General Sanchez calls Iraq a 'nightmare'

Al Jazeera - Oct 13, 2007

Security remains a big concern four years after the US-led invasion [EPA]

A former top US military commander in Baghdad has described the war in Iraq as "a nightmare with no end in sight".

In the bluntest assessment of Iraq by a former senior Pentagon official yet, retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez also lambasted US political leaders as "incompetent, inept, and derelict in the performance of their duty".

Addressing a meeting of military correspondents and editors in Arlington, a Virginia suburb of Washington, Sanchez said: "There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight."

He said the current White House strategy will not achieve victory in Iraq.

Bush assailed

Sanchez blasted the "surge" strategy of George Bush, the US president, that calls for maintaining more than 160,000 US troops in Iraq until the end of the year in the hope of reducing sectarian violence.

"Continued manipulations and adjustments to our military strategy will not achieve victory," he said. "The best we can do with this flawed approach is stave off defeat."

Sanchez retired from the military in November 2006, part of the fallout from a scandal over abuse of detainees by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Reacting to Sanchez's comments, the White House evoked a September report to congress by General David Petraeus, the current US military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador .

"We appreciate his service to the country," Trey Bohn, White House spokesman, said.

"As General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have said, there is more work to be done, but progress is being made in Iraq. And that's what we are focused on now."

'No hope'

Sanchez, however, had a starkly different view. "There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope," he insisted.

According to Sanchez, US politicians in both the administration and congress have too often chosen loyalty to their political party above loyalty to the constitution because of what he called "their lust for power".

"There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders," the retired general complained.

"In my profession, these type of leaders would immediately be relieved or court-martialled."