House Armed Svc. Chair: Prison Probe Endangering GI Lives

The decision by Congress to keep summoning U.S. military commanders back to Washington to testify about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is endangering the lives of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq, the head of the House Armed Services Committee said on Thursday.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have had 66 attacks on American forces," House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told MSNBC's "Scarborough Country."

"If you‘re the battlefield commander of Iraq [called back to Washington] you have issues stacking up on your desk with respect to convoy security, surveillance capability, operations, working in this IED problem that we have got, working the force protection problems," said Hunter.

"Some of those issues are life-and-death matters," he added pointedly.

Rep. Hunter named Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as one U.S. commander who's been summoned to Washington to testify, saying there nothing Sanchez "can add or detract from the court-martials that are taking place" over abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Along with Gen. Sanchez, the Senate forced Centcom Commander Gen. John Abizaid and Iraq prisons chief Major General Geoffrey Miller to leave the Iraq theater on Thursday to answer questions about the scandal.

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