Charlie Rose

ray  09/20/2008 04:55 PM Report

I just finished reading Lt. Gen. Sanchez' book. While I am a registered Republican and in fact voted for Bush on both occasions, I find Secretary of Defense Rumfeld's conduct both cowardly and unexcusable. He's micro-managing the war in Iraq, instead of leaving it to the military, is what got us in so much trouble to begin with. No wonder he left office within days of Bush being re-elected. He was never held accountable for this boarish and unethical conduct. Shame on you Donald Rumsfeld. You are an embarrasment to us Americans who value, support and treasure the sacrifice and risk that our young women and men in our armed forces take each and every day they go out there to defend our country, our freedom and our way of living. WAY TO GO INTO HIDING RUMSFELD!

Mike F  05/27/2008 07:25 AM Report

Just a few days after Robert Kagan here comes General Sanchez explaining to us that we had to go to war because we thought that Saddam had WMD. And once again he gets a free pass from Charlie, who fails to remind him that the UN inspectors were pulled from Iraq because the Decider had decreed that it was time for the war to start. We did not have to go to war--we wanted to go.

Ed Martinez  05/22/2008 11:45 AM Report

I am in the unique position of knowing and having worked for both LTG Ricardo Sanchez, and Gen George Casey in my 20 years of military service, which included an 8 month stint supporting Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. I think the proximate cause of the failure of our policy occurred when V Corp, a tactical command was placed in the position for whatever reason to perform as the theater land component commander with reposibilities to support the Provisional government (political responsibilities)with no infrastructure or budget to cause or implement action. Mark-in-chi-town must be Rumsfeld's pen name as he is trying to indict an honorable man. In fact LTG Sanchez is left with his integrity intact. Abu Ghraib has been the albatross hung on this exceptional officer, unfairly. In the meantime, Gen George Casey who did nothing the entire time he was in the same position with the ful complement of staff and support did nothing but circle the wagons and let the insurgency get almost complete control. This was no surprise to me because the Gen Casey I knew was never a field general. To this date he is an Infantry general without a Combat Infantryman's Badge.

Mark-In-Chi-Town  05/20/2008 11:26 PM Report

Sanchez does quite a bit of passing the buck for things that were under his control. As I recall, Petraeus was in country in Northern Iraq during Sanchez's command. Petraeus areas of responsibility was relatively pacified until well after he left.

Sanchez takes no responsility for failing to implement standard COIN procedures throughout the country as soon as he realized there was a viable insurgency. Petraeus had already demonstrated that those procedures had been successful in tamping down the insurgency in his area. Lots of excuses about a lack of resources, but no acknowledgment that it was his policies of maximizing force protection, over reliance on kinetic operations, and abandoning population protection that cause the insurgency to mushroom during his time in command. Sanchez was the one advocating having US troops hiding for their own safety on large bases and abandoning the Iraqi population to be intimidated and co-opted by violent insurgents.

He should be ashamed of attempting to pass the blame on to everone else. Petraeus was able to utilize the same number of forces as Sanchez had in country to pacify it in the last year. Had Sanchez had any clue how to conduct proper COIN operations, the insurgency could have been nipped in the bud. His public campaign to clear his name is reprehensible. If he was concerned about the military learning the appropriate lessons of his experience, the proper way to do so is through internal dialogue and education within the military, not making excuses for his short comings to the body politic.

AS Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post notes, Casey tried to get Sanchez to properly address insurgency tactics to no avail. It is for this reason that Sanchez is viewed by most in the military as a second rate General, at best:

Gen. Casey goes out to implore Sanchez, and he says, "Let me pull in some counterinsurgency experts." They've kind of been disregarded and ignored up to this point. "Have them tell me what we're doing here." They come in and give him a report that says, "There are nine basic hallmarks of failure in this sort of war, and you guys are squarely meeting eight of them. You're not controlling the border. You're not focusing on the population. You are focusing on large-size operations. You are not treating your prisoners well." These are all lessons, again and again, the military has learned. Why are these being ignored?

In August 2004, for the first time, the United States military formally has a counterinsurgency plan. It's not until August 2004 where Casey actually has a plan and signs it. There was never a plan the whole time that Bremer and Sanchez were there for how the U.S. military was to operate. So really, you need to get Bremer and Sanchez out of there, it seems, to even have a strategy, let alone an effective strategy is to have a strategy." End Ricks Quote.

See the link http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/sanchez-delivers-democratic-pa/ for more commentary on Sanchez's failures.

We Demand Accountability  05/19/2008 08:38 PM Report

It seems tragic that Sanchez is taking the fall for a series of mistakes that started with misguided NeoCon policy wonks sitting in comfortable armchairs that were later translated into immoral and repulsive policies by incompetent leaders in the Executive Branch. When will we see accountability go to the top?

Bob Brandt  05/19/2008 04:02 PM Report

This interview with Sanchez was one of the best Rose shows I have ever seen: Sanchez himself spoke clearly and directly and assumed responsibility for his role and his critique of this role - he was very powerful in his presentation. Charlie was very sensitive to his position and handled it with great grace. A real masterpiece. Thank you.

Tom McGill  05/19/2008 10:46 AM Report

Sanchez was very straight forward and represented well the problems Iraq presented to the US military and vcivilian leadership. The duties of leadership were clearly stated. The strengths of our system of letting thre generals execute broad commands from the civilian leadrship is what has made us so effectivee. The quetion of Iraq will last a long time. Afgansthan is even worse. Note his comment on Nato.

fccm  05/18/2008 11:53 PM Report

Charlie Rose is looking more and more like Jeff Gannon (a.k.a. , James Guckert), Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Michael McManus, and the string of Bush regime White House spokespersons.

Charlie Rose is slipping as a viral advertiser for the publishers that control him.

Take this piece of trash from Keith Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation's HarperCollins Publishers. It is more CYA fiction trying to defend the greatest failure in American history.

Even this soiled general is slipping. This 'yes man' for Bush-Cheney-Rumsfailed-Wolfowitz and now for Murdoch looked like a deer-in-headlights trying to regurgitate the script given him of recent unrelated aggressive US interventions to explain the illegal Iraq invasion and occupation, grossly ignoring even mentioning the Cold War. He knows better. His professional military education and experience supports what Sun Tze observed thousands of years ago that 'supreme excellence is winning the war without fighting.'

If this soiled general thinks this book will improve his awful reputation, he has made yet another mistake. He needs to write another one, on his own, to explain his failure to execute the oath to support and defend the US Constitution or his failure to comply with the Geneva Conventions protocols.

Viewers must see through this Murdoch viral marketing.

Walton Elia  05/17/2008 01:23 PM Report

Washington has consistently carried out its provocative policies in Iraq from the early stages and until today, so that the business of war will go on as pentagon's contractors and groups who have interest in military industry and oil profit, plus the fact the capital raised from this organized crime is needed to keep America's relationships with its allies containable, my other comment that I have in regard to the notion that America should not talk with states sponsoring terrorism, that is another example of the American double standards in foreign policy, and by continuing such the policy of ignorance will have devastating consequences. If you technically apply the term states sponsoring terrorism broadly in our world today, you will find that in a lot of places as an example Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, some European countries and even Israel itself, there is religious anti imperialism streams that are establishing and growing in demand as societies break the silence when it comes to fateful issues such as choosing to live in a world of peace, prosperity and sharing human values and cultures over a world of fear and the domination of enterprise, and you see that happening in Iraq as profound specimen of that struggle where people are willing to give out their life for the future of their kids to live better, and that's when public debate has to take place to solve the most humanely known struggle between the ordinary people against the greed of their leaders and or invaders