The Mercenary’s Cookbook

In a new tell-all by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, the former Commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq takes his turn finger-pointing over where Iraq went wrong. Considering this Administration’s track record for punishing prescience and promoting loyal incompetence among its ranks, the fact that the three-star general took the fall for Abu Ghraib speaks in his favor. (Because, as we all know, it’s the soldier’s fault a few Bad Apples got “out of hand” — if by Bad Apples you mean, the White House.)

It might surprise you to learn (/snark) Sanchez thinks Rumsfeld might have had something to do with the failures of the first year:

“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.”