TX-SEN: DSCC recruiting Abu Ghraib commander?

It certainly looks that way: the word is that Patty Murray is really and truly thinking that the best way to rally Texas Democrats to victory in 2012 is to recruit Ricardo Sanchez, the Army general who commanded coalition forces during the worst of the abuses done at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.  This, of course, blighted Sanchez’s career; while no formal charges were ever made, the general was essentially passed over for promotion until Sanchez took the hint.  Due perhaps to this lack of formal charges, Sanchez’s full culpability has never been established: reports indicate that the general’s authorization of interrogation techniques gave wide latitude to interrogators that was later horribly abused, but no credible evidence of his actual complicity in torture has been found.

Which (even if true) will never happen now, of course.  If Sanchez runs as a Democrat, the groups that would have been most likely to push for further investigation at this late date – the antiwar Left – will not be interested in pursuing the issue.  The antiwar Left will, in fact, enthusiastically support the man who was their head devil in their designated Hell on Earth… because to do otherwise would be to show some elementary sense of self-worth and dignity, and the antiwar Left has neither.

So – when your Democratic masters get around to picking your candidate for you – go ahead and endorse Sanchez, ye progressives. Get on the floor and lick those boots.  Not that Sanchez will win, anyway; 2012 will be a bad year for a Democrat in Texas.  But it’s always fun to watch the antiwar movement futilely beat its own ‘principles’ to death on command for the benefit of their masters. You’d think that it’d get old eventually, but no…

Moe Lane

PS: To forestall the inevitable objections from people who actually know something about the Abu Ghraib outrages (i.e., people who aren’t antiwar progressives): yes, I know.  The scandal broke after the military cleaned up the place, and notified the media about the abuses.  The commanding general’s career was blighted not because Sanchez conspired to commit torture, but because command takes responsibility and it all happened on his watch.  And, yes, what happened at Abu Ghraib was an outrage that was made all the more outrageous because it was hideously outside the norms of normal US military behavior; and the US military was hideously smeared by the antiwar movement for years over this aberration.

But we cannot allow the Democrats to get away with encouraging the aforementioned smears without consequences.  The Left fund-raised on Abu Ghraib; in fact, it probably still does.  They must be forced to either stay consistent to their past positions, or else publicly admit that they never believed in those positions in the first place.

Via @PatrickRuffini.