"This left General Sanchez in charge of operations in Iraq with a staff that had been focused at the operational and tactical level, but was not trained to operate at the strategic/operational level." He went on to write that neither he nor anyone higher in the Administration knew these orders had been issued, and that he was dumbfounded when he learned that Gen. McKiernan was out of the country and in Kuwait, and that the forces would be drawn down to a level of about 30,000 by September. "I did not know that Sanchez was in charge," he wrote.
Should be an interesting read. Reminds me of a direct fire plan for a company defense with multiple sectors of blame, redundant fall back positions, and a reserve pot of blame to dole out as gaps appear in the main defensive arguments. As I said on the Feith thread, this period is resulting in a truly remarkable run of accounts that all have at their core a defense for incompetence based on ignorance. They did no wrong because they did not know.

Tom