how many times we gonna cry over spild milk?
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. Bushs 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.
There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetence in strategic leadership among our national leaders, Sanchez said. They have unquestionably been derelict in the performance of their duty. In my profession, these types of leaders would be immediately relieved or court-martialed.
Though Sanchez did not criticize Bush by name, he left little doubt that he placed most of the blame on the administrations top leadership, particularly the National Security Council which is led by the President and which was under the day-to-day direction of Condoleezza Rice until her elevation to Secretary of State in 2005.
Sanchez said that starting in July of 2003, the generals on the ground warned that the war could not be won by military means and required a coordinated strategy that brought to bear the full panoply of American power and influence.
Any sequential solutions would lead to a prolonged conflict and increased resistance, Sanchez said about these messages to Washington. By neglect and incompetence at the National Security Council level, that is the path our political leaders chose and now America and more precisely the American military finds itself in an intractable situation.......
Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory, Sanchez said in an apparent reference to Bushs decision to "surge" U.S. troops this year. The best we can do with this flawed approach is to stave off defeat.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/101207.html