Ricardo Sanchez: 'Wiser' in Hindsight on Iraq, Politics

DATE May 7, 2008 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez on his time
leading combat operations in Iraq from 2003 to 2004
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

The former commander of US troops in Iraq has written a new book saying the
things he couldn't say while he was in uniform. Retired Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez writes that the Bush administration led America into a
strategic blunder of historic proportions, and that the executive branch of
our government did not trust its military. He says there was a shocking lack
of resources and proper training for our troops. His book is called "Wiser in
Battle."

General Sanchez commanded the coalition forces responsible for all military
activity in the Iraq theater of war during the year following major combat,
from June 2003 till the end of June 2004. The insurgency grew, and the Abu
Ghraib abuses happened during his command. He describes the end of his career
as a casualty of Abu Ghraib. He retired from the military in November 2006
after serving 33 years in the Army.

General Sanchez, welcome to FRESH AIR. Is it fair to say that you think you
were sent into Iraq with a nonexistent plan?

Lieutenant General RICARDO SANCHEZ: Oh, absolutely. We have this extremely
successful--probably one of the best offensive campaigns in US military
history. We convince ourselves that we have won. Everything that we care to
see in the environment tells us that we have succeeded in changing this
regime, and that we can walk away, just like we have done in the recent past.
Examples are Kosovo and in Grenada and Panama, especially in Panama, where we
go in, conduct regime change, and very rapidly extract our forces and turn
over power to another government.

So the recent past that we look at is reinforcing of this notion that the war
is over, and the impact of that one May declaration is really what leads to
this very catastrophic strategic mistake.

GROSS: The "Mission Accomplished."

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: The mission accomplished statement by the president, or
the perception that the mission is accomplished when he makes his speech
onboard the aircraft carrier. I contend that most of the significant problems
of the occupation period are caused or aggravated by the impact of that
statement. And...

GROSS: How did it make your job harder?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, you have to imagine the scene. As I'm taking
command on 14 June of 2003, the two higher headquarters that have been
fighting the war are leaving. I mean, these two headquarters are literally
shutting down satellite antennas, they're dismantling their command posts,
they are...

GROSS: You're talking about Jay Garner's group and what else?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: No, I'm--well, I'll get to Jay Garner here in a second.
I'm talking about General Franks' headquarters.

GROSS: OK.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: And General McKiernan's headquarters that are the two
higher headquarters above my command.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: And General Wallace's command. They are shutting down
all of their operations, unplugging computers, satellite antennas, lining up
their convoys and leaving Iraq, headed to Kuwait. That's the first real
impact.

The second is that, around the 16th of April, before the president makes his
appearance on the carrier, the orders have already been issued for the removal
of the combat forces that are in the country. The units that had fought the
ground war were told in April that they would be home by August, and no one
wants to be the last man killed in this war. And then about a week after I
assume command, General Franks comes to Iraq on his farewell tour before
retirement and he reinforces those orders and tells the units that they will
be home before the end of the summer.

Then you have Bremer and Garner. In May, Garner's organization, the Office of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, are celebrating with high fives
when they find out that they're being replaced by Ambassador Bremer and the
CPA. Bremer comes in with a very small organization, and literally all of the
key people from Garner's organization leave the country. And along with them
goes what little institutional knowledge had existed on a plan for standing
the country back up.

And then, probably just as important, commanders at all levels and senior
leaders are being removed by the Army, and they're being sent back to the
United States.

GROSS: So you're basically saying most of the military infrastructure is
moving out as you head in, and then the insurgency starts to grow, and you
don't have the resources you need.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Absolutely. Absolutely. What happens to us is that we
truly, honestly believe that this war is over at all levels of leadership.
And the reality on the ground is very clear to me, within a matter of a couple
of weeks, that we still have a war going on.

GROSS: You complained to the Pentagon in 2003 in a letter that was later
leaked to The Washington Post that your supply situation was so poor it
threatened Army troops' ability to fight. What were some of the things you
needed--in terms of supplies, spare parts, body armor--that you didn't have?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: What we are facing during that period of time, and what
drives that letter is that we are having a very difficult time in
re-establishing all of the logistics supply chains, because they have been
disestablished after the declaration by the president. And this encompasses
the entire range of sustainability issues for our vehicles. Spare parts are
very, very difficult to come by, and then at that time we're also facing the
challenges of a growing insurgency and the improvised explosive device
phenomenon that is creating some major vulnerabilities for us because our
equipment was not designed for that kind of warfare. So those are the things
that are driving us on the ground, and, you know, we are adapting as we are
learning the environment, and were asking for that support.

GROSS: You write in your book, "I saw the cynical use of war for political
gains by elected officials and acquiescent military leaders. I witnessed
those resulting political decisions override military requirements and
judgments and, in turn, create conditions that caused unnecessary harm to our
soldiers on the ground." And I think, you know, one example here that you cite
is rushing to hand sovereignty over to the Iraqis by July 1st, 2004, to do it
in a few months instead of a couple of years, which was what was originally
intended. And you say in your book that you think that decision, to hand over
sovereignty by July 1st of 2004, was a political decision to help President
Bush win the 2004 election. Why did you reach that conclusion?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: In November of 2003, we have assessment teams that come
into the country and establish the fact, unequivocally, that the military is
executing a strategy that is accomplishing what is necessary in countering the
insurgency. However, they also establish that the effort that we, as a
coalition, are undertaking in rebuilding the businesses and providing jobs and
rebuilding local city, provincial governments, that is failing. It is very
clearly established. And it is at that time that we are searching for
solutions, and the solution is that we will transfer sovereignty. The
military advocates, over the course of the following months, that maybe the
timing isn't right, because the capacities of the Iraqis has not been built
sufficiently to hand over this extremely complex situation.

But the decisions that are made are that we will absolutely not waiver from
that one July transfer of sovereignty day. If in fact we execute and complete
the missions in Fallujah, both against al-Sadr and against the insurgency in
Fallujah in the April '04 time frame, it is clearly recognized that we put at
risk that transfer of sovereignty. We have no one to transfer sovereignty to
at that point, and it'll be seen as a failure of our strategy, which in turn
would have a very adverse effect on the polls and on the ability of the
administration to get re-elected.

GROSS: So I think what you're saying here is that turning over sovereignty to
the Iraqis in July 2004 was a way to make a situation that was going badly
look good.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, absolutely. I mean, we know that our political and
our economic efforts are problematic; and, you know, we have to turn this
over. And then, you know, at one point there's a thought that maybe we ought
to hand over responsibility to the Iraqis so that when this goes wrong,
they're the ones that are held accountable.

GROSS: Now, you say at a time when the US was clearly occupying Iraq and Iraq
was beginning a civil war that the Bush administration was denying that we
were occupiers, we were just liberators, and the Bush administration was
denying that there was a civil war in Iraq. Did that make your job harder,
the refusal, as you see it, of the Bush administration to acknowledge the
language that was really defining what was going on in Iraq?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: From a military commander perspective on the ground, even
before we deployed, there is no question in the minds of the military
commanders that once we arrive in the Middle East, that we have chosen as a
nation to launch a force of 150 to 180,000 soldiers into the belly of the
beast, if you will. We are going into a country that sees as us infidels. We
are going into a region that is the home ground, if you will, of our radical
extremist enemies in this global war on terror. We know that Iraq, from
history, that they absolutely adamantly oppose occupation by any foreign
forces; but yet in the run-up to the war, we're telling ourselves that we're
going to call ourselves liberators and not occupiers. To us, the military,
that is an irrelevant discussion because the facts are that we are occupiers.
International law defines that very clearly. We accept that from a military
standpoint, and we plan accordingly. The issue that creates problems for us
is that the policies and the resources that have to be provided in the
political arena to accommodate and to satisfy the responsibilities of an
occupier at those levels are not provided to Ambassador Bremer, and that makes
our job harder on the ground.

GROSS: My guest is retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. He led all
coalition forces in Iraq from June 2003 through June 2004. His new book is
called "Wiser in Battle." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is retired Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez. He commanded the coalition forces in Iraq from June '03 to
June '04. He's written a new memoir called "Wiser in Battle."

You write in your memoir that during the more than a year that you commanded
the troops in Iraq, you witnessed a blatant disregard for the lives of our
young soldiers in uniform. Give me an example of what you mean.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, the key one is Fallujah. In Fallujah, we launch
into Fallujah with very clear military objectives and stated missions, and
then we make decisions after it gets pretty tough fighting--which, by the way,
had already been communicated to the administration and the political decision
makers that this would be a very tough fight, and that it would last three to
four weeks. So we go into this battle with a very clear understanding that
this is going to be bloody, and that there will be, in fact, civilian
casualties, and also that the enemy's strategic communications will be acting
against us because we know that there is an Al Jazeera reporter in there.

And when we make the decisions to back away from that fight after two days, we
make that decision knowing that we will eventually have to go back into
Fallujah to eliminate that safe haven. It encourages the insurgency,
essentially gives them a victory, and I believe that that is the seeds of
civil war that we ourselves plant in Iraq.

GROSS: Whose decision was it to pull out of Fallujah?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, that's clearly a political decision. Ambassador
Bremer is the one that communicates that to me, but it was made in Washington,
and it unequivocally was approved by the president.

GROSS: Now, you say that the military was told to withdraw. You would've
liked to have stayed and finished the battle. You think withdrawing helped
build the insurgency and create a victory for the insurgents. What was the
logic behind withdrawing?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, it was very clear. The logic was that we had to
withdraw our combat forces because if we did not, then the governing council
was going to collapse. We would then have no government to hand over
sovereignty to. We would've lost the support of the United Nations, which was
in the country at that point in time trying to find and identify that
transitional government that we would be handing sovereignty to. That is the
political implication of the military accomplishing the mission in Fallujah.

GROSS: If there wasn't such a rush to hand over sovereignty to Iraq, if the
plan was maintained the way it was originally supposed to be, to wait a couple
of years, two to three years, do you think the problem you're describing
would've been avoided?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, actually, the interesting thing, as I also describe
in the book, at one point we are having this specific discussion with the
secretary of defense, and he himself asks, `What is so magic about 1 July?' or
words to that effect. So he himself is questioning why it is that we have to
abide by the 1 July time frame when we have this major security challenge on
our hands. And this is done in a video teleconference that we're holding at
our level in preparation to go into a video teleconference with the president.
He doesn't surface that concern or question when we go in with the president,
but I firmly believe that if we had been allowed--and we felt that we were
only about four days to a week to being able to break through and eliminate
the resistance in Fallujah--if we had been allowed, we would have not given
the insurgency this moral victory and actual tactical victory, and we would
have once again recaptured the initiative and brought back some security and
stability during that period of time. It would have allowed us to once again
have the opportunity to make political progress with the local governments and
the national government, political government, and to try to re-establish the
economic aspects of the country. Whether it would've changed the course of
the war, very difficult to say because we have never been able to take
advantage of these windows of opportunity.

GROSS: Well, the politics that you think were driving the decision was
basically not so much the politics of Iraq, but the politics of the Bush
re-election campaign.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, absolutely, and it's all tied together. It's the
need for us to have this major success in Iraq, this major political success
that shows progress, and if you fail in that significant milestone that we
have identified at that point about five months earlier, then it shows a
failing situation, or a complete lack of progress, and our backing away from
the political milestones that have been set by our leadership. And you can't
afford to have that in the middle of a presidential election.

GROSS: So if you don't mind talking about this, what was it like for you as
the commander of the coalition forces in Iraq to start to increasingly feel
that the Bush administration was making its decisions based on wanting to win
the re-election, as opposed to what was best for the war in Iraq, or for the
soldiers fighting that war; and here you are, responsible for putting those
soldiers in harm's way in the service of a war that you were becoming
increasingly skeptical about for a president whose motivations you were
becoming increasingly skeptical about?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: I think this is--the culmination of that is when I'm
given the orders by Ambassador Bremer to, in fact, withdraw under fire. And
this is when we have the discussion.

GROSS: This is Fallujah again.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: This is in Fallujah, when we have the discussion in his
office that turns, you know, pretty vocal. And I when I tell Ambassador
Bremer and General Abizaid that if I'm forced to issue those orders that, you
know, I will resign and they'll have to find another commander to issue that
kind of an order to my forces, it is a--this surfaces a fundamental question
and challenge for military leaders in wartime. It is at the point where
politics begin to drive the decisions that are made in wartime, and they are
not necessarily in agreement with the military necessity to achieve military
victory. And this is when you have to, as a military commander, make some
very fundamental decisions about whether you continue to serve or whether you
choose to resign. And the decision calculus that drives the individual
military commander has many factors. And for me at that point in time, I felt
that if I left command and resigned, then I would be putting my soldiers at
further risk, and therefore I felt that I had to stay in command and continue
because I felt that I had a very good understanding of the dynamics and that I
could mitigate some of the impacts.

GROSS: Retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez has written a new book
called "Wiser in Battle." He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm
Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with retired Lieutenant
General Ricardo Sanchez. His new book contains scathing criticisms of how the
Bush administration led us into war, and how it's conducted the war. He
describes a lack of strategic vision and a shocking lack of resources and
proper training for our troops. General Sanchez commanded all coalition
forces in Iraq from June 2003 through June 2004. He retired in 2006. He's
written a new book called "Wiser in Battle."

I want to get back to the question what it was like for you, as the commander,
to send men and women into battle as you were becoming increasingly skeptical
about the war and the president leading it.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: When I came out of Iraq, I had lost 843 soldiers, and I
had had over 7,000 wounded. But we understand, as military commanders, that
we operate under civilian control. We understand that this is part of the
strength of our nation and the strength of our Constitution, and we know that
unless these orders are illegal or immoral that we must comply. And what we
do on the ground is what we can to attempt to mitigate the loss when assigned
missions, or when told, as we were told in Fallujah and with Muqtada al-Sadr,
to not complete and achieve the objectives that we had originally been in
search of. So for a commander, it is very difficult, and you mourn the loss
of every one of your young men and women. And, you know, there comes a point
in time where I think you have to--you have to make that decision to resign,
if in fact you believe that is going to be of some value to the organization.

GROSS: But you didn't do that.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: And I did not reach that point, that's correct.

GROSS: It's not until very recently that you started, in 2007, that you
started speaking out against the war.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: No, I think what I've done--and when I spoke out in
October of 2007, the reason I spoke out, and if you've read--anybody that has
read the text of the statement that I make, it's that we must in fact surge
beyond the military in order to be able to achieve victory, that we can't
continue with a strategy that is focused solely on the application of military
power. That in order for us to win, which we must, in this case, we have to
address these other issues. We have to address the diplomacy and get the
region involved. We have to address bringing economic hope to the average
Iraqi through jobs and additional businesses. And we've got to address the
political challenges that the country faces to this day.

GROSS: I'm really interested in what you think about the American military's
reliance on private contractors during the war in Iraq. We've been reading
about so many problems that the contractors have had, and how they've handled
aspects of security, architecture. I mean, there's an article in The New York
Times this week about how KBR, which was responsible, among other things, for
maintaining the housing facilities for many of the soldiers in Iraq, is
responsible for faulting wiring in some of those facilities.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Right.

GROSS: And several of those soldiers have been electrocuted.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Right.

GROSS: Did the reliance on private contractors for many responsibilities
across the board pose any problems to you as head of command?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, it is both a blessing and a curse, depending on who
you look at, on which contractors you look at. We were very closely tied to
the contractor support that we were getting in maintenance and logistics and
communications, even in intelligence, as we all know. And we cannot, and
could not have accomplished our mission without that contractor support.

Where you really have the problems is in the Blackwater-type forces that come
into the country that're operating independently, and that create havoc, if
you will, on the streets; and you wind up with, sometimes, incidents that are
questionable. And it is in those incidents where some strategic problems
occur. I mean, it ties you right back to Fallujah. I mean, that was a major
problem for me. You know, we do Fallujah because of the four Blackwater
individuals, as we all know.

GROSS: These are the contractors whose remains of their burned bodies were
hung up on a bridge in Fallujah.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Yes, that's correct.

GROSS: Quite a horrible spectacle.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Yes. And it is those types of contractors who had no
real oversight, because they're working for the Department of State at that
point, and the Department of State does not have the capacity to provide
adequate oversight. We don't have the right communications, command and
control linkages, if you will, that allow us to maintain visibility of the
operations that they're conducting. All of that creates problems for the
commander on the ground. And as soon as you put combat-type forces that are
contractors on the ground, that are operating independently, you're asking for
trouble, and we have found it.

GROSS: My guest is retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. He led all
coalition forces in Iraq from June 2003 through June 2004. His new book is
called "Wiser in Battle." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Lieutenant General Ricardo
Sanchez. He commanded the coalition forces in Iraq from June of 2003 for over
a year. He's written a new memoir called "Wiser in Battle."

Let's talk about Abu Ghraib. The Abu Ghraib scandal happened while you were
commanding the troops in Iraq. Abu Ghraib, which had been an Iraqi prison
under Saddam Hussein, became an American-run prison for Iraqi prisoners while
you were the commander. When the American military took over the prison, was
it clear to you whether those prisoners should be treated with the protections
of the Geneva Conventions or not?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: First of all, let me give you a broad perspective on Abu
Ghraib. Abu Ghraib is a disgusting, shameful incident that I have described
as a strategic defeat for our country. And it occurs under my command. It
was not condoned, tolerated or encouraged by any order, direction or policy of
the command. And I believe that the Abu Ghraib pictures have blinded us to
the facts and the root causes of the abuses that occur in Iraq and in a
greater totality across global war. There was never any question--there was a
question for about a week while I was in command about what the status of our
prisoners were, but that was ended by the third week in June when we issued
clear orders that every detainee in Iraq would be handled under the Geneva
Conventions. There was no question. The issue that we have...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: ...is that at the national level the interrogation
policies of the administration, which eliminated the Geneva Conventions, had
completely eliminated the foundations of all existing policies and training
and understanding of how it is that our military forces are to conduct
interrogation or tactical questioning operations. The Army had failed to
issue any implementation instructions and policies, or to provide necessary
training for any of our soldiers that are involved in these operations, and
for our tactical units, which get involved in tactical questioning, at the
point of attack. And...

GROSS: And you say that some of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib had come from
doing interrogations in Afghanistan.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Absolutely.

GROSS: Where the Bush administration said that the Geneva Conventions didn't
apply to the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who are captured in Afghanistan.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Absolutely.

GROSS: So they were used to doing interrogation techniques that went beyond
the Geneva Conventions, and you say some of them were applying them in Abu
Ghraib.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, I mean, they're applying them in the Iraq theater.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: What happens to us--the Army doesn't only fail to issue
initial implementation policies and instructions and training--in the winter
of 2002, the Department of Defense knows unequivocally that the policies as
they have been communicated to the military forces have led us down the path,
and we have abused and killed detainees in Afghanistan. And we fail as an
institution to address those issues. So by the time Abu Ghraib occurs, before
we even go into Iraq, before we even attack into Iraq, this is well known.
Every single deficiency and problem that is later identified in Abu Ghraib is
already well known by the most senior leadership of the Department of Defense,
and it's ignored.

GROSS: Now in September of 2003, you wrote a memo with the intention of
clarifying what was allowable for interrogators, since you felt that there
weren't clear guidelines that the military had issued. So in this
memo--correct me if I'm wrong--things that came under the category of
acceptable was exploiting Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during
interrogations, isolation, sleep management, yelling, loud music and light
control to create fear and disorient detainees, deception, including fake
documents and reports, stress positions, such as forced kneeling for as much
as four hours at a time. Were you confident that all those things were
acceptable under the Geneva Conventions?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Absolutely. The lawyers within the command unanimously
had reviewed all of these procedures, and they were absolutely confident that
every one of the procedures, with the safeguards and the oversight mechanisms
that we implement in those policies, would be within the constraints of the
Geneva Convention.

GROSS: What are those safeguards that you're talking about?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, we're talking about the actual development of
interrogation plans, the actual oversight of the conduct of the interrogation,
actual oversight by senior commanders, senior commanders, the medical
oversight of the conduct, or of the actual responses of an individual that is
being interrogated. So, in sum, it was the development of those plans that
would be reviewed at multiple levels; and in the second memorandum, they would
be reviewed at the most senior, both military intelligence and legal levels of
Iraq, and finally approved by me.

GROSS: Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the second memo, which came
about a month or several weeks after the first memo, some of the interrogation
techniques that you said were acceptable were rescinded unless you personally
approved them. And you had gotten advice from one of your lawyers that maybe
these things really weren't acceptable under the Geneva Conventions.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: No, that is not correct. That is absolutely not correct.
What happens between the two memorandums--and, by the way, the legal
investigation that is conducted, because there's a very specifically focused
legal investigation that is conducted in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib--to
establish the validity of the legal guidance that is given in this whole chain
of events--that investigation establishes that these two memorandums are in
fact legally sufficient, that they are in fact within the bounds of the Geneva
Convention, and that if applied as envisioned and documented in those
memorandums, they would have prevented any abuses.

Now, having said that, the difference between the first memorandum and the
second one is driven by the fact that there is one lawyer at the higher
headquarters in Central Command who questions whether the two techniques are
probably too close to the line. My lawyers are adamantly of the position that
those two techniques are clearly within the conventions and allowed. And my
guidance at that point is, if we will achieve consensus with my higher
headquarters, both in Central Command and in Washington, that these
memorandums are acceptable by eliminating those two, then go ahead and do it.
I don't want to have anyone that is not onboard with those two. Even though
you believe that these are legal, take them off the memo. And that's what we
do. And at that point, everyone agrees, all the way up to Washington, that
these memos are sufficient and that they are within the conventions.

GROSS: The Army report about Abu Ghraib released in August of 2004 didn't
accuse you of directly instigating abuse, but the Army General Paul Kern, who
oversaw the writing of the report, said in an interview that you wrote a
policy which was not clear, and that by doing so you allowed junior officers
to conclude mistakenly that they were following official policy as they
stepped over a legal line. What do you think of that?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, I think the confusion that exists--you know,
there's a bigger issue within Abu Ghraib, and let me try to describe it to
you. Once again, as I mentioned earlier, we have been blinded by the
pictures. What is actually going on in Abu Ghraib is two different issues.
One, it's the MPs that we all know, the Grainers and Fredericks and Englands
and the others. They are engaged in the punishment of criminal detainees
because they had rioted and they had threatened the MPs in the days prior.
Those detainees were never subjected to interrogations, and the problems that
arise from those MPs engaging in this punishment are driven by probably a
couple of factors. One is that they had not been properly trained. We had
sent them--these reserve component soldiers had been sent into battle
untrained and definitely under-resourced because of the systems that our Army
has that doesn't properly resource those units.

And probably the most important aspect of this entire issue here, of this
tension problem, is that at the time that these abuses occur, a team of 40
Army experts, led by the highest-ranking military policemen in the country in
the Army, a major general, are physically in Abu Ghraib conducting their
assessments and the review of my operations. And they come out of there on
the 6th of November and give me a report that advises me about some of the
things that we've got to do, some of the procedures that've got to be put in
place, and some of the training that they have conducted, and we accept that
report. These are the Army's, the nation's experts in detention operations,
and they miss, and they fail to recognize that our MPs have this problem.
That's one of the aspects.

Let me tell you where the confusion comes in that is not known. The confusion
is in what has migrated into the country from Afghanistan. You have the CIA
and the special operating forces that are still operating, not under my
command, with the rules that are applicable to the greater war, which mean
that the Geneva Conventions do not apply. And we have individual soldiers
that have come from that theater of war, and they have brought back, or
brought with them, that understanding of how interrogations are to be
conducted. And this is precisely what my memorandums are trying to control.
But even if we apply my memorandums, and say they're applied completely, you
still don't eliminate the problem because my guidance and my orders do not
apply to the special forces and the CIA. And we identify problems in both
organizations, and we communicate those problems to their headquarters, one,
the special forces that report to General Abizaid's headquarters, and the CIA,
which is nominally under control of Ambassador Bremer in the country, and back
to Washington, that they have major problems.

GROSS: What's it like for you now as a retired military leader to be watching
the war as a civilian? Does it look different to you?

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Well, one of the things that I have to be very careful
with is that most of the information that I'm getting is what appears in the
press; and having a very intimate knowledge of the complexity of a
battlefield, the complexity of the decision-making process and all of the
variables that go into decision making and the conduct of operations in this
environment, and in the dealing with our host country, I have to be very
careful that I don't make my own judgments about what is happening or state
opinions with only half of the information.

Probably the most difficult thing for me is that I continue to see a national
strategy that is not fully resourced, that has not surged, and I know that
that is prolonging this war, and that it is in fact costing us in terms of
lives and money and time. That is probably the most difficult thing.

GROSS: General, thank you very much for talking with us.

Lt. Gen. SANCHEZ: Sure, Terry. Glad to be on. Thank you very much for the
opportunity.

GROSS: Retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez is the author of the new
book "Wiser in Battle."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Maureen Corrigan on the book "The Suspicions of Mr.
Whicher" by Kate Summerscale
TERRY GROSS, host:

The new book "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" documents a now-forgotten famous
Victorian murder case. It's by Kate Summerscale, the former literary editor
of Britain's Daily Telegraph. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Ms. MAUREEN CORRIGAN: A dark night, a lonely English country house, a family
sleeping behind locked doors. And then, within this closed circle, an act of
murder most foul. It sounds like the plot of the classic Agatha Christie
mystery, down to the detail about the renowned London detective called in to
crack the case. Except, as writer Kate Summerscale argues, the Road Hill
murder of 1860 was not an instance of reality mimicking fiction; rather, it
was the true crime that helped catapult British mystery fiction into being.
Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, even Englishman wannabe Henry James were all
inspired by the Road Hill case to turn out uncanny tales featuring shrewd
children, nervous governesses and, most crucially, dysfunctional families
whose every member has a secret to hide.

In her intriguing new book called "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher,"
Summerscale zeroes in on the Road Hill case not only as a source for the
evolving mystery genre or enigma novels, as they were then called, but also
for the burgeoning science of detection itself. As Summerscale points out,
words like "clue" and "lead" were just entering the Victorian vernacular
around the time of the case. The famous detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher,
who was summoned to Road Hill House, was just one of eight men composing
Scotland Yard's fledgling detective force. The squad was created, Summerscale
says, in response to urbanization and the sense that an ever-expanding London
was becoming mysterious to itself.

The murder Whicher set out to investigate was particularly grisly. On the
evening of June 29th, 1860, the Kent family, consisting of Samuel Kent, his
second wife, Mary, and seven children, four from Samuel's first marriage, were
tucked into their beds. Also sleeping in the house were a young nursemaid, a
housemaid and a cook. When the nursemaid awoke the next morning, she
discovered that three-year-old Savile, who slept in a cot in her room, was
missing. Eventually the household was roused and a search got under way.
Savile's body was found dumped at the bottom of a filthy outdoor privy, his
throat slashed.

All of England was swept up by the case, and popular suspicion centered, of
course, on the nursemaid. But Inspector Whicher sniffed out the scent of evil
even closer to home. The Kent family, as he described it in the reports to
his commissioner, was emotionally fractured. The parents doted on their
younger children. The children Samuel Kent had with his first wife, who was
rumored to have gone mad, were displaced. Whicher's eagle eyes locked in on
16-year-old Constance, Savile's half sister. The nightdress Constance had
worn to bed that evening was missing from the weekly laundry pile. Later, a
bloody shift was discovered stuffed into the kitchen stove, but it too quickly
vanished. Also curious was Constance's reaction to the frantic announcement
of Savile's disappearance that fateful morning. Whicher reported that `Miss
Constance opened her bedroom door dressed, heard what was being said, but made
no remark.'

On the strength of Whicher's hunch, another new word entering the language of
detection, Constance was taken into custody and tried. But the case against
her was too weak. Whicher left the courtroom a failure. He was mocked in the
press as "Inspector Watcher of the Defective Police," and denounced in
Parliament as representing the most dangerous aspects of this new creature,
the detective, nothing more than a working-class snoop set loose to invade the
refined Englishman's cherished domestic sphere and besmirch young ladies like
Constance with his grimy fantasies. When Constance came forward and confessed
five years later, Whicher had already taken early retirement from Scotland
Yard. His discharge papers cited the cause as "congestion of the brain."

Summerscale, like the detective she celebrates, is an excellent close reader
of detail. And her book conveys the oppressive dullness of daily middle-class
Victorian life down to the spartan supper of bread, butter and water consumed
by the nursemaid on the night of the murder. "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher"
combines a thumping good mystery yarn with fine social and literary history.
But to Summerscale's credit, she ends her book with a disturbing detail that
reminds readers of the very real little boy whose murder sets so much else in
motion.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" by Kate Summerscale.
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