Great line of reasoning G.A, Phillips -- we invaded a country to give them freedom and out problem is that we gave them too much freedom.

With this thinking no wonder our country is in trouble.

Ya I know liberals don't know poop about freedom, nor do Muslims, and of course using your great line of reasoning once agian you blame the problem on another line of reasoning insteed of the reason.

you people are truly amazing.

General Sanchez's nightmare (as reported by the AP) isn't about the conduct of the war, per se, but rather about the nightmare of incompetent strategic leadership 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 AP made it sound different.

With this thinking no wonder our country is in trouble.

And *what* "liberals in power" at the "outset"?

the ones holding office who voted for the war and then backstabbed our troops. I new that they did not mean what they where voting.

This war was undertaken with broad support that has steadily eroded as it became clearer and clearer that the administration wasn't sure what it was doing. The looting of Baghdad being a good starting spot.

I don't rember it this way, but I do remember thinking form the outset that media could not possibly understand what it was doing.

soory that you did not understand that this was my impression and I am mighty sure that I have seen what I seen.

you do know that the looting of Baghad was one of the most hyped stories in history till a few idiots stated to have liberal sex sessions in a prison one night, and by who, and for what. please do not think that a rewriting of history can't happen right before your eyes and that you might believe it.

Its called good propaganda.

I will agree that this war could have gone better and that we gave the pepole of Iraq to much freedom all at once, but dont you think it's far to easy of a siting of the Liberals game of blame that most avarge people have been tricked into playing or one might say conditioned for, talk about missleading the country, talk about playing on our fears.

The general who presided over the Abu Ghraib scandal

Considering how much the right is supposed to respect generals, they sure love to hide behind them. President Bush presided over the Abu Ghraib scandal. The buck stops there, no matter how many patises are set up to take the fall...

This war was undertaken with broad support that has steadily eroded as it became clearer and clearer that the administration wasn't sure what it was doing. The looting of Baghdad being a good starting spot.

In all fairness, G.A., did you read the comment thread? Professor Taylor, no bleeding-heart liberal the last I checked, recognized that the media were highly supportive of the war at its outset.

And *what* "liberals in power" at the "outset"?

Let me review some of the descriptive phrases that have been used by some of you that have made my personal interfaces with the press corps difficult:

In some cases I have never even met you, yet you feel qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world.

So, apparently, if one hasn't actually *met* Sanchez, one can't make judgments like the above?

That's odd, because merely *reading* his remarks leads me to believe that some of those judgments are in fact true.

If Bush had been the kind of person to fire Rumsfeld that week, possibly the occupation might have had some sort of chance.

For "inability to construct," however, I would substitute "lack of any interest in constructing." Unity was not in Rove's 2004 electoral gameplan.

And it reads to me like the "unity of effort" problem as he is addressing it flowed from the administration and its inability to construct that unity of effort.

Great, he's turning into David Broder.

"Unity of effort" towards *what*? What *kind* of effort?

if the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq, it would lead to “chaos that would lead to instability in the Middle East.”

As opposed to what we have now?

Either Iraq is FUBAR, or it's not. A hard call, I realize. But I don't care for the logic of those who say the only way to find out which, is to stay there & see.

The incomprehension here is vivid from the vocabulary itself. What's insignificant at the level of tactics may very well be of enormous strategic import, even within the confines of what's strictly military.

But given that the occupation of Iraq was, first and foremost, a political struggle - which I think should be obvious to us all - then the tortures at Abu Ghraib were, quite obviously, a huge self-inflicted defeat.

Does Sanchez really imagine it could've been otherwise, simply if the American people hadn't heard about them? Because the Iraqi people already knew, or were going to know, simply because we didn't shoot dead everyone we stripped naked and walked around on a leash. The shame of the victims was only going to provide cover for so long.

Even in his denunciations, Sanchez confirms the characterization of him as having a "conventional warfare mentality," and the most damning indictment of Bush and Rumsfeld is that *this* is the man they sent over, with Bremer, to handle their occupation. Courts-martial, indeed.