Greg Sargent reports that retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez , who was implicated early on in the Abu Ghraib scandal is being pushed by the Democratic Party to run for Senate in Texas. Unlike some Republican recruits last cycle however, Sanchez seems to have turned against torture as policy:
An independent inquiry in 2004 did fault Sanchez for his actions in Iraq, but a subsequent review by the Army’s inspector general cleared him. Even more interestingly, Sanchez ultimately called for a truth commission to get to the bottom of the abuses and torture, arguing that the use of the techniques had failed. “During my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques,” he said.
It's hard to know how Sanchez's call for a truth commission will play in conservative Texas, Either way, however, if Sanchez does enter the race, we could very well see a full and public airing of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Could get very interesting.
According to a 2008 Senate inquiry into the use of abusive interrogation techniques, Sanchez personally authorized the use of "stress positions, environmental manipulation, sleep management, and military working dogs in interrogations," based on faulty legal advice. He later issued another SOP prohibiting many of them, but at that point the migration of abusive techniques from Gitmo had already begun, and Sanchez' second SOP "led to confusion about which techniques were permitted." The report concluded that Sanchez' actions "were a direct cause of detainee abuse in Iraq."
Sanchez is one of the few high-level people involved in this who has expressed any degree of remorse, and perhaps not so coincidentally one of the few to actually face some professional consequences as a result. He retired in 2006 in order to avoid an epic showdown in the Senate over a potential new assignment. That was back when lawmakers were still ashamed of torture. A few short years later, Sanchez could find himself sitting on the other side of a confirmation hearing.
