts his civilian leadership for their lust for power, their incompetence and so on with respect to the Iraq war.
Sanchez entered the military in 1973 or 1974. He had been in the military for 30 years, well into retirement eligibility, when he took over in Iraq. He might have retired the instant these insights occurred to him. He could have said what he's saying back when it might have mattered. Seems to me Sanchez is the pot criticizing the kettle.
Sanchez can kiss my ass. His excuse that it was his duty to obey orders and not object publicly when he was on active duty is nothing but lame.
Sanchez rails against partisan politics:
"National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising an effective, executable and supportable strategies," he said. "At times, these partisan struggles have led us to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives."
"Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq," he said. "Without bipartisan cooperation, we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope."
A possible Unity08 candidate? What he says above may be true enough, but I sure hope not.
2 comments:
I think that Sanchez' connection to Abu Ghraib makes his candidacy unlikely. There's more on his comments at the Belmont Club. Wretchard thinks that if you look at the whole statement, it was not entirely unreasonable. Frank Warner has a post as well. He thinks that the NYT is cherry picking their quotes.
Oh, I don't think Sanchez' statement (what I've seen of it) is unreasonable, I just think it was entirely too late, and his excuse for silence while in uniform is lame.
I wonder what General Shinseki thinks of all this?
The image of Donald Rumsfeld claiming that the plan was the military commanders' plan is burned into my memory. I wonder what General Franks thinks about that.
Happy Sunday!
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