Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who served a tumultuous year as commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army on Wednesday, calling his career a casualty of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
He pointed to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as the key reason for his departure.
He said for a story in The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, "that's the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire. I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command."
He had been a candidate to become the next commander of U.S. Southern Command. But he was passed over after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal exploded into an international controversy.
Sanchez has not been accused of any misconduct but has been criticized by some for not doing more to avoid mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.
An Army spokeswoman declined comment Thursday.
The 55-year-old retired in a formal ceremony at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. He served in the military for 33 years.
In Iraq:
San Francisco-based Bechtel is pulling out of Iraq after three years of work that cost the lives of 52 of its workers. A company spokesman says the deaths are among the greatest losses of life that Bechtel has suffered during any job in its 108-year history, possibly exceeded only by the work it did on the Hoover Dam during the Depression. Besides the 52 workers killed, another 49 were wounded. Bechtel had hired as many as 40-thousand workers — mostly Iraqi subcontractors — while it worked on rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure.The U.S. military said a Baghdad-based soldier was killed on Wednesday after the vehicle he was riding in was struck by a roadside bomb west of the capital, the first U.S. casualty in November. At least 2,818 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Last month was the fourth deadliest month since the invasion, with 105 American service members killed. The U.S. military said Thursday it killed a mid-ranking al Qaeda operative in an air strike. In a brief statement, the military said Rafa al-Ithawi, also known as Abu Taha, was killed Wednesday in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, by precision laser guided weapons that destroyed his vehicle. It said al-Ithawi had been named an emir under al-Qaida in Iraq, making him a local commander in Anbar province, the heartland of the stubborn Sunni insurgency against U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies. It said al-Ithawi frequently sheltered foreign militants who came to Iraq to attack Shiite civilians and U.S. and Iraqi forces.The U.S. military identified a kidnapped soldier for the first time on Thursday, saying the abducted Iraqi-American was 41-year-old Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell also said that the reserve soldier was visiting his Iraqi wife when he was handcuffed and taken away by gunmen during a visit to the woman's family. The soldier's name had been widely known after a woman claiming to be his mother-in-law told the story of the interpreter's secret marriage three months ago and his abduction on Oct. 23. Caldwell said the United States believed the soldier was still in the custody of his abductors.Scattered bombings and shootings in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq on Thursday killed at least ten people and injured 42, police said. The bodies of two men who had been bound and blindfolded before being shot execution style were found dumped in an eastern suburb of the capital. In an apparent revenge killing, gunmen ambushed and killed Jassim al-Asadi, the Shiite dean of Baghdad University's school of administration and economics, along with his wife and son. The shooting followed the murder on Monday of prominent Sunni geologist Essam al-Rawi, and closely followed the pattern of tit-for-tat sectarian killings that have raged through much of Iraq following attacks on Shiite holy sites in February. Iraq's Interior Ministry said at least 119 Iraqi officers were killed last month. The figures for October deaths came after the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said more than 300 Iraqi police and soldiers died during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which included the first three weeks of October. The official also said 185 police were reported injured — pointing to a low survival rate among members of the force, who lack the armored vehicles, body armor, and fortified bases of U.S. troops operating in the country. In contrast, a much higher percentage of U.S. soldiers have survived their injuries.