Step One: Screw Up a War. Step Two: Run for Senate.
Now this is how you pick a political winner: find a guy who let a war go off the rails and presided over a torture regime and get him to run for Senate.
Ricardo Sanchez, the disgraced retired three-star, has decided he’s not done with public service. Prodding from Texas Democrats is leading Sanchez to prepare for an apparent Senate bid. “After the military, I decided that socially, I’m a progressive, a fiscal conservative and a strong supporter, obviously, of national defense,” he told McClatchy.
Congratulations, Texas Democratic Party: you are on the verge of a new level in cynicism. Sanchez’s tenure running the Iraq war saw a humiliated and cashiered Iraqi military metastasize into an insurgency that killed and maimed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Under pressure from the Pentagon, he approved abusive detention and interrogation practices for Abu Ghraib that resulted in the U.S.’ most damaging wartime scandal since Vietnam. What could possibly interrupt Sanchez’s deserved fade into obscurity?