san antonio, Texas • The man who led coalition forces in Iraq during the first year of the occupation says the United States can forget about winning the war.

“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will — not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said in an interview.

Sanchez, in his first interview since he retired last year, is the highest-ranking former military leader yet to suggest the Bush administration fell short in Iraq. “I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time,” Sanchez said after a recent speech in San Antonio, Texas.

“We’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years, better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done,” adding that he was “referring to our national political leadership in its entirety” — not just President George W Bush.

Sanchez called the situation in Iraq bleak and blamed it on “the abysmal performance in the early stages and the transition of sovereignty.” He included himself among those who erred in Iraq’s crucial first year after Saddam. Sanchez took command in the summer of 2003 and oversaw the occupation force amid an insurgency that has sparked a low-grade civil war in Iraq.

The general was speaking out amid a bitter debate in the United States over the future of their military commitment in Iraq, where more than 140,000 GIs are battling to quell sectarian violence and defeat a violent insurgency. Their current commander, General David Petraeus, hopes this year’s so-called surge in US troop numbers will eventually tamp down the violence enough to allow Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki to kick-start a political peace process.

14 more US soldiers killed

US command reported a total of 14 more soldiers killed in action in Iraq in a series of bomb attacks and clashes with insurgent fighters over three days. In the most deadly single attack, four soldiers were killed in Baghdad yesterday when a makeshift bomb exploded as they were conducting an operation to seal off a neighbourhood and search it for enemy fighters. Bomb attacks elsewhere in the war-torn capital accounted for two more soldiers yesterday and two on Saturday, while similar incidents and ambushes outside Baghdad saw six more deaths. The latest fatalities brought the number of US servicemen to have died in combat and from other causes in Iraq to 3,488.