Leadership dooms Iraq strategy: ex-commander

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A "catastrophic failure" in the Bush administration's leadership of the Iraq war has mired the United States in a nightmarish conflict with no clear way out, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq said on Friday.

The blistering assessment by retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was one of the harshest yet by a top military leader involved in the war.

"There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders," Sanchez told a group of military reporters, according to a copy of his remarks.

"America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve 'victory' in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism," he said.

Without mentioning President George W. Bush by name, he called the president's troop-escalation "surge" strategy a "desperate attempt by an administration that has not accepted the political and economic realities of this war."

"There is no question America is living a nightmare with no end in sight," he said.

Sanchez commanded the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq from June 2003 until July 2004 as the anti-U.S. insurgency took hold. He retired in 2006 and blamed the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal for wrecking his career.

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