The conclusions drawn from the Nuremberg trial should not be forgotten. Obeying orders is not always a valid excuse.

His message should be taken seriously, but his own role in that which he criticizes can not be ignored.
For my money, that is the larger message in the message about personal accountability for the administration and Sanchez alike.

Generally this sort of reasoning goes something like where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Since the person didn’t tell us about the smoke before, either there mustn’t have been fire before, or even if there was, they have some capricious motive for telling us now, so we should somehow distrust both them and their report of fire now.

It works great, because once you get the brain angry, it no longer can distinguish between being upset at the messenger and the truth of what they said, and you can call the messenger shrill etc.

In this case, however, I think there is a legitimate point from Warner in that it isn’t merely a matter of Sanchez reporting late, it’s that Sanchez could have *done* something at the time. In particular he could have acted as a whistleblower, quit to spend time with his family etc.

It’s notable that Graham and Sanchez’ other newfound critics in the Republican Party suddenly are sounding the alarm about him after keeping silent for so many years

Uh, what’s so surprising here? Sanchez faded from public view when he retired. Why would anyone criticize him until he opened his big mouth?

Is Sanchez now supposed to be above criticism? What criticism could be given that would be acceptable? Should Graham really have come on TV sometime in the past year or so to criticize Sanchez directly?

The simple fact is that Sanchez made a bad situation worse on his watch. Does anyone really think he did a great job with what he was given? Almost everyone agrees that his actions made things worse – even acknowledging the vacuous leadership of the Bush administration.

My it’s amazing how fortunes change. Once excoriated by the left for Abu Ghraib, now he’s the newest hero for speaking against Bush.

Is Graham lying when he says this:

He was on the ground for well over a year there, and I know Senator McCain and myself point-blank asked him and Bremer, “Do you have enough people over here?”

Because every time we would go back, Wolf, it would be worse than the time before…..As far as I’m concerned, he was part of that mistake by being a commander who did not express now — then what he’s saying now. And I know he was asked because I asked him.

What a sad, sad country we live in.