Adm. Fallon resigns as CENTCOM Commander

With the opening of Iran’s new non-dollar oil bourse and now the departure of Fallon, it looks like a good bet that the NeoCon Globalists and their enablers in Congress will begin to ramp up the next big adventure into Iran (not that covert operations haven’t already paved the way there).

Bye, bye, America. Hello New World Order.

Nancy, is it time yet to put impeachment back on the table? Or are you going to waffle until after the bombs drop on Tehran? I’m thinking if that comes to pass, that when the war crimes tribunals begin, you and good ole Harry will be right there on the docket with W, Cheney et al.

And if you think America’s power and standing in the world community will sheild our leaders this time around, methinks you are sadly mstaken. Our economy is busted, the dollar has almost burned, the market will crash much further. We won’t have the economic might to stop someone from really pursuing Bush in the International Courts.

Ugh, I just read that Atlantic piece this weekend.

Fallon seemed like a smart and capable professional. No wonder these incompetent assclowns felt the need to show him the door.

Everyone who thinks Bush isn’t crazy enough to attack Iran, and dump the mess in the laps of the Democrats who are almost sure to win in November, or at the very least use an escalation to boost McCain’s prospects, please raise your hand.

Anyone?

Here’s what’s going to happen:

Fallon resigns
Cheney goes to the Middle East to arrange with his pals the Saudis for another terrorist attack on American soil, providing the excuse for
The ultimatum given to Iran: hand over the terrorists and halt your nuclear program or we’ll bomb you back to the Stone Age
The Iranians refuse
Cheney bombs Iran back to the Stone Age
McCain is elected because we need a Commander in Chief, not an effete liberal wimp or (horrors) a woman
No wonder McCain was singing “Bomb, bomb Iran.” He knows the fix is in.

David Kurtz, at TPM:

Like other professional classes — lawyers and scientists come immediately to mind — the military officer corps is seen by the White House as a threat to its own Executive Branch hegemony.

That’s the key to understanding today’s resignation by Adm. William Fallon, the commander in chief of Central Command.

The resignation of a CINC is a big deal, under almost any circumstance. But considering the Bush Administration’s seven-year effort to put the Pentagon under its thumb, the resignation of a commander like Fallon, who by most accounts was willing to exercise his independent military judgment, is another setback for the professional officer corps as an institution.

Make no mistake. None of the Bush Administration’s efforts in this regard has been about re-asserting civilian control over the military in some constitutional sense. The effort has been focused on degrading the autonomy, independence, and institutional authority of the Pentagon in order to further the narrow ideological and partisan aims of this particular White House.

Fallon was considered by many to be the one man standing between Dick Cheney and bombing Iran. So in the short term, Fallon’s resignation raises concerns about our future policy towards Iran (and as Spencer Ackerman notes, those concerns are likely to be greatest in Iran itself). So much for the return to mainstream foreign policy that was going to be led by Bob Gates and Condi Rice.

In the long-term, Fallon’s resignation — in some ways forced, perhaps in other ways dictated by circumstance — does much of the same damage to the Pentagon as has already been done to the Justice Department and the supposedly independent regulatory agencies. Defense Secretary Gates was supposed to be a bulwark against the White House’s ongoing efforts to erode the Pentagon. But Fallon was apparently too independent. The White House wanted someone, as Esquire said, more pliable. Another Tommy Franks. And we all remember where that led.

–David Kurtz

Keep in mind that the literal truth is that modern neoconservative Republicanism is a verifiable mental disease and all things become clear. They will stick to their agenda (or at least try to) regardless of who dies (as long as it’s not them) as long as they remain alive on this earth.

We are in deep kimchi, folks. Keeping a close eye on who gets appointed to Fallon’s spot is the only to know how much.

And gues who was a no show.and did not vote on the measure at all?

Fallon has since denied reports that he told Petraeus in March that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickensh*t”.

The damage Bushcheney have caused to our career military officer cadre will last a generation. This is on top of the way they have destroyed 1/3 of our best and brightest servicemen who will return with crippling mental or physical disabilities.

Feel safer now? If there is a hell, these guys deserve the waterboard suite.

A sad, but I have to agree necessary, move.

Why necessary? Simple. We really, despite the Current Occupant, cannot to afford to have our military leaders publicly disagreeing with their civilian leaders and remaining in power– it would lead to the ultimate downfall of our system of government. Movements down that road tend to lead to military coups (not that I haven’t advocated for that event to happen for the last few years…), which aren’t exactly Democracy.

Admiral Fallon’s decision to retire, especially in light of the intemperate display of his rejection of policy (damn, I wish that reporter had had somewhat of a conscience, and an understanding of what he was exposing), was the correct move, and the only possible move under the circumstances.

If anything, this should be a cautionary tale for the press– is it always so good to get that ‘scoop’ that you have to destroy the very people whom you want to protect? Admiral Fallon could have continued his more-or-less pacifict and correct tendencies towards the Iranians for the rest of dubya’s tenure without any significant impact. Instead, the press just allowed the opening for the Current Occupant to attempt one last try at all-out war.

Thanks.

Impartial @17, while Obama was not present to vote on Kyl-Lieberman because Harry Reid rescheduled the vote to happen just after he left town, he (Obama) did release a statement on the day of the vote that he opposed the measure (and his vote would not have been decisive). I wish you and Mary would stop trying to make an issue of this.

Clinton affirmatively supported more Bush-Cheney warmongering, Obama opposed it, and Harry Reid was more culpable for the vote happening in a way that Obama was not present.

Well, I guess now we know why Cheney is going on tour, to let everybody know the hit is going down. We can all get ready for $5 a gallon gas and a gen-u-wine De-Prezzion. George is gonna do the legacy thang after all.

As to Mary and I doing whatever, I was merely responding to the post above commenting on the “only Democratic” candidate to vote yea on the measure so try to be a little more unbiased in your viewpoint.

Um, your “response” doesn’t change the fact that the original statement was correct .. Sen. Clinton is, in fact, the only Democratic candidate to vote Yea on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment.

Strategically placed moves like this one, the naming of Gen. Shinsecki’s replacement 14 months early to undercut him, and the firing of Army Secretary Paul White share the similar characteristic that they are meant as shots across the bow to the entire uniformed military, if you cross us, your career is over. They do tremendous damage to the ability of Congress or the people to get straight analysis from people in uniform. I just hope there are jobs for all of them in the next administration, perhaps they can help undo some of the damage caused these past 7 years.

short fuse

see #28

Castor Troy;
How interesting that you want to ban one of the few who posted in opposition to the crowd. I mean demanding impeachment and calling the President names is not inflammatory rhetoric in the least. And of course all here are backing up their assertions with fact. Sure they are….
Any way, while I do not see the Admiral as wanting in martial virtue like SteveL I can understand the Admiral’s dilemma. I recommend that all you Parana out there wait and see what he has to say after his retirement. You may be surprised (dismayed?) to find out that he resigned just so the Iranians had no misconceptions about America’s policy. Then again he may have had an honest disagreement with President Bush (Like Truman and MacArthur for just one example). Ether way we will have to wait and see

America does not have 575,000 infantry soldiers and marines stationed at military bases around the world. You might well be speaking of the entire international strength of the US Army, but a large proportion of those are cooks, supply technicians, electronics techs and aviation mechanics, pilots and aircrew and so on. If the U.S. had thousands of ground troops to call on, the stop-loss program preventing soldiers who have finished their contracts from leaving when their service is complete would not have been necessary. Three and four tours of combat duty virtually back-to-back would likewise not be necessary. I don’t doubt there are more soldiers available, but you must keep an uncommitted reserve, and you have to have a couple of battalions available to replace active duty troops rotating out of theater.

Virtually the entire available fighting strength of deployable forces is deployed already, and it isn’t enough to wrestle Iraq to the ground. Iran is both larger and more populous. Besides, if forces were not needed in other countries to guard U.S. interests abroad, they wouldn’t be there. If you strip them out to send them to Iran, who’s going to protect your bases?

I say you can’t do it, but there’s no reason for you to listen to me. America is nothing if not stubborn, and if you feel you must, knock yourself out.

I second Mark’s reply to JKap @20. The size of our armed forces is misleading because of how many of them absolutely need to be in support roles for all the ghee-whiz gadgetry to function. Eg, the Apache and its obscene requirement for maintenance between uses.

That’s how Shishenski got into trouble, by talking about how many troops would really be needed to invade and occupy a decent sized nation. Basically everyone enlisted in either the Navy or the Air Force is useless for the task of invading Iran. Moreover, “we” can’t remove the troops from all those bases around the world…or we won’t. A whole bunch of them are sitting in Asia running amok in places like Okinawa and Itaewon. (side note: if you ever find yourself in S. Korea and someone says, “go to Itaewon”, don’t listen)

The grand strategy in Iraq was to role up those dollar dumpers fast, and send a message to the Iranians. It failed, and as a result, emboldened the Iranians. We are now (regardless of our budget and our archipelago of bases) in a far worse strategic position than we were in 2002. No one is afraid of us any longer, and what force projection we had is tied up and tied down. If your quest is world domination, we already made the fundamental mistake.

It’s scary because it now leaves the tactical nukes as the only realistic option…and time may well be running out for the princes of darkness to make their final moves.

@Mark #35
Virtually the entire available fighting strength of deployable forces is deployed already, and it isn’t enough to wrestle Iraq to the ground.

Well, I’d like to see you support that assertion.

In one sense, I stand corrected. The United States has currently deployed at least 575,000 soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors and other personnel in 700+ military bases in 130+ countries around the Global American Empire. So, you’re right in the sense that we may not have half a million grunts and jarheads waiting around to take back Normandy if necessary. But the argument is clouded because we are largely forced to rely upon the Department of Defense for those numbers–and I think that it’s fair to say that historically the Pentagon isn’t exactly a model of transparency and accuracy. So the actual numbers are likely much higher than I have expressed here.

Since it is rather difficult to ascertain exact figures for the American Empire from official sources such as the Department of Defense, and because it is so rarely the subject of the quote-mainstream media or public “educational” indoctrination, I turn to Chalmers Johnson, a U.S. Armed Forces veteran, author, and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego and president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute, in 2004:

America’s Empire of Bases

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize — or do not want to recognize — that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire — an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can’t begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage — Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.

Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.

At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases

It’s not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department’s annual “Base Structure Report” for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases — surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries — and an estimated $591.5 billion to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo — even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

[…]

But you still believe that the globalists/imperialists promoting our military empire would not shuffle the deck, so to speak, so that they could advance their mercantilistic notions into Iran? I think that’s perfectly naive.

Besides, if forces were not needed in other countries to guard U.S. interests abroad, they wouldn’t be there.–Mark

I can tell that you’ve been doing a little Bush/Cheney-style military strategizing, so allow me to respond.

To put it bluntly, the undeclared, unconstitutional “war” in Iraq is intentionally-engineered chaos that, along with the Orwellian “Global War On Terror” and the perpetual “War On Drugs,” perpetuates the police state/warstate at home and the eventual demise of our Constitutional Republic.

A “war” is not “won” by preemptively invading and indefinitely occupying sovereign nations as was done in Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon to be Iran (not to mention the indefinite military occupation of Japan, the Vietnam “war” and numerous other military “conflicts” and Imperial American adventurism around the globe). However, this is how a military empire is developed and perpetuated. We have 100,000 military personnel in Japan and South Korea today. How exactly does that serve “U.S. interests”? How exactly does that fit within the framework of the Constitution?

Your assertion that the American Empire is somehow completely necessary in all its incarnations around this planet is unsupported and unfounded. In fact, the American Empire is the cause of much blowback in the form of terrorism. They don’t “hate our freedoms” as the trained chimp might say, they hate our empire.

How would you feel about the Chinese Army occupying Iowa or San Francisco? Would you fight it at all or would you just figure that that’s the way it’s supposed to be? As for me, I would fight it. Would I be wrong to oppose with force a Chinese invasion and occupation? Why do we show so little empathy for people in foreign lands (130+ countries) that our military forces occupy?

Lastly, I’d like to talk about real “U.S. interests,” not made-up bullshit.

Indeed, how are U.S. interests served through American Imperialism? Are U.S. interests served by promoting a generational burden upon our grandchildren’s grandchildren to somehow reconcile a $500+ Billion military budget in 2007 alone (and soon to be $1 Trillion for 2008)? To the contrary, I think that our military empire is largely not serving the interests of our country, and, like most empires have historically ended, will end badly for Americans–and we are ultimately paying the cost with our liberty and our prosperity.

But vote Obama, Clinton or McCain. They certainly have the bona fides to maintain this global empire that is ingrained into the American Psyche as an aphoristic virtue as you have demonstrated.

This is analysis? Puh-lease. Isn’t it a good idea to let Iran guess whether the U.S. would attack them or not? Why would a theater commander indicate otherwise and in public? That’s just dumb, and not helpful to foreign policy.

And as far as a draw down of troops, I think letting Petraeus, Odierno, and Crocker handle things was probably a better idea.

The U.S. military has had enough Gen. McClellans in positions of supreme command. We didn’t need another one. How much anybody wanna guess that Fallon, like McClellan, tries to run for some office as a Democrat?
–SteveIL

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