<p>College Confidential won’t let me post what the head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leading military officer of the United States and the world, has to say about General Petraeus (so you’ll have to pick it up yourself):</p>
<p><a href=“http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II14Ak02.html[/url]”>http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II14Ak02.html</a></p>
<p>Fallon is head of Centcom. He is not chairman of the Joint Chifs, nor is he the leading miliary officer of the US.</p>
<p>Beyond that, I’ll give the same response that I gave to TD who posted this earlier: This says nothing about which person is correct. The only thing this proves is that contrary to the folk “wisdom” of the left, Bush does indeed surround himself with opposing views.</p>
<p>mini- I think this was mentioned on Keith Olbermann tonite (or one of those cable shows). They said that Sen. Webb from Va. was planning to call Fallon to speak before Congress.<br>
If this article is accurate, I’m going to love to hear Fallon’s testimony to Congress.</p>
<p>Fallon and the Joint Chiefs are reportedly dead set against maintaining the massive troop strength in Iraq. </p>
<p>Bush just glosses over the ongoing destruction of the US military, not to mention the $10 billion and 90 US fatalities per month price tag.</p>
<p>"Fallon and the Joint Chiefs are reportedly dead set against maintaining the massive troop strength in Iraq. "</p>
<p>But, yet he is “very happy” with what is being proposed:</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070909/NEWS03/709090377[/url]”>http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070909/NEWS03/709090377</a></p>
<p>Had any “liberal” (of which I am not) called Petraeus what Fallon did, folks would be calling for his resignation. </p>
<p>Whether he agrees with the non-policy or not, Fallon considers him an “a-k-l-c-s.”</p>
<p>1) How do you know that Fallon is not a liberal?</p>
<p>2) Perhaps Petraeus thinks Fallon is just a jealous egomaniac who can’t stand to have an underling get all of the attention.</p>
<p>3) Perhaps both are correct in their assessments of each other’s personalities, but both are equally great military leaders.</p>
<p>4) Perhaps they are not great military leaders (and all the accolades that the Dems poured on them in their hearings were wrong).</p>
<p>Bottom line is that this exchange, if accurate, is totally irrelevant to any discussion other than to point out that Bush does indeed hear dissenting views.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I want to acknowledge that fundingfather is right: This is perhaps the first clear evidence I’ve ever seen of Bush tolerating an open disagreement among top advisors, and giving both a hearing. I think that’s a good thing.</p></li>
<li><p>It has been reported that current Chief of Staff Josh Bolton is much more open to that than his predecessors. Maybe it’s true.</p></li>
<li><p>Military commanders who did not give the advice the Bush Administration wanted to hear have not had long subsequent military careers in the past 6 years. Maybe with Rumsfeld and Rove out, and Bolton in, that’s changed now. We’ll see.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Well, clearly, it was a little odd that they sent Ambassador Ryan Crocker, instead of Admiral William Fallon to Petraeus’s event.</p>
<p>“Well, clearly, it was a little odd that they sent Ambassador Ryan Crocker, instead of Admiral William Fallon to Petraeus’s event.”</p>
<p>No, the odd thing would be to have two military views rather than one military and one state department view.</p>
<p>Or maybe Cheney is happy to let the generals squabble about Iraq while he is busy planning the mother of all air attacks on Iran.</p>
<p>FF: Well, funny, but up to this point in the war, the CENTCOM head and the Multinational Force Commander regularly testified together about the course of the war in Iraq. Why not now? Because Bush can no longer count on Fallon being an a-k-c-l-s.</p>
<p>Interesteddad: You are right on target. It’s Iran that’s in the scope. That and a permanent occupation of Iraq.</p>
<p>“Permanent occupation of Iraq?” Surely you jest. What in the world, beside 14 military bases and the world’s largest embassy/fortress, would give you that impression?</p>
<p>Why should Iran be worrisome to anyone? They’re simply working on their nuclear program to ensure their energy independence from middle eastern oil.</p>
<p>And the UN has done a mighty job of holding them in line.</p>
<p>ADM Fallon may be head of CENTCOM, but he is still GEN Petraeus’ CO. MNF-I falls under the jurisdiction of CENTCOM. So the comment is no less valid.</p>
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<p>Weenie, does the fact the you are intentionally reading nefarious things into everything that happens w/r to the Bush administration occur to you? Your presumption is that Crocker was sent to report rather than Fallon to avoid a potentially negative readout is flat out fallacious. Are you aware that Crocker co-authored a paper in 2002 advising AGAINST the war? He is yet another example contradicting the notion that Bush just surrounds himself with Yes-men/women. Crocker’s testimony was expected to be the most damning because his was the report on the political situation. To have included Fallon it would just have been another affirmation that from the military perspective there have been sign of improvement.</p>
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<p>Much more fallacious is your incessant effort to put lipstick on a pig with respect to the debacle this Administration has made in Iraq. It’s gone from a “they’ll welcome us with flowers, Mission Accomplished, slam dunk” to a drawn out, contentious effort that will have cost us $1 trillion, the lives of more than a million Iraqis, the nation of Iraq as an entity, not to mention the lives of nearly 3,800 US troops and counting. And you have never answered the question – nor has the Administration – of what the end game is and what Iraq will look like. That’s fallacious.</p>
<p>Once again, the initial reporting on this has been proven to be “scurrilous” according to Fallon:</p>
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</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/military_fallon_petraeus_070917w/[/url]”>http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/military_fallon_petraeus_070917w/</a></p>
<p>There certainly seems to be a pattern here, with both this false Fallon comment and the out-of-context Greenspan comments.</p>
<p>In both cases, there was an initial flurry of reporting in the media (and on certain web sites) presenting a very slanted point of view. The later corrections end up at the end of the threads, or somehow never make it to the “front page.” </p>
<p>Seems a little suspicious to me.</p>
<p>Not suspicious at all - it has served its purpose in the lefty blogosphere and I predict will be used by mini and his minions countless times to discredit anything that comes from Petreaus. As they say, “Mission Accomplished”.</p>