Ricardo Sanchez

For the football (soccer) player, see Ricardo Sanchez (soccer).

Ricardo S. Sanchez
Allegiance	United States of America
Service / branch	United States Army
Years of service	1973-2006
Rank	Lieutenant General
Commands	Multinational Force Iraq V Corps 1st Armored Division 2nd Brigade
Battles / wars	Operation Desert Storm Iraq War
Awards	Defense Distinguished Service Medal Defense Superior Service Medal Legion of Merit Bronze Star

Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez (born 1951) is a retired United States Army general who served as the V Corps commander of coalition forces in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004. He was the highest-ranking Hispanic in the United States Army when he retired on November 1, 2006. At the time of his retirement, Lieutenant General Sanchez called his career a casualty of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Early life and education

Affirmative action is the only reason this worthless officer was promoted past captain. He knew about Abu-grav and chose to ignore it.

Sanchez was born into a poor Mexican American family in Rio Grande City, Texas. During the Vietnam conflict (1969-73), Sanchez was in college. He spent one year at the University of Texas at Austin on an ROTC scholarship, eventually transferring to Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas, where he graduated in 1973 with a double major in math and history. Sanchez was named a Distinguished Military Graduate (DMG), meaning he was in the top 10% of all ROTC cadets in the nation. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Regular Army.

Army career

Sanchez became a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. By 1977, he had transferred from the infantry to armor. He received promotions regularly and was stationed at posts in the United States, Korea, Panama and Germany.

In 1991, then Lieutenant Colonel Sanchez served as a battalion commander during Operation Desert Storm, successfully leading his unit of the 197th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) to Basra without suffering any casualties. Shortly after the Gulf War, Sanchez was promoted to Colonel and given command of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division. Afterwards, he served on the staff of U.S. Southern Command, first as deputy chief of staff then as director of operations.

On July 10, 2001, by now a general, Sanchez became commander of V Corps' 1st Armored Division. He held that position for nearly two years before assuming command of the entire corps on June 14, 2003. On this date he also became commander of coalition ground forces in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Commander of Coalition Ground Forces in Iraq

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq.

June 2003 to June 2004

Sanchez held the top military position in Iraq during what was arguably one of the most critical periods of the war—the year after the fall of the Hussein regime, and the time the insurgency took root and began its counterattack. Highlights during his tenure as commander in Iraq include the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein, and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

He was in command when the abuse of prisoners occurred most notably at Abu Ghraib prison. Some have been highly critical of the U.S. military's failure to hold generals accountable, as the blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers was placed only on a few individuals of the lowest rank.

Sanchez was succeeded as commander of allied ground forces in Iraq by a four-star general: former Army Vice Chief of Staff George Casey.

Disunity in leadership

L. Paul Bremer was the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. There was almost a complete failure to communicate between Bremer, the top civilian, and Sanchez, the military leader. "It was very clear they hated each other. They lived in the same palace and didn't talk to each other." This disunity in leadership has been cited as one of the major failures of the first year of the Iraq War.

Abu Ghraib

Sanchez was commander of coalition forces during a period when abuse of prisoners occurred at Abu Ghraib and at other locations. In a memo signed by General Sanchez and later acquired by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request, techniques were authorized to interrogate prisoners, included "environmental manipulation" such as making a room hot or cold or using an "unpleasant smell", isolating a prisoner, disrupting normal sleep patterns and "convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other than the United States are interrogating him." On May 5 2006 Sanchez denied ever authorizing interrogators to "go to the outer limits". Sanchez said he had told interrogators: "...we should be conducting our interrogations to the limits of our authority." Sanchez called the ACLU: "...a bunch of sensationalist liars, I mean lawyers, that will distort any and all information that they get to draw attention to their positions."

War crimes prosecution

On 14th November 2006, human rights advocate Wolfgang Kaleck brought charges at the German Federal Attorney General (Generalbundesanwalt) against Ricardo Sanchez and a number of other high officials for their involvement in human rights violations in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Kaleck acts as an advocate for more than 30 human rights organizations as well as 11 former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Career after Iraq

In June 2004, Lieutenant General Sanchez relinquished command of the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I) to General George Casey, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. Sanchez returned to Germany where he continued as Commanding General, V Corps. He was briefly considered for promotion to four-star rank with assignment as Commander, Southern Command; nomination would have required Senate confirmation, which would have been contentious due to the Abu Ghraib scandal. He was not nominated; the position went to General Bantz Craddock.

Sanchez led V Corps in Germany during 2004-2005 as it refitted in anticipation of its second deployment as the command headquarters in Iraq. When V Corps returned to Iraq as headquarters element for the Multi-National Corps Iraq (MNC-I), Lieutenant General Peter W. Chiarelli was named commander; the V Corps flag remained in Germany with Sanchez. The result was somewhat unusual; the V Corps headquarters was in Iraq under Chiarelli's command with the name MNC-I while Sanchez remained in Germany with the corps flag, but with replacement (V Corps-Rear) personnel.

On 6 September 2006, Sanchez relinquished command of V Corps in a ceremony at Campbell Barracks, Heidelberg, Germany. Sanchez had commanded the corps for more than 3 years; longer than any previous commander in the unit's history. In deference to Sanchez' longevity, he relinquished command to General David McKiernan, Commanding General, US Army Europe and Seventh Army, his higher commander, instead of to a successor.

Sanchez retired on 1 November 2006, culminating 33 years of Army service. Sanchez now lives in his home state of Texas.

Author

On 2008-05-06 HarperCollins Publishers released Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story, a memoir by General Sanchez and Donald T. Phillips.

On 2008-05-07 General Sanchez was interviewed by Fresh Air host Terry Gross on NPR where he discussed the Iraq war, his life and book.

Criticism of the media and political leadership

Speaking to a group of military reporters and editors in Washington DC on Oct 12, 2007, Sanchez lambasted the media for "sensationalist" coverage and "self-aggrandizement" and expressing the belief that reporters were willing to "compromise [their] integrity" and "display questionable ethics" to get front page stories:

The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our servicemen who are at war. My assessment is that your profession, to some extent, has strayed from these ethical standards and allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on TV, what they read in our newspapers and what they see on the web. For some of you, just like some politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your preconceived notions, biases and agendas.

Sanchez went on to criticize the partisanship that has characterized America's political leadership on Iraq:

There has been a glaring, unfortunate, display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. As a Japanese proverb says, "Action without vision is a nightmare." There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight. Since 2003, the politics of war have been characterized by partisanship as the Republican and Democratic parties struggled for power in Washington. National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising effective, executable, supportable solutions. At times, these partisan struggles have led to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had a greater priority than our national security objectives. Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq — without bipartisan cooperation we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on in Washington that would give us hope.

Sanchez has become the most senior retired general to criticize American political leadership of the war.

Quotes

• "(The Abu Ghraib prison scandal is) the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire. I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command.

• In reference to the 2007 "surge" strategy in Iraq: "The best we can do with this flawed approach is to stave off defeat"

External links

• U.S. Commander Retires Over Abu Ghraib
• Complete text, audio, and video of Ricardo Sanchez' speech to a military reporters and editors forum luncheon
• The Story of Ricardo S. Sanchez by Our World in Balance
• U.S. commander "allowed prison abuse" (Friday 27 August 2004, Aljazeera)
• Ricardo Sanchez at IMDb