Friday, October 12, 2007

Ex-Commander Blasts Iraq 'Nightmare'

By Robert Parry
October 12, 2007

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq for the first year of the occupation, blamed “incompetence” by President George W. Bush’s national security team for creating a “nightmare” that could last far into the future.

Sanchez, who led coalition forces from June 2003 to June 2004, used an Oct. 12 speech to a conference of Military Reporters and Editors in Arlington, Virginia, to castigate nearly everyone connected to the Iraq War, including the U.S. news media, Congress, the State Department, the White House and the Pentagon.

Read on.

3 comments:

profmarcus said...

with all due respect, mr. parry, general sanchez appears to be creating a smokescreen for himself... general sanchez issued a memorandum in 2003 authorizing enhanced interrogation techniques for use in iraq, a memo which detailed those techniques, and also noted which of them were likely in contravention of geneva... when he was asked about it in testimony before the senate armed services committee in 2004, he denied he had written it, a flat-out perjury... i have assiduously followed this particular story and have kept copies of all relevant documents which i was able to obtain from aclu archives and the media reports at the time... you can see everything here at the link below... general sanchez is doing the usual dance of this day and age, blaming and pointing fingers, and hoping no one remembers he is a bald-faced liar...

http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/2007/10/general-who-authorized-enhanced.html

jbyopa said...

I am glad that General Sanchez can speak up, now that he has his pension safely in hand. I wonder if there are any senior officers ready to show some balls while they are still active? The President and his gang of useful idiots are planning a bigger, badder blowout in Iran. Are there any Generals or Admirals willing to risk their cushy retirement and push back now, in a highly visible way, before this war expands ten fold?

Unknown said...

It's unfortunate that Sanchez waited so long to make this statement.
But there are numerous other generals who did not so we know that essentially what Sanchez is saying is true but his long silence goes a long way to denote his complicity in allowing the Bushies to manufacture the policy of lies and deceit tat is still their policy.

Bush & company need to be impeached to set the precedent that even a president cannot be immune to the agenda of crimes Bush and Cheney perpetrated even though they will ultimately be found guilty by history.