Richard WarnickGen. Sanchez: ‘The best we can do is stave off defeat’
From today’s Washington Post:
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration yesterday of going to war with a “catastrophically flawed” plan and said the United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”… “The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat,” Sanchez said in a speech to the Military Reporters and Editors’ annual conference.
In discussions with reporters, LTG Sanchez acknowledged that “mistakes were made” during his tenure as the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Division commanders who were in Iraq at the time have faulted him for never producing a plan for the occupation, allowing crucial decisions to be made on an ad hoc basis. Serious errors by Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer and some Army commanders such as the 4th Infantry Division’s Maj. General Ray Odierno led to the rise of a powerful Sunni insurgency and the horrifying prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. By the spring of 2004, American forces were hard pressed, fighting both Sunnis in Fallujah and the Shiite Mahdi Army in Najaf.
LTG Sanchez is the latest of twenty or more senior military officers to break with a strong tradition of never going public with criticism of government war strategy.
IraqSlogger comments on LTG Sanchez’ remarks (subscription required for full article):
He dissed Congress, the State Department, the National Security Council, the White House (repeatedly), even the media. Everyone except himself, even though he was in charge of the strategy on Iraq when the insurgency broke out and the Abu Ghraib torture case surfaced.
October 13th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Some good ancient historical reading as to how long this can last, and what “success” really can mean. Winning leads to losing and so forth, by the looks of it.
en.wikipedia.org
November 24th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
[...] the direct responsibility for the mission of trying to occupy Iraq without enough troops, now says the occupation is a “nightmare with no end in sight.” This week, he elaborated on the subject: “[T]he courage and blood of our troops have not [...]
February 19th, 2008 at 11:45 am
[...] General Sanchez, formerly the US commander in Baghdad, said last October: “The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off [...]