Remember the screeching the Democrat Party let loose when the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq surfaced? Remember how that was a devastating scandal which all but invalidated America’s mission in Iraq? Remember how we were the bad guys in Iraq as a consequence of a few clowns taking S&M pictures of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists in their care?

Apparently, Democrats in Texas don’t. Because, as Pajamas Media reports, the word is that former Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was found derelict in his duty as the highest-ranking official implicated in Abu Ghraib, might be their candidate for the Senate seat coming open next year.

Retired Gen. Ricardo Sanchez looks set to join the campaign for the Texas Senate seat being vacated by KBH, as a “progressive on social issues, fiscally conservative” Democrat. The fact that he’s running as a Democrat alone weakens his candidacy, in a state where Democrats haven’t won anything statewide in a very long time. But Sanchez in particular may turn out to be among the most problematic candidates the Democrats can field. They’re hailing him today, but not too long ago Sanchez was linked with the worst scandal to come out of the US-led war in Iraq: Abu Ghraib. Sanchez was found to be derelict in his oversight duties, a dereliction that led to one of the most significant public relations defeats for the US in the entire war. He left the military in some disgrace.

Sanchez was the top general in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, which was the year after the Saddam Hussein regime toppled. That was the year things went badly downhill, and he was ultimately replaced by Gen. George Casey. Sanchez then took over command of V Corps in Germany and was going to be installed as head of Southern Command, but instead the Abu Ghraib thing buried his career and in September of 2006 he retired. At the time, he took a shot at the ACLU, calling them “…a bunch of sensationalist liars, I mean lawyers, that will distort any and all information that they get to draw attention to their positions.”

Now he says he’s a fiscal conservative and a social liberal and he’s thinking about running.

Sanchez, as Democrats go, probably isn’t all that bad a candidate. What’s hilariously funny, though, is that but for the fact he’s Hispanic he wouldn’t get the time of day by Democrats anywhere. But because the Texas GOP has put together a very strong slate of candidates for the seat, which will come open next year thanks to Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s impending retirement – including the state’s solicitor general Ted Cruz, who is also Hispanic, and who some say is the favorite on the Republican side – they’ll embrace just about anybody who fits the identity politics they think is their only hope in Texas. It’s a deeply conservative state with a large Hispanic vote, so obviously they’ve got to run somebody Hispanic.

Regardless of the fact that by running Sanchez they’re basically admitting the Abu Ghraib thing was nothing but demagoguery on their part.