Comments on: What Sanchez really said

By: Neo

Neo — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:06:19 +0000

The Times really had to "cherry-pick" the nightmare quote, especially when General Sanchez's nightmare is the incompetent strategic leadership in Washington that includes 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 Times and the AP made it sound different.

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:02:05 +0000

“Can you name more than Franks or Petraeus who actually think that Iraq is a good idea?”

Sure:
Adm. Michael Mullen
Gen. James Cartwright
Gen. George Casey, Jr.
Gen. T. Michael Moseley
Adm. Gary Roughead
Gen. James Conway
Adm. William J. Fallon
Gen. Lance Smith
Gen. Bantz J. Craddock
Gen. Gene Renuart
Adm. Timothy J. Keating
Gen. Joseph Fil, Jr.
Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond

Shall I go on?

By: jimmy

jimmy — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:09:52 +0000

I second the emotion, Laura.

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:38:41 +0000

Of course, you remark on his remarks about the press and forget the “big picture” again. Iraq is a failure and our Armed forces are breaking under the stress. Are you going to blame the press for that as well? Lack of leadership, a poor plan to begin with forged by those neos in a think tank and poo pooing the “experts” who knew better about force size and costs, and hubris. Ingredients on how to make a failure. Truly sad. Can you name more than Franks or Patreaues as generals who actually think that Iraq is a good idea?

By: sergey

sergey — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:29:46 +0000

Sanches found even more harsh words about press, that were conveniently omited from their reports. See
http://shieldofachilles.blogspot.com/

By: douglas

douglas — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:47:47 +0000

“Sanchez lost 800 soldiers during his tenure. He clearly feels that thier loss was a failure of the policy makers and unnecessary.”

You’re projecting something that just isn’t there. If what you claim is so, he should have resigned in protest far earlier than he ended up having to, in worse circumstances.

By: Donald Wolberg

Donald Wolberg — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:00:05 +0000

General Sanchez’s remarks were rebroadcast a number of times by C-Span, actually as part of a series of different remarks by individuals and panels on the overall review of military and military press reporting and interactions. The Sanchez remarks were very reasoned, I thought, and not outdated in terms of policy, and he was just as concerned with the ethics and accuracy of reporting on Iraq as he was in the policy issues. The additional discussions by experts and reporters dealing with readiness and spending were just as significant and largely unreported. Sanchez does maintain that there were and are major shortcomings and the implication is clear that he consideres Iraq to have been poorly thought out for the long haul, and policy to have been inadequate. Interestingly, if you listen to his prognosticating, he does in some sense predict continued failures–I suspect that the current Kurdish-Turkish mess brings weight to his views, and is certainly making a mess of what we can or cannot do. Sanchez lost 800 soldiers during his tenure. He clearly feels that thier loss was a failure of the policy makers and unnecessary. He was genuinely moved by their sacrifice, and his concern is that their loss and the later decay in our military readiness, and everyone of the “experts” agrees we will need a ten-year rebuild of our forces to pre-Iraq readiness. I can hardly wait for the Sanchez memoirs!

By: Lee

Lee — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:07:28 +0000

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.

Gee, sounds like he’s talking about Jimmy.

By: jimmy

jimmy — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:41:43 +0000

“the defensive dog in the race” says it all.

By: douglas

douglas — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:15:06 +0000

“I always found it difficult to trust any reporting from a paper whose motto was “All the news that’s fit to print”.

That alone should have told you all you needed to know about agenda, bias, and manipulation.”

Heh, kinda like calling your news service “Pravda” (Truth).