General Sanchez Says Iraq War is Nightmare With No End In Sight

Posted on October 13, 2007

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former the former top commander of American forces in Iraq, has issued a sweeping indictment of the Iraq war policy, calling the it a "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan." Sanchez also said that the war is "a nightmare with no end in sight."

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a "catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan" and denounced the current addition of American forces as a "desperate" move that would not achieve long-term stability. "After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism," General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va.
He is the most senior war commander of a string of retired officers who have harshly criticized the administration's conduct of the war. While much of the previous condemnation has been focused on the role of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, General Sanchez's was an unusually broad attack on the overall course of the war.
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General Sanchez's main criticism was leveled at the Bush administration, which he said failed to mobilize the entire United States government, not just the military, to contribute meaningfully to reconstructing and stabilizing Iraq. "National leadership continues to believe that victory can be achieved by military power alone," he said. "Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory. The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat." Asked after his remarks what strategy he favored, General Sanchez ticked off a series of steps-from promoting reconciliation among Iraq's warring sectarian factions to building effective Iraqi army and police units � that closely paralleled the list of tasks frequently cited by the Bush administration as the pillars of the current strategy.
General Sanchez, now a Pentagon consultant who trains active-duty generals, said the administration's biggest failure had been its lack of a detailed strategy for achieving those steps and "synchronizing" the military and civilian contributions. "The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder responsibility for the catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable," he said.

Sanchez was the commander during the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Bush administration denied him his fourth star, effectively sending a signal that he should retire. How many generals has Bush gone through during this war? I'm starting to lose count. First the new general is held up as a paragon of virtue. Then, when more disasters happen in Iraq the latest general is fired and they put forth a new patsy. The commanders in Iraq have little or no input into the planning of strategy, according to them. The war plan came straight from Dick Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices and the military was overridden many times. Anyone remember Colin Powell saying you needed 500,000 troops ready to go before you even thought about invading a country as big and as complicated as Iraq? He was a general, too. I believe he's retired now.