Admiral William Fallon vs General Petraeus

[Highway61]

Please everyone today....call or email Senator Carl Levin and ask him to bring in and question Admiral William Fallon UNDER OATH (which Petraeus was not.) The discrepancies between the two are HUGE. If handled properly the funding bill won't have a leg to stand on and will blow this whole thing out of the water.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that",

In sharp contrast to Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

The CENTCOM commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region. "He is very focused on Pakistan," said a source familiar with Fallon's thinking, "and trying to maintain a difficult status quo with Iran."

The conflict between Fallon and Petraeus over Iraq came to a head in early September. According to the Post story, Fallon expressed views on Iraq that were sharply at odds with those of Petraeus in a three-way conversation with Bush on Iraq the previous weekend. Petraeus argued for keeping as many troops in Iraq for as long as possible to cement any security progress, but Fallon argued that a strategic withdrawal from Iraq was necessary to have sufficient forces to deal with other potential threats in the region.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39235

[panader0]

1. I agree. With a quote like that, the "Betrayus" line is little

"Ass kissing little chicken shit." C'mon Moveon, run a full page with that quote. Please.

[polichick]

7. I love it!

Let's put these two in front of a camera and let them fight it out.

[mod mom]

2. H20 Man reported that cheney is going to speak at Fallon's home turf:

(Fallon is the Commander for US Central Command)


from H20 Man:


The vice president is preparing tol fly to Grand Rapids this morning, to make a war speech at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, and then on to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, home to the U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command, to address the military there.

"Cheney, who has asserted that he is not really part of the executive branch of government for purposes of reporting on how much material his office classifies and declassifies each year, is very much part of the president's war-team. In fact, he is the sole significant survivor of an administration that has lost most of the key players that it started with in 2001.

"But this is a relatively rare, official, outing for the vice president."

Cheney, and Bush, hit the road for war strategy
by Mark Silva
Baltimore Sun; September 14, 2007



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1806618&mesg_id=1806618

WONDER IF FALLON WILL BE THERE TO GREET cHENEY?

[Highway61]

3. I seriously doubt it

Remains to be seen....If he does.. .here comes some blackmail. This administration is like a bad episode of the Sopranos

[mod mom]

4. Threats were on my mind. they are more effective when personally delivered by sneering

cheney. We'll have to watch if Fallon will roll over and change his tune after darth's visit. I hope not.

[hisownpetard]

9. Except, there were no bad episodes of the Sopranos, IMHO.

[AtomicKitten]

5. Fallon may turn out to be the truth-teller --

that will knock the Petraeus' "report" down

[mod mom]

6. God -I hope so!

Admiral Fallon your country needs you to do your duty to uphold the constitution and do the right thing.

:patriot:

[beachmom]

8. I don't think we should get our hopes up too high.

I just heard Sen. Kerry on Ed Schultz and he just said that there were questions out of Petraeus's scope, and it certainly made sense to bring in Fallon to testify. I don't know if Kerry was keeping his cards to himself, but I simply didn't hear ANY expectation from him that Fallon was going to say anything earth shattering. Still, he agreed that Fallon needs to come to Capitol Hill to testify.

[Igel]

10. Of course they're at odds.

Petraeus is at odds with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, too. They have different job descriptions, goals, and motives.

Fallon has to keep CentCom ready for anything in his arena. That's partly Iraq, but also Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, etc., etc. Anything that reduces his flexibility in those areas, that overrides his planning and his ability to meet possible or probable threats is bad, he would say. He wants to do *his* job. His job is not Iraq.

The Joint Chiefs are responsible for keeping the armed forces in shape. They're the man whose boat is to be kept in tip-top shape, polished, the wood oiled, the deck clean, no marks or barnacles on the boat's hull. Put it in the water ... bad. But they're to maintain it for just that purpose, even while wanting such purposes never to come along because it degrades the quality of what they're obliged to maintain.

Petraeus doesn't answer to the Joint Chiefs or to Fallon. He answers to the Sec. of Defense. He's in charge of Iraq. Period. But he's within CentCom's structure. His job is to make the effort in Iraq go right. Issues of troop preparedness are outside his job description. Afghanistan isn't his problem. If he requisitions troops that CentCom thinks will be needed elsewhere, CentCom can be overriden by the Sec. of Defense. If he degrades combat readiness, the Joint Chiefs can get their nose bent out of shape, but they can be overriden.

Fallon's been trampled in all of this. As far as Iraq is concerned, here's a ranking officer working as a glorified supply clerk for a lower-ranked officer and that officer's mission, giving out valuable resources that he believes he may well need for his own mission. And if he needs them and he's given them away, success in his mission will be harder. This has got to be humiliating for a proud man. It's all the worse if he thinks that the mission the supplies are going for is misguided.

[CGowen]

11. Fallon had a "visceral distaste" for what he regarded as Petraeus's sycophantic behaviour in general

nt