General Richard Sanchez, who's own career was besmirched by his association with the earliest days of incompetence and with Abu Ghraib, is the latest to "speak out." His statements confirm what we all knew then and know even better now: the invasion was arrogant, ill-conceived, and inexcusably badly managed.
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.
Sanchez has finally been cleared of wrongdoing, and he's the first, apparently, to attach the right label to the driving force behind the administration's Iraq invasion: "lust for power.”
Time to forget about "Saddam Hussein," "freedom and democracy," and all those excuses. Just call the Iraq debacle what it is. Lust for power.
