I put Middle Earth Journal in hiatus in May of 2008 and moved to Newshoggers.
I temporarily reopened Middle Earth Journal when Newshoggers shut it's doors but I was invited to Participate at The Moderate Voice so Middle Earth Journal is once again in hiatus.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Does Admiral Fallon have to go?

Now we all know that George W. Bush wants to do whatever his bat shit crazy Vice President, Dick Cheney, wants to do and we all know that Dick Cheney and the rest of the lunatics want to attack Iran. According to Thomas P.M. Barnett there is someone standing in their way, the head of U. S. Central Command, Admiral William "Fox" Fallon.
The Man Between War and Peace
So while Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler (a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to Fallon--and apparently Fallon 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. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."

What America needs, Fallon says, is a "combination of strength and willingness to engage."

Those are fighting words to your average neocon--not to mention your average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to "nuclear holocaust."

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.
Yes, the last thing on earth the Bush/Cheney cabal, the neocons and the AIPAC crowd wants is a sane man in their asylum.

Go read the entire article and Tom Ricks' half hearted rebuttal.