Political Punch

Gen Sanchez is to be commended for having the courage to step forward and speak the truth. This speaks loudly of his integrity and honor. Choosing to not go quietly in to the background, speaks loudly to his values. This is a display of a true General.

McCain is not Bush. The people of America need to realize this before it is too late. Charismatic leadership is not the answer to America's future.

I think the latent heroism surfaced five years later in response to the unpopularity polls of Bush and the Iraq war and to the final winding down of the administration. It's a lot easier to be heroic far after the facts and actually quite debatable if the word heroism even applies.

Its easy enough to have moral clarity in hindsight, but what no-one seems to discuss is why Gen Sanchez, McClellan, etc , said almost nothing when they were actually in a position to make a difference. What is with all this latent heroism? Why does it only come out in ways that make them money? I cannot in clear conscience call any of these monday morning quarterbacks patriots. Instead of embracing them on their PR tours to promote their books we should be denouncing them for cowardice .

It puzzles me to no end that the incompetent and grossly negligent Bush administration is still in charge in Washington.
It puzzles me even more that no one is
is stating the obvious solution to
the mess. That is, to correct lies you have to state the truth. Amerika has to apologize to the Iraqis for taking over their homeland and killing them in the thousands.
They also have to apologize to the nations of the earth for trouncing underfoot human rights through out the world.
They also have to get rid of their imperialistic goals and go home and fix their government and their economy and then mind their own business.

I wish Mcellan and Sanchez had quit to show of a protest against this administration rather than be forced out and write these books after the fact. They could've written a book still after they quit. Never the less, as a saying goes it's better late than never I'm glad they're doing it. I think Sanchez was forced out anyway.

If there's ever a time impeachment process should be used, this is it but there is none. I heard that impeachment is a political decision, not criminal decision or something to that effect on radio but I disagree. As a country, if we want to come clean and reclaim world standing and credibility... as a country, if we want to tell the future generation that this cannot happen without repercussion and this isn't acceptable, Congress would do something. Blame this one on republican who would never vote for an impeachment and Pelosi who said impeachment is off the table, simply ignoring one of the duties that they're required to do. History will be witten as this is the worst Prez/administration ever... unless of course Rove and Fox (Fix) News can somehow manage to avert this, calling historian unpatriotic, cowards, left wing bloggers, etc...

Sanchez was an "affirmative action" (i.e., racial/ethnic quota) "general".

I'm amazed at the statements of support here for Patraeus.

General Patraeus is the terrorists best friend. Rather than actually trying to protect his troops and carry out his mission, this failure of a general is deliberately funneling dollars to the Sunni insurgency, one of the crackpot schemes of the so-called 'surge'. Literally engaging in financial support of terrorists with links to Al-Q and the fundamentalist Islam of Saudi Arabia.

How on earth is this a winning strategy? Hes as much of a general as Bush is a president. Neither of them are fit to lick the mud off the boots of a true American hero like General Sanchez.

I love that guy Al the Chemist: "...
Bush's legacy...BIG China..." Always makin somethin outta nothin. BIG China, as I recall, was a gift from Bill Clinton (remember all them favored nation campaign contributions?).

Let's see, Patriot thinks Bush is and idiot and McCain is a, hang on...let me see if I can get on Patriot's non-incompetent level... McCain is a triple idiot, or some such.

Will Patriot be voting for Obama or Hilary, and how will this exempleur of competence explain their proposals to quickly draw down troops in Iraq without exposing the region to chaos.

Sanchez and McClellan are telling the side of the story their publishers have convinced them they need to tell to sell books (the Sanchez comment about "necconservatives" is typical red meat, and typical of comments about neoconservatism, general and ignorant). Whatever mistakes the Bush Administration have made in Iraq (and even those of us who thought and think that ousting Saddam was a good idea) were aided and abetted by these two. They've also been compounded by a constant media drumbeat for the kind of haphazard withdrawal from Iraq that Obama is planning and Clinton offers some limited support to. That drumbeat has only emboldened the enemy and given them reason to think they might outlast the US.

The surge has demonstrated that Al-Queda can be met head on and, combined with the fact that the Sunnis are becoming politically pragmatic, the news in Iraq looks hopeful.

There are a lot of people to blame for why it's taken this long, but those who begin and end with the Bush Administration aren't being any more honest than they accuse Bush of being.

Sanchez: "Over the fourteen months of my command in Iraq, I witnessed a blatant disregard for the lives of our young soldiers in uniform. It is an issue that constantly eats away at me."

Now that's an admission of dereliction of duty in the line-of-duty if there every was one!!!

Is this Sanchez’s confession of guilt and failure as an officer in U.S. armed services or is it supposed to be an indictment of Bush and the Admin?

It reads as the former rather as opposed to the latter.

Barack Obama will win the incompetence contest between Bush and himself. Obama can't even get his small senaate disrict in shape. Such a dud.

Let's see, the man who was in charge of giving the truth to the media is fired, and two years later says he lied to the media.

The man who was in charge of the war in Iraq during Abu Ghraib retires insisting that nothing was done wrong, and two years later is saying that Abu Ghraib torture was true and we screwed up the war during his tenure.

If Bush retires and writes a tell-all book about how bad he screwed things up, I bet he'll be hailed as a hero by the liberals as well.

After all, they LOVED Armitage (the man who "outed" Valerie Plame), and adored Richard Clarke, the man who was responsible for anti-terrorism up until shortly before the 9/11 attacks.

I think it's about time we started looking at war crimes or better yet Treason for the Bush administration!

dstupple - You overlooked the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that have died. We also must care for 30,000+ wounded veterans for decades to come, and an image that will take decades to restore. The real question here is whether or not militaristic pre-emptive interventionist foreign policy is in our best interests for the reasons given by the Bush adminstration with regards to Iraq. To me, we have destabled the region in Iran's favor for what we thought would be cheap oil taps.

How many Generals wrote books during WWII or Korean Conflict? If you believe there were 'blunders' in Iraq you would be shocked on what occurred in those two wars. Before we went into Iraq, Sanchez was aware of the estimates that we may lose up to 10,000 in a protracted urban battle. Maybe we did do something right. Finally, probably the reason his book is not getting the coverage is that nothing can smother critique better than success. Why do you think that coverage of Iraq has been void of late?

Everyone with a brain everywhere in the world knew from the outset that Bush is an incompetent.
Yet Bush was elected and RE-ELECTED?

Even Scot McClellan, an obvious incompetent if you watched his performance as Press Secretary, recognizes that Bush was ALWAYS an incompetent.

The problem is that America HAS BECOME a nation of incompetents!

And who do incompetents like as their leader? Other incompetents of course! lol

And to make matters worse, some Americans don't mind tripling up on Bush with McCain't. lol
Talk about a nation of people being suicidal, suicidal.

Yep a big blunder has been made over there in Iraq. The Bush administration is the nexus of power and arrogance, and we clearly see the horrible consequences. I myself will vote Ron Paul to support a more sensible foreign policy. Whomever you folks vote for avoid McCain. I don't think we can afford an Iran debacle on top of everything else.

I detect a vast right wing conspiracy to separate liberal readers from their money

I am not old enough to remember but did McArther not just "fade away" when Truman fired him?

The good thing is that only 4,000+ Americans and 100,000+ Iraq citizens had to die; approximately 30,000 Americans are physically injured and the country lies in bankruptcy before the Generals and the Politicians have the guts to stand up and speak part of the truth. It could have been worse …

Wait a moment, it will be worse unless we, the citizens of this country, stand up and speak out and stop these spineless people who are taking over this country through the politics of politics.

We have had a preview of the “Democrats” not standing up but merely being lead by the misogynist male media to ordain an unqualified empty suit to run against John McCain. It’s about to get worse. Instead of sending your kids to college you will buying the necessary body armor to wrap them in, when the draft is reinstated to handle to the war John McCain will bring us. The spineless Democrats will do nothing, just as they failed to impeach Bush, failed to stop Bush, failed to even attempt to stop Bush, and failed to hold a fair election.

I know, let’s go to one of those misogynist churches to pray for protection from the stupidity that will envelop this country, as some of you kneel before a "man of God" and “hope” that it won’t. Kiss my ring!