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. Continue reading TX-SEN: DSCC recruiting Abu Ghraib commander?