.
The stakes keep getting higher: Friday brought the harshest criticism we’ve heard yet of the Iraq war from a retired military commander :
In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”
….”There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”
Between the New York Times account and the Washington Post account , it seems that Sanchez attacked (a) the Bush administration, (b) the Pentagon, (c) Congress, (d) the National Security Council, (e) the “inter-agency process,” (f) the State Department, and (g) the media. I don’t doubt they all deserve it, but at the same time that’s a suspiciously sweeping indictment for a senior guy who says he realized the war was FUBAR the day he took command in 2003 but didn’t speak out about it until now.
In any case, Sanchez promised “more to follow later” and said he would make further public statements in which he names names. Pass the popcorn.
“The administration, Congress and the entire interagency, especially the State Department, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure, and the American people must hold them accountable,” Sanchez told military reporters and editors. “There has been a glaring unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders.”
Sanchez lashed out specifically at the National Security Council , calling officials there negligent and incompetent, without offering details. He also assailed war policies over the past four years, which he said had stripped senior military officers of responsibility and thus thrust the armed services into an “intractable position” in Iraq.
“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 Crystal City. “Without bipartisan cooperation, we are destined to fail. There is nothing going on in Washington that would give us hope.”
He faulted the administration for failing to “communicate effectively that reality to the American people.”
.
high-ranking generals who become active upon retirement … likely a book soon to be published.
Clearly they don’t speak their mind before the U.S. Congress and their Commander-In-(mis)Chief the President so that the Iraq Lie can persist. I do hope the American people will speak THEIR mind by voting in the next general election of 2008.
Everything is unraveling in the Iraq campaign of George W. Bush and VP Dick Cheney, a truly “Shock and Awe” of the world to watch. The U.S. Embassy being build on the Tigris river in Baghdad for the amount of $750m and yearly upkeep costs of $1.2bn, will be a lasting concrete evidence of Bush’s fallicy. The building will last until the free Iraqi people of Muslim faith will either destruct it, or will become the palace of Iraq’s future dictaor.
U.S. Embassy does have water treatment facilities, a sewage plant en 24/7 electricity, a truly “green zone” amongst the pool of sorrow and danger on the streets and in the residential districts of the city of 6 million Iraqi citizens.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."it will be interesting to keep track of the Baghdad embassy. The pool is probably too nice for the thing to be destroyed. Maybe it will become a museum.
The idea of this embassy simply enrages me for some reason….maybe it’s because I feel it’s a monument to the whole ‘ugly american’ mindset…where we can just appropriate such a huge amount of land in another country and build this monstrosity. I’d like to see it made into a combination of hospital and mental health care/possibly orphanage..something to do with the Iraqi people themselves. More vicariously I’d just like to see this piece of crap bombed into oblivion just because.
“Clearly they don’t speak their mind before the U.S. Congress and their Commander-In-(mis)Chief the President so that the Iraq Lie can persist. “
And this is why I will continue to dismiss these type statements because they are cowardly, made only after there is no risk to a commanders future career.
Seeing that Sanchez and others, like Taguba, were eventually run out anyway, they, including public officials like Colin Powell could have had so much more impact had they spoken up in their official capacity. Sanchez likely perjured himself in one of his appearances on the Hill, but of course nothing was made of it.
Like Powell, he is a coward and multitudes of Iraqis and Americans are dead as a result of his cowardice.
To clarify,
Taguba did speak up in his official capacity when he reported on the abuses and murders at Abu Ghraib.
I’d be more sympathetic if he was a grunt, with no protection or fat pension to take care of him or her.
But no. He wasn’t gonna mess up his pension with the truth. I’m glad he’s coming clean, but don’t expect me to pat him on the back when it’s not costing him anything.
It’s costing thousands of people EVERYTHING.
The only thing this does is add one more piece of evidence–not that it should be needed to anyone with a functioning brain–that this is a clusterfuck, always has been a clusterfuck, and forever WILL BE a clusterfuck.
Yearly upkeep of a +$1 billion? Surely, we could afford to repair our failing infrastructure with that money.
Geeze, I am so tired of being ruled by the half-wit 20 percent.
So as an all-too brief respite from the madness, we’re headed your way. More later offline.
for me, the statement of the embassy is that we–Americans—say that we are far better than the general population of this country that we invaded and destroyed. When the general public gets electric and sewage and clean water and medical care, then and only then is when I will believe in the American experiment of said country. This will not happen in the, future– near or long. Doesn’t one think that even if we do get the embassy up and running that there will not be resentment over it, is a very long stretch of the imagination, IMHO. We might as well tear down the wall and give it to the Iraqis. This would be the easiest thing for us to do…I seriously doubt that we will even be welcome in Iraq in the future, no matter what.
As far as the officer if said disgruntlement, he is to blame, and he, himself, is what some of the problems came from. He is just upset that he did not get his other star on those shoulders of his. He is such a laughing stock!
the nightmare we cannot seem to shake, is the new trend of thought around our country…greed..the “me” generation…
the nightmare is led by the Bush types..a new justice is the only way it will stop..
our voice must become a battle cry, heard round the world, to stop the injustice that rules…
my question is, how many will be heard?
so far, the answer is pretty weak.