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When the SouthCom commander-in-chief position opened with General Barry McCaffrey retiring from the Army in early 1996 to become the Drug Czar appointed by President Clinton, Cisneros was later quoted in the media as recalling having heard that then Lieutenant General Wesley Clark (then the Director of J-5 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was seeking to win the four-star billet as head of the U.S. Southern Command — after the Army had nominated Cisneros for the post  [Mark Thompson, Time magazine, September 22, 2003, Brass Ambition: Wesley Clark climbed fast up the ranks of the Pentagon — charming some, alienating others. How good a general was he?]  Thompson noted that Cisneros would have seemed the ideal candidate: a Spanish speaker who had taken Manuel Noriega into custody in 1990 when the Panamanian leader surrendered to U.S. troops.  Clark, in contrast, speaks Russian and had never held a Latin American post.  (Washington Post staff writer Lois Romano noted, on October 19, 2003, in her article, For General, Salutes or Hoots;  Few Gray Areas About Clark, Whose Intellect and Drive Are Givens, that the Army hierarchy did not officially recommend Clark for the Southern Command post in 1996 nor later as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, overseeing NATO forces.  The recommendations came over the Army's objections from General John M. Shalikashvili, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from senior Pentagon civilians, reported Romano.)  

General Shalikashvili was a friend of Clark and Clark had first met Bill Clinton in November 1965 at Georgetown University when, as a West Point cadet, Clark attended a conference on international affairs, as noted by a Boston Globe article.  Clinton was a student there and the Class President (both were from Arkansas and were later to be Rhodes scholars).  They reconnected in 1993, helped by a mutual friend, a Little Rock native who had known both for years.  Soon thereafter, Clark was offered the post of Director of J-5 on the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (replacing General Barry McCaffrey who had been appointed  Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Command in February 1994) by Shalikashvili and backed by President Clinton.  When that position opened up in early 1996 (with McCaffrey's assuming the position of Drug Czar), the Army had already interviewed its candidate for the post, Lieutenant General Marc Cisneros, who had led the successful US invasion of Panama seven years earlier. Army officials told Cisneros that the job was probably his, but that it had to be cleared by the White House.  Instead, Shalikashvili intervened on behalf of Clark, with Clinton's support.  [Comments by Michael Kranish, An Arkansas alliance, and high-ranking foes, Fifth in a series of profiles of leading candidates in the 2004 presidential race, Boston Globe, November 17, 2003]

The Time article went on to quote a colleague of  Clark, "It doesn't mean a lot to be a Rhodes scholar in the Army, but it helps your career when the President is one."  In fact, after Clark had run the Southern Command for only 12 months, Clinton nominated him to be NATO commander. That too raised Pentagon eyebrows, given that Clark had no significant command experience in that theater either, noted Thompson.  

"When I was told by the Army that he was maneuvering to politically usurp my nomination, I visited with Clark," Cisneros said to Time's Mark Thompson.  "I said, 'I hear you're competing for the Southcom position also' -- but he denied it.  He told me, 'You're the nominee, and you're the one who's going to be selected, and I'm not trying to get that job.' " But within weeks, Clinton had nominated Clark.  "I could have taken a 'Yes, I'm applying for the job,'" Cisneros says. "But when I confronted him, he was dishonest to me."  While Clark declined to respond directly to Cisneros, he told Time, "People are entitled to their own opinions. The Army and the armed forces are very competitive institutions."  [Thompson in the same Time article.]  

Clinton declined requests for comment. Clark, referring briefly to the promotion in his book (Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat) without mentioning Cisneros's name, wrote without explanation: "It seemed that the Army's pick for the job hadn't been acceptable for some reason."  Clark said through a spokesman that he had been told he was not in the running for the job and therefore did not lie to Cisneros. [Michael Kranish, An Arkansas alliance, and high-ranking foes, Boston Globe, November 17, 2003]

Cisneros retired from the Army in August 1996 in a ceremony at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas, after completion of more than 35 years of service.  

After just one year at the SouthCom helm, Clark was appointed by President Clinton in mid-1997 as  Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and top NATO commander.

[WHO's note:  I had heard and read rumors in early 1996 from up north that Cisneros was being considered for the SouthCom post.  While I thought he would be an excellent choice, I felt the State Department would probably not be in agreement, what with the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD, formerly the political arm of the Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega military regimes) were back in power in 1994 for the first time since democracy was returned to Panama following the U.S. invasion of December 20, 1989 -- with Ernesto Perez Balladares as President of Panama and the PRD having made a strong comeback in the National Legislature -- all resulting from the May 1994 elections.  In retrospect, had Cisneros gotten the job, the dynamics, in my thinking, would have been most interesting.]  

His assignments since leaving SouthCom in Miami were Assistant Division Commander (Support) of the 1st Infantry Division, U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, Germany; Commander of NATO’s Multinational Brigade Force, Kosovo November 1999 – May 2000; Commanding General of V Corps' 1^st Armored Division 2001 - 2003; and Commanding General of V Corps in Germany June 2003 - August 2006.  Concurrently with the last assignment, he was Commanding General of all the coalition ground forces in Iraq (Coalition Joint Task Force 7 (CJTF-7) June 2003 - June 2004.  Sanchez held the top military position in Iraq during what was arguably one of the most critical periods of the war--the year after the fall of the Hussein regime, and the time the insurgency took root and began its counterattack -- and also a time of major controversies.  Highlights during his tenure as commander in Iraq include the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein and the capture of Saddam Hussein. 

Until revelations of prisoner abuse became public in the spring of 2004, Sanchez was considered a strong candidate for a fourth star and appointment as the commander in chief of U.S. Southern Command. [Jim Tice, Army Times, September 8, 2006]

Although Sanchez had been exonerated in 2005 in official investigations (which included other officers and enlisted service members) and  by the Army and the Department of Defense of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the controversy over interrogation techniques both which occurred during his command, his nomination for a fourth star and command of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami was quietly withdrawn in 2004 when it became apparent that hearings on Capitol Hill on his promotion would dissolve into a firestorm over Pentagon and White House interrogation policies and would sink his confirmation, according to news media reporting.  (Tice in the September 8, 2006, Army Times article reported the Bush administration never moved forward with the nomination because officials felt it would have ignited a nasty confirmation battle in the Senate, according to Pentagon sources.)

"That’s [Abu Ghraib] the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire," Sanchez told The Monitor newspaper.  "I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command."  [Travis M. Whitehead, Gen. Sanchez, former top U.S. commander in Iraq, steps down after 33 years in the military, McAllen, Texas, Monitor, November 2, 2006]  To another reporter about the same time, he said, "The reason I'm retiring is that any nomination for Rick Sanchez was not in the best interest of the Department of Defense or the United States government. And that's as stated to me by the chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers) and the secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld]."  [Sig Christenson, Valley general stays a soldier to the end, Express-News, November 1, 2006]  

Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey was more blunt in his assessment.  As reported in the same Express-News article, McCaffrey blamed Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer, chief administrator of Iraq in the occupation's first year -- both whom he considered as the chief culprits in the failure to stabilize Iraq -- for troubles that came Sanchez's way.  Noting that critical intelligence, military police, civil affairs and engineering assets were removed from Iraq, McCaffrey said he [Sanchez] faced an "atrocious" situation and was set up to fail . . .  "We don't produce a better soldier of honor," McCaffrey said, "somebody who takes care of his own troops and is an aggressive war fighter."  Sanchez had made a deep impression on McCaffrey, who rated his battalion the best of 26 under his command during Gulf War I, noted Christenson. [In the same Express-News article]  Sanchez later served again under McCaffrey in 1994-1996 as deputy chief of staff and a colonel at SouthCom in Panama (followed by his promotion to brigadier general with new job at director of SouthCom's J-3/Operations Directorate).  [WHO's note] 

So, instead, Army General Bantz Craddock (then senior military advisor to then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) was appointed Commander of Southern Command in 2004.  (Two years later, he was appointed Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and top NATO commander.)

Sanchez relinquished command of V Corps in a ceremony in Germany early September 2006 and retired from the Army in a ceremony presided by U.S. Central Command Commander  General John Abizaid, at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas, November 1, 2006.   In his remarks at the ceremony, General Abaizaid offered high praise for Sanchez, calling him a man of integrity and duty.  "I've never stood by a better soldier in tougher times," he told the crowd.

(For former assignments, GO TO)

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UPDATE ON RETIRED LIEUTENANT GENERAL SANCHEZ (October 13, 2007):

"Former Iraq Commander Faults Bush:  'No End in Sight,' Says Retired General Sanchez,"  by Josh White, Washington Post, October 13, 2007 -- Sanchez accused the Bush administration of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight" ... "There has been a glaring unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders." So said  Sanchez in his speech October 11, 2007, to the Military Reporters and Editors' annual conference in Crystal City, Arlington Country, Virginia.  Sanchez also blasted war policies over the past four years, which he said had stripped senior military officers of responsibility and thus thrust the armed services into an "intractable position" in Iraq. (Complete article at  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202459.html?hpid=topnews )