Gross Incompetence and Dereliction of Duty

Friends,
"Mission Accomplished" horribly failed our troops. This is what the Commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq says in his new memoir, "In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."
These are very serious charges by a very high placed American commander. The Bush administration unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed American troops. These retched pieces of pond scum need to be brought to trial!

Rev O

W.H. Watch, Washington Post
Sanchez Attacks
"Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq from 2003-2004, has written a new memoir: Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story. In an excerpt published by Time magazine, Sanchez lays the blame for the post-invasion bungling in Iraq squarely on the man who fired him -- then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- and his superiors.
Sanchez writes that he didn't learn until 2006, while talking to military investigators, that the U.S. even had a plan for post-war Iraq. What he learned then was that there had in fact been an "operational concept that had been prepared by CENTCOM . . . before the invasion of Iraq was launched. It was standard procedure to present such a plan, which included such things as: timing for predeployment, deployment, staging for major combat operations, and postdeployment. The concept was briefed up to the highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, and the President of the United States.
"And the investigators were now telling me that the plan called for a Phase IV (after combat action) operation that would last twelve to eighteen months.
"To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had never seen any approved CENTCOM campaign plan, either conceptual or detailed, for the post-major combat operations phase. When I was on the ground in Iraq and saw what was going on, I assumed they had done zero Phase IV planning. Now, three years later, I was learning for the first time that my assumption was not completely accurate. In fact, CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job.
"That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. Vice President Cheney knew about it. And President Bush knew about it.
"There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. . . .
"In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."