Saturday, June 12, 2004

And Sanchez is the Winner! (or the Loser, All Depending How You Look At It)

The WP opens this story with the following:

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior U.S. military officer in Iraq, borrowed heavily from a list of high-pressure interrogation tactics used at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and approved letting senior officials at a Baghdad jail use military dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns, sensory deprivation, and diets of bread and water on detainees whenever they wished, according to newly obtained documents.

I'm sure that the Pentagon's decision to "rotate out" General Sanchez (LAT) had nothing to do with this. President Bush: Sanchez "has done a fabulous job. He's been there for a long time. His service has been exemplary."

A "Senior Defense Official" said "He's been there going on 14 months now. Anybody trying to draw a line between the natural progression of looking for somebody to rotate into that position to the alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib would be just wrong. There's absolutely no connection whatever."

From the LAT story: "It was unknown what Sanchez's next assignment would be."

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