McCain: Sanchez’s Criticisms Never Communicated To Congress

Senator John McCain appeared on Heading Right Radio this afternoon, and as always gave our listeners a good dose of straight talk. He spoke about the pitfalls of his campaign, and how he has learned from the immigration debate that the borders have to be secured before any other decisions can be made about the illegal immigrants already in the country. McCain also felt that the recent criticisms of his fellow candidates on core issues for the party’s base may give him an opening to make a case that he is the most reliable conservative in the race.
However, his most explosive comments came when I asked him about the criticisms leveled by General Richard Sanchez about the politics, strategy, and reporting of the war in Iraq. Sanchez ripped the administration for strategic blunders, which came as news to Senator McCain, who had spent years making the same criticisms of the Rumsfeld strategy. McCain claims that Sanchez never told Congress of his dissatisfaction with the situation.
This comes at about eighteen minutes into the podcast:

EM: What did you think about [General Richard] Sanchez’s speech?
JM: I honor and respect his service to the country. I respect anyone who spends their adult life in the military as he has, but I respectfully have to say, General Sanchez, why didn’t when I was in Baghdad, meeting with you and Jerry Bremer five years ago — well, four years ago — and I said, “You don’t have enough troops here. You’re going to fail. Looting is going on, Al-Qaeda is coming in, you’re going to have these problems. Why aren’t you settling the de-Ba’athification issue, etc etc.” And he defended the present policy [at that time], he said it was succeeding, and he testified before the Armed Services Committee, of which I am a member, the same way.
When we confirm a senior officer to a position in the military, there’s always a standard question that is asked, and that they always say Yes to, and that is “When asked, will you give your candid and personal opinion in answer to a question by a member of the committee?” They always say Yes. He said Yes. He was asked in several hearings about the strategy, and he not only didn’t complain about it — in all due respect again — but he supported it. And I wish he had done that back when he was on active duty.
EM: Active duty generals are able to have that sort of candor in dealing with members of Congress. It’s expected of them, isn’t that right?
JM: They are required to. They are required to, because when they are confirmed in their positions, when they are promoted to a high level, they are specifically asked in writing that question, and they have to answer in writing.

This puts Sanchez’s criticisms into an entirely new light. The impression he gave was that his was a lone voice in high command, opposed to the strategy from the start. He made it sound as if no one listened to his input and that the administration and Congress simply ignored dissenting opinions from the field.
McCain begs to differ. Sanchez, McCain says, had several opportunities to inform Congress of any dissent he might have, but Sanchez simply didn’t offer any. Not only did Sanchez not voice dissent, he actively endorsed the policies and strategies employed before his retirement. McCain, who was looking for credible allies at the time, would have loved some corroboration for his own criticisms of the war strategy — and McCain was making headlines for offering those as far back as 2004.
It appears, from McCain’s account, that Sanchez indulged in a little historical revisionism to make himself look better on his way out the door. If you listen to McCain, you can hear the frustration in his voice when he says he wished Sanchez had voiced those criticisms — and the lack of belief he has in Sanchez’ implied claim to have been a dissenter.
ADDENDUM: Why is this important? If McCain’s correct — and there’s no reason to think he’s not — then Sanchez didn’t lift a finger to get the strategy changed when he was tasked with implementing it. McCain notes later that Rumsfeld didn’t exactly encourage debate on policy, but that’s exactly why McCain interacted directly with Sanchez and the other commanders. It doesn’t exactly build Sanchez’s credibility as a war critic to find out that he didn’t take advantage of any opportunity to change the direction of the military plan.

38 thoughts on “McCain: Sanchez’s Criticisms Never Communicated To Congress”

  1. Well, as veterans know, suction works better than traction in achieving rank. Presumably Gen. Sanchez was merely honoring the tradition of saying what the boss wants to hear.

  2. Integrity/honesty is becoming such a rare thing among our elites that I almost wish there were some way to set that as a perquisite for public service.
    Of course, if we did that, the population of Washington D.C. would shrink by more than 90%.
    What was it God told Abraham? If you can find 10 righteous men in Sodom, then I will spare the city.
    Can we name 10 honest men (liberal or conservative)in public service in Washington? Can anyone nominate even one?
    Anyone?

  3. This is a tough call. Who to believe: a general or a politician? Maybe they’re both telling the truth, or at least the truth as they know it. Perhaps LTG Sanchez did criticize the strategy, but McCain was so busy appearing on the Sunday morning talk shows that he missed it. Or perhaps Sanchez’s criticsm was couched in such mild terms that it didn’t register with McCain. It seems to me, though, that if LTG Sanchez DID voice dissent to members of Congress back when he was in the saddle, at least some of them would come forward now and say, “Yeah, he told us pretty much the same thing three years ago.”
    Time will tell.
    Cap’n Ed: McCain notes later that Rumsfeld didn’t exactly encourage debate on policy…
    It would be of interest to speak with people who worked for Rummy and get their take on his style. This strikes a cord with me because I’ve recently be rereading GEN LeMay’s autobiography and his discussion about how he felt command decisions should be made, vis. get everybody’s frank, open and honest opinion, then make the decision. Woe betide anybody who runs his mouth after the decision is made! You may not agree with it, but it’s the boss’s policy and you either follow along with it or get the hell out.
    Did Rummy squelch policy debates? Or did he listen to opinions, make his decision, and make it clear that this was THE decision and further debate would be (ahem) unwelcome? There’s quite a difference there.

  4. OT: anyone check on DayByDay? Death in the family? hope they’re well. They’ve done much for our troops.

  5. Maybe the best way to look at all these former Generals and statesmen memoirs would be the same when we read someting like the ex Wehrmacht’s Generals memoirs. They were all ways correct and their higher ups were retarded. After all, it wasn’t von Manstein or von Mellenthin’s fault that they lost battles or campaigns – nope – it was all the fuhrer’s fault.
    Reads much the same.

  6. McCain was right when he warned of all the problems emerging in Iraq 4 YEARS AGO, at a time when Cheney insisted that the insurgency was in its final throes. Sending in more troops was part of the solution and McCain was one of the truth tellers ready to deliver a bitter dose of reality.
    Did Sanchez complain about the decision-making of the White House before this recent statement? If he did, you’d probably find it in Woodward’s Plan of Attack. There was no shortage of generals who realized the wreckage of the Bush policy but didn’t publicly complain.
    The more disturbing question: how did the politicians, such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, manage to bully and quiet dissent within the top ranks of our military? It all started with Army Chief Shinsiki’s Congressional testimony that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of troops would be required to secure Iraq after the invasion. Rumsfeld immediately rebuked Shinsiki and quickly dismissed him. After that event, Rumsfeld and his incompetent hacks were able to muffle our top generals. It’s a disturbing part of the war that will eventually receive the attention it deservers.

  7. It would be of interest to speak with people who worked for Rummy and get their take on his style. This strikes a cord with me because I’ve recently be rereading GEN LeMay’s
    You can find exactly this in Woodward’s Plan of Attack.
    What do you think- was Sanchez excited to see the very effective Generaly Jay Garner replaced by a former State Dept hack like Bremer? Because that’s one of the incredibly bad decisions that Sanchez and his team had to endure.

  8. “It all started with Army Chief Shinsiki[sic]’s Congressional testimony that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of troops would be required to secure Iraq after the invasion. Rumsfeld immediately rebuked Shinsiki[sic] and quickly dismissed him.”
    ____________________________
    Liar. Shinseki served out his full term.
    Saint Eric Shinseki also wanted to wait six or eight months before attacking Afghanistan so we could build up a giant invasion force complete with tanks and self-propelled artillery, thus duplicating the ineffective strategy that led to ten years of war and an ignominious Soviet defeat.
    As for Sanchez, he not only didn’t complain about the previous Iraq strategy, he also says that we face an unending nightmare in Iraq that we can’t win… but we have to stay anyway. Coo-coo!
    Another jealous loser who can’t stomach the idea that someone else will be credited with winning the war. Too bad, Sanchy-pants. You had your chance and you blew it. Thanks for your service. Now STFU.
    “Progressives” love to crow about the miscalculations of conservatives, but speaking for myself, I don’t blame Bill Clinton for saying we’d be out of the former Yugoslavia in six weeks, even though it’s been thirteen years.
    Circumstances change. I understand that. I’m not such a retard that I expect my president to be an infallible superhero I can fall deeply in love with and think of as my all-knowing daddy.

  9. McCain may become more valuable to Republicans as the polygraph for Republicans than as a POTUS candidate. I personally thinks his chances for the nomination are very, very (not just very) slim, but, hey, my wife tells me I’m wrong all the time. Maybe she’s right.
    McCain can attack statements such as the one from Sanchez without retaliation from the press. His history on Iraq gives him credibility that others do not have.
    He has also called Romney on the carpet for some of his statements without attack, which helps keep the campaign honest.

  10. Tom,
    Rumsfeld identifed a replacement for Shinseki long before his term was over in order to undermine his authority and make an example of his honest testimony. Same effect, same result.
    Otherwise, your clarification is appreciated. It’s amazing to learn that the military leadership responsible for the war has been filled with so many idiots like Sanchez, Batiste, and Shiseki. If only the great wartime minds like Rummy, Bush, and Cheney had military officers of the same caliber. I won’t even mention the effect of idiots like McCain running around yelling ‘more troops, more troops’ in 2003. Too bad Bush can’t run for office again, hard to imagine how the nation will survive without him.

    Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:


    DEP. SEC. WOLFOWITZ: There has been a good deal of comment – some of it quite outlandish – about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army – hard to imagine.

  11. bayam,
    I am sure liberals would like nothing better than Pres Bush to keep ALL Clinton’s appointees and not place his own. Worked well with Tenet also.
    And perhaps Rummy was right (which I may or may not agree with btw) when they felt all they needed was the amount originally needed. Afterall the war took what, a month? Too bad Rummy wasn’t a mind reader and did not foresee the Iranian involvement beginning in 2004. As for Shinseki wanting ‘several hundred thousand men’, the surge max went up to what 165,000? And it seems to be working. 165K seems a lot closer to Rummy than Shinseki.
    If he and Clinton hadn’t cut the Army to bare bones (as Carter and Clinton made sure to do immediately) Rummy could have sent in all that Shinseki wanted. If he agreed with that assessment. Shinseki wanted the extra men not for combat roles, btw, but for logistics.
    SHINSEKI:
    I would say that what’s been mobilized to this point — something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We’re talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that’s fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this.
    Read the first sentence, looks like he is onboard with the amount mobilized. Change that ‘looks like’, its in plain English.
    O, one last thing Bayam. The story you talk about Shinseki being undercut was reported by the Washington Post. It stated, with no attribution other than your ‘high government officials’, never mentioning Rummy or anyone for that matter by name, that he was being replaced by Gen Keane. Turns out that story was flat wrong, he was replaced by Gen Schoonmaker. Probably more MSM BS.

  12. “Can we name 10 honest men (liberal or conservative)in public service in Washington? Can anyone nominate even one?”
    You probably don’t agree with any of his positions, but I would argue that – dare I say it? – Ron Paul is an honest man. Too bad he hates America.

  13. Bayam:
    Rumsfeld identifed a replacement for Shinseki long before his term was over in order to undermine his authority and make an example of his honest testimony. Same effect, same result.
    Ya know what, I’ve read that leftest tripe so many times in the last 4 years I convulse with laughter at this point.
    Everyone in each branch of service knows who their new commander is long before he/she arrives whether it’s thru a public statement or scuttlebutt.
    Show me the memo that declares Rumsfeld did it to undermine Shinseki’s authority.
    Better yet, show how it was undermined. Did those under his command refuse to carry out his orders? Did they go AWOL en mass?
    Maybe his commend was split, with have carrying signs reading “Shinseki must go NOW” and the other half reading “Shinseki please don’t go, screw Rumsfeld!”
    Bayam… you really need to catch up with your talking points, the “undermine his authority” one is as stale as year old bread.

  14. I don’t believe more troops in the beginning would have had too much effect. Remember the hoary project management joke that “Two women can’t have a baby in 4 1/2 months”. Given the hostage rescue element of the war, its understandable that the Iraqis would take a while to come to terms with the realities of their new freedoms. It’s unfortunate, but without the excesses of AQI and the Shia militias the ordinary Iraqi might not now be ready to ally with us and move forward; our COIN strategy might not be nearly as effective.
    During the US Civil War, the Union was militarily ineffective until the right commanders were in place. The British efforts in the Malayan Emergency took six years of fighting, starting in 1947, with several years of political work afterwards. The Malay constition was not addressed until 1955 – 1956. We and the Iraqis have done amazingly well by any objective standard. The woulda-coulda-shoulda refrain is self-serving BS, the purveyors of which should read “The Mythical Man-Month”, which has several insights about software development that are relevant to any large project. For example:
    “When designing a new kind of system, a team should factor in the fact that they will have to throw away the first system that is built since this first system will teach them how to build the system. The system will then be completely redesigned using the newly acquired insights during building of the first system. This second system will be smarter and should be the one delivered to the customer.”
    Some things just take time.

  15. “Can we name 10 honest men (liberal or conservative)in public service in Washington? Can anyone nominate even one?”
    Jeff Sessions.

  16. Marc – Please explain why Russ Feingold isn’t an honest man. I would assume you would have some evidence if you believe that.

  17. Maybe I’m not remembering correctly – But didn’t this very same blog advocate the notion that Congress does not have war powers and should not have anything to do with how the war is fought?
    And if my memory does indeed serve me correctly, why exactly would you expect Sanchez to consult with Congress if Congress wasn’t supposed to be interfering?

  18. Show me the memo that declares Rumsfeld did it to undermine Shinseki’s authority.
    The point is that civilian politicians have undermined the independent voice of military leaders. The way Shinseki was publicly rebuffed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz is only one example.
    “The Mythical Man-Month”, which has several insights about software development…
    That has nothing to do with modern warfare.

  19. Captain, I strongly recomend that you reread General Sanchez’s speech.
    The much quoted AP line about the nightmare of incompetent strategic leadership talks of “republican and democratic” politicians which must include Capitol Hill.

    There has been a glaring, unfortunate, display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. As a Japanese proverb says, “action without vision is a nightmare” there is no question that America is living A nightmare with no end in sight.
    Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the republican and democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives. Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq – without bipartisan cooperation we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope.
    – General Sanchez

    Funny how the AP made it sound different.

  20. Shinseki was NOT an idiot! He gave our troops fancy new hats. He couldn’t get ammo for them to train with, but hats, hell yeah…

  21. Maybe the issue isn’t the number of troops needed to secure Iraq after the initial war, but rather, not having enough troops to fight the proper type of war because they misunderstood the enemy?
    A Bltz to knock out Sadamm’s control, and working behind the scenes to get the Iraqi Army to stand down in order to avoid mass slaughter seem like PART of a winning strategy, BUT, the reason most civilians were not wildly celebrating was they really understood Fedayheen Sadamm still had their guns (at ther backs) and stashed ammo dumps. [and maybe they remembered something about the Kurdistan and Marsh betrayals and didn’t trust the US?]
    No Front Line, No Security.
    Yes, I agree with the Left critique that that there weren’t enough troops in Iraq OR Afghanistan, but they fail to follow the logic that it would have meant many, many more enemy dead as those who would not lay down their arms would be killed.
    Rumsfeld later admitted he relied on the Northern Alliance in Tora Bora because he thought the American public would not put up with high American casualties. He and Wolfowitz simply dd not get the fanaticism, brutality, and deception of the Baathists and Fedayheen. Cordon, Sweep, Secure and Hold; 4 years late but working. Something about utilizing your competitive advantages of manpower and firepower. THEN fixing the plumbing.
    Turkey didn’t help the math either.
    Am I the only one who thinks we are arguing about the wrong things?
    And, of course, you have to read the Sanchez speech, not the press bumper stickers, to see that he is right in many ways: no true natonal effort and some parts of the media that he says have contributed to American deaths.
    But, McCain is right that Sanchez should have objected when asked.
    I wonder f Sanchez ever voiced his concerns internally, to whom, and when… and then maybe just hunkered down to carry out his orders best he could.

  22. Congress, per the Constitution, is not the Commander in Chief, so, yes, they should not any role in how a war is conducted.

  23. I love how the anti war commentators act like they actually know how the war is going or not going. Ultimately we will have the historical record to go on and I for one predict, as I have since the beginning, that this war is going better than some of the most optimistic forecasts prior to the invasion of Afghanistan.
    By any benchmarks of prior wars this has and continues to be a remarkable affair. The only defeats, as usual, are on the home front championed by folks that change the bar to support their straw man views. Easily forgotten were their ramblings about tens of thousands of dead Americans during the initial invasion and millions of starving refugees along with epic plague outbreaks. We were finally left with chants of no WMD’s which they originally told us were going to be instrumental in killing so many soldiers. The frat party at Abu Ghraib was a god send to the naysayers.
    It is truly amazing that we have less than 4000 dead in some of the world’s most hostile environments while slowly (slower than I thought) winning the hearts and minds of natives. I admit I thought that the recent successes in Anbar would have occurred a couple of years ago. All this carping about we should have, could have is nothing compared to previous conflicts. Amateurs are mistaking the extreme political partinship as a barometer for the success or failure of the war strategy. If Eisenhower himself were in Iraq right now the dems would still be saying the same things. Politicians these days are about votes. Support is coincidental.
    But I put it to anyone that has studied wars over the last several centuries to make the argument that the war to date hasn’t met or exceeded expectations given the constraints of the battle space. I am obviously not talking about the expectations of armchair pacifists or the anti American crowd as occasionally represented on this board.
    Today’s military is the stuff of legend. They will not be denied. As a recent British General commented when asked about today’s GI’s vs British troops etc, he said the amazing thing is they come to win! And win they shall despite the best attempts on the home front to prevent it.

  24. Forget Sanchez. He did not have truly unfettered contact with Washington. The villain in this piece is CentCom, Sanchez’s boss and still the boss. This is the truly reckless, chair warming high command in Tampa that micro-manages the action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is CentCom that has, for example, established the absurd Rules of Engagement that have prevented the elimination of so many key terrorist leaders. To this day, we have the ghastly, politically correct CentCom hack, Gen Francis Kearney, who ordered two Green Berets to be investigated for murder after two in-field investigations cleared them for the sniper killing of a top-ten most wanted Taliban terrorist. These fine soldiers have now been cleared for a third time, no thanks to the obviously malicious and vindictive actions of the special forces hating General Kearney, who still warms a chair in Tampa at CentCom. The obscene CentCom has viciously suppressed the field command since the beginning of the War. There is simply no end to the politically correct decisions of these hacks in Tampa. It is far past the point when attention should be directed to the chair warmers in CentCom, not to our commanders in the field!

  25. The tradition in the military is to keep dissent quiet…you discreetly tell the boss of your concerns, then follow his decision as if it were your own. Spouting off to a grandstanding politician is simply not done within that society–not if one wishes to maintain the respect of one’s fellows (peers, superiors and subordinates). It’s true that none of us knows what Sanchez told his boss (GEN Abazaid), and therefore we can only speculate about whether he opposed some of the force structure and strategy decisions that were made during his tenure.
    The results our military achieved speak for themselves–they quickly and easily defeated a much larger force that was defending its homeland. However, as so many would observe, the military is necessary but not sufficient to achieve victory in war (which, after all, is ultimately a political event). Alas, we did not have the necessary economic, diplomatic and information capabilities to fully exploit the military success. Since those capabilities remain insufficient, our military continues to pay a price, exacted by an opposition that grew because the military is not organized, trained and equipped to conduct large-scale economic development, diplomacy, and institution-building. In that sense, Sanchez is simply stating the “conventional wisdom”, not making news…

  26. How nice that the writer of this blog posesses perfect insight. It must be terrific never to have to learn anything new, or adjust your thinking in the light of new information.
    He never even considers the possibility that Sanchez honestly believed at the time that the strategy being pursued was correct, but over time came to realize that it wasn’t.
    Good grief. Perhaps this blogger needs to psychologically cover for the years of support he gave to Rumsfeld and his failed strategy.
    That’s a lot of blood to wash off your hands…

  27. “Integrity/honesty is becoming such a rare thing among our elites that I almost wish there were some way to set that as a perquisite for public service.
    Of course, if we did that, the population of Washington D.C. would shrink by more than 90%.”
    Good thought but then how would these honest folks relate to the 90% of the private sector population that lack these fine traits.

  28. Who here believes that our inability to pacify Iraq in 2003 was due to a lack of manpower? Would two or three times the soldiers have resolved the matter then?
    I believe that one of the reasons the war was won so easily was that those who bore arms in defense of Saddam’s regime did not have their hearts in it and, knowing that they would be defeated no matter how hard they fought, they chose to keep their powder dry and reserve their capabilities for the “fight after the fight”. If the Iraqi Army and all of those who could have fought as conscripts had given all they had to repel the invasion, the aftermath would have been much less difficult than it was.
    People have to believe they are beaten before they are really beaten. All of the Iraqi’s ideas and misconceptions and bloodlust and nationalist fervor were channelled into action of one form or the other. Some actively resisted the occupation. Some actively or passively supported the insurgencies. Some put their energy into Politics and corruption or evening the score for old debts.
    Now the Sunnis are tired of war and tired of seeing their young men killed and incarcerated and tired of the terror and the tension and the blood. The Shia weary of the horror they have witnessed and the realization that, given the chance, they have behaved no more nobley than their former Baath masters. They understand better now what the reality of the situation is. They understand that the Americans are, overall, a civilized and decent people who, however misguided, want the Iraqis to make for themselves a place that is like what we have in America. Sometimes you have to see what evil looks like before you can recognize good.
    Everyone is wise when granted the clarity of hindsight. I, however, am wise enough to understand that, even with hindsight, it is not so clear what we could have done differently that would have guaranteed a different result. Too many are ready to latch on to one error or lost bet and magnify that into a critical turning point in the war. I believe that if these recently-discovered military geniuses had run the war, they’d have made a worse dog’s dinner of it than the administration did.

  29. Patrick said:
    Today’s military is the stuff of legend. They will not be denied. As a recent British General commented when asked about today’s GI’s vs British troops etc, he said the amazing thing is they come to win! And win they shall despite the best attempts on the home front to prevent it.

    And here’s Sanchez’s example of “best attempts”:
    “MY ASSESSMENT IS THAT YOUR PROFESSION, TO SOME EXTENT, HAS STRAYED FROM THESE ETHICAL STANDARDS AND ALLOWED EXTERNAL AGENDAS TO MANIPULATE WHAT THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SEES ON TV, WHAT THEY READ IN OUR NEWSPAPERS AND WHAT THEY SEE ON THE WEB. FOR SOME OF YOU, JUST LIKE SOME OF OUR POLITICIANS, THE TRUTH IS OF LITTLE TO NO VALUE IF IT DOES NOT FIT YOUR OWN PRECONCIEVED NOTIONS, BIASES AND AGENDAS.”
    crossdotcurve said:
    “That’s a lot of blood to wash off your hands…”
    I would submit that history will show that much of the “blood” was spilled because of the lies and rhetoric produced by the MSM and a democratic party that was committed to failure for simple political advancement. Cheerleading for an enemy does not a “leader” make. You’ll have to explain to me how the left intends to “wash the blood off their hands”.
    Gen. Petraeus had the luxury of taking charge in the theater that his predesesors did not have—no handcuffs, completly different ROE, and 100% “support” from our senate. Even while the MSM (NYT’s and Wapo leading the assult) continued it’s propaganda that the surge is a failure, events changed in Iraq DIRECTLY because of the strategy of clear and hold that Patraeus employed. There was no longer a mosque that the cowards could run and hide into. Our lean, mean, fighting machine had a general that would allow them to do what they came there for….WIN.
    Nancy Pelosi should be arrested by the AG for directly threatening supply lines to our troops (while we are engaged in war) by her asinine resolution that happened over 90 years ago. Can her party sink any lower?
    Neo said:
    “Captain, I strongly recomend that you reread General Sanchez’s speech.”
    “Selective” editing does not cut it anymore Neo. Sanchez ripped the media and the left’s agenda for their “contribution” to the war effort (which the major news outlets conveniently left out, AGAIN)
    I’ll save all my rantings about how these treasonous cowards over the past 4 years have spit on our military shamelessly for another post.

  30. I recommend West Point endow a new McClellan Chair of Partisan Generalship, to be funded by the Democratic Party.

  31. Sad to say, but Gen. Sanchez was totally over matched by the situation in Iraq. He always had a “deer in the headlights” quality about him during press conferences. His strategy was to hunker the troops down in their bases in the vain hope that it would minimize casualties and that things would somehow sort themselves out. His biggest failing was making a token effort, at best, to close down the Syrian Border, or at least the ratlines from Syria down the Euphrates River. Unfortunately, he is Hispanic which helped get him elevated to a position way beyond his abilities and due to the impending 2004 election kept him from being fired until he had commanded for a face saving one year tour.
    This highlights the biggest handicap facing us in the War Against the Islamofascists (I refuse to use the term GWOT). The Clintons did something unprecedented when they were in office. They reached way further down in to the government bureaucracy to ensure that people loyal to themselves, or at least their philosophical view of the role of government, were appointed and/or promoted. This is especially evident at the State and Justice Departments, but also severely effects the Pentagon and CIA. EPA, HUD and Education got special attention, but nearly every part of the Federal government suffers from this infestation. The idea was to have their people in place to make things difficult for any follow on administration, whether Republican or Democrat, to make a stark contrast to the “Happy Days” of the first (and God help up, hopefully only) Clinton administration. This would help pave the way for Hillary to come riding in on a white horse to save the day. This is not saying that there has out right sabotage (although there definitely has been at State and probably at the CIA, too), but that these high level (and getting ever higher with each passing year) would slow things down, reinterpret orders, leak and spin to the press to undermine the administration and generally keep the bureaucracy in the Clinton camp. Look at all the leaks of classified info coming out of the CIA and State over the last couple of years. This is kind of like the bureaucrats undermining the Chancellor to pave the way for Palpatine in the Star Wars movies.
    They also did this with Generals and Admirals, elevating people to the highest ranks for political reasons. Shinseki is classic example as he was supposed to replace Akaka as senator for Hawaii in ’06 before Akaka decided to run for another term. He’s a Clintonista through and through.
    The Clintonistas are ripping the guts out of this country just to help pave the way for Hillary. It makes me sick. But what makes me sicker is that Bush has done zippo to rid us of these parasites. Case in point: George Tenet.
    This is the main reason I support Romney in the election next year. After at least 16 years of stunning mismanagement in the White House we need some one who knows how to run a company, and the US government is by far the biggest company on the planet. He also knows that a company runs best as a team and everybody on the team needs to be using the same game plan. And if you don’t, you get cut.

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