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‘Fox’ Fallon Fired: And we’re f*cked…

Justin Raimundo
Antiwar.com
March 12, 2008

“If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran,” says the March Esquire, “it’ll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man.” The piece describes this top military figure as the last obstacle to the Bush administration’s persistent push for war with Iran: “It’s left to” him and him “alone … to argue that, as he told al-Jazeera last fall: ‘This constant drumbeat of conflict … is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working [for].'”

That was Adm. William “Fox” Fallon speaking, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, last of the Vietnam vets in the high command, and, yes, the very same Adm. Fallon who has just submitted his resignation as head of Central Command. What makes this particularly ominous is that, according to former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Patrick Lang, Fallon told him, upon taking over at Centcom, that war with Iran “isn’t going to happen on my watch.” Lang asked him how he thought he could stop it: “‘I have options, you know,’ Fallon responded, which Lang interpreted as implying Fallon would step down rather than follow orders he considers mistaken.”

Do I really need to draw you a picture to get you to imagine what’s coming next? This is as clear a signal as any that the Bush administration intends to go out with a bang – one that will shake not only the Middle East but this country to its very foundations.

In a statement, Fallon hinted at the reason for his resignation:

“Recent press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president’s policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts in the Centcom region. And although I don’t believe there have ever been any differences about the objectives of our policy in the Central Command Area of Responsibility, the simple perception that there is makes it difficult for me to effectively serve America’s interests there.”

What “efforts” is he hampering but the effort to drag us into another war?

Fallon has long been a thorn in the administration’s side: while in Egypt, on a tour of his Centcom command, he assured President Hosni Mubarak that there would be no attack on Iran, which leaked to the Egyptian media. Washington was livid. “I’m in hot water, again,” he confided to Thomas P.M. Barnett, the Esquire journalist who accompanied him on his trip.

He’s been in hot water with administration hawks – including the president, wildest hawk of them all – before. Last fall, he was quoted by Pentagon insiders as calling Gen. David Petraeus an “ass-kissing little chickensh*t” for telling the president what he wanted to hear on Iraq and the “surge.” Long an advocate of engagement with China as well as Iran, Fallon has been relentlessly attacked by the neocons as “soft and accommodating.” After Fallon began reaching out to the Chinese, the response was delayed but vehement – and telling – when it came:

“It was only after the Pentagon and Congress started realizing that their favorite ‘programs of record’ (i.e., weapons systems and major vehicle platforms) were threatened by such talks that the sh*t hit the fan. ‘I blew my stack,’ Fallon says. ‘I told Rumsfeld, Just look at this sh*t. I go up to the Hill and I get three or four guys grabbing me and jerking me out of the aisle, all because somebody came up and told them that the sky was going to cave in.'”

The military-industrial-neocon complex, as it were, has been working overtime to get him out of the way of their war plans, and this week they finally succeeded. Not that Fallon is all that surprised, I’ll bet. Speaking freely to Barnett, he telegraphed his resignation:

“Sitting in his Tampa headquarters office last fall, I asked Fallon if he considered the Centcom assignment to be the same career-capping job that it’d been for his predecessors. He just laughed and said, ‘Career capping? How about career detonating?'”

It’s a detonation that will reverberate throughout the Middle East, prefiguring the mega-explosion to come. One can hardly imagine a clearer indication that the White House has made the decision to go to war with Iran . It’s just a matter of when and how the administration can provoke an incident.

That’s why U.S. warships are patrolling the Lebanese coast; and why our warships are playing hide-and-go-seek with Iranian gunboats in the Gulf. It’s the reason the Israel lobby has been beating the tom-toms for war, and the reason the anti-Fallon, Petraeus, has been so vocal about the Iranian roots of our Iraqi problem. With Fallon out of the way, the road to war – a regional conflagration that will make the invasion of Iraq seem like a holiday picnic – is cleared. Get ready for World War III.

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US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack

Times Online
February 27, 2007

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.

“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” a source with close ties to British intelligence said. “There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.”

A British defence source confirmed that there were deep misgivings inside the Pentagon about a military strike. “All the generals are perfectly clear that they don’t have the military capacity to take Iran on in any meaningful fashion. Nobody wants to do it and it would be a matter of conscience for them.

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Podhoretz: Bush will “do it” before he leaves office

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bLq6pzOc5w