Fallon Resigns As Mideast Military Chief

The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East resigned Tuesday amid speculation about a rift over U.S. policy in Iran.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Adm. William J. Fallon had asked for permission to retire and that Gates agreed. Gates said the decision, effective March 31, was entirely Fallon’s and that Gates believed it was “the right thing to do.”

Let’s see…the Chief IMHO is strongly inclined to urge ADM Fallon not to let the doorknob hit him in the butt on the way out.

This is the same ADM Fallon, who as CINCPAC was incessantly engaged in a game of footsie with the ChiComs, to the extent of inviting them aboard to observe, up close and personal, how we prepped and trained for war in the Pacific. Of course there’s no one in the Pacific with any possible inclination to fight the US except those same ChiComs’ PLAN (Peples’ Liberation Army Navy – Hey! That’s what they call it…maybe it loses something in translation.).

Apparently he has had a pattern of undercutting the Iraq “surge”, and General Petraeus, in a not very well concealed effort to channel the administrations policies.

Good riddance. The Fleet, and the nation will be better without Fallon’s sort of accommodationist and contrarian policy games.