Word: fallon
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...Gates told reporters in a hastily called briefing that a public "misperception" of a gap between Fallon and the Administration on Iran policy couldn't be erased, and that its "cumulative" impact had become a "distraction" that prompted Fallon to offer his resignation on Tuesday morning. "That's why I believe he has made the right choice," Gates said. The Secretary said he couldn't explain the persistence of this "misperception," or why it couldn't be eliminated. "We have tried to put this misperception behind us over a period of months and, frankly, just have not been successful...
...Pentagon officials were upset that Fallon had allowed the Esquire writer Barnett - who said Bush "regularly trash-talks his way to World War III" - travel with him to Afghanistan and Egypt, granted him several interviews, and posed for a photograph that accompanied the article. "There was a pattern of behavior by Fallon," a senior Pentagon official said. "He seemed to be saying things that were out of step with the Administration. Gates never found Fallon to be straying, but certainly publicly he seemed to be straying." Fallon plainly knew the explosive potential of the magazine article; he called Gates last...
...Fallon isn't the first four-star officer to lose his job for verbal missteps. General Michael Duggan was fired as Air Force chief of staff by then-defense secretary Dick Cheney in 1990 for telling reporters traveling with him about Air Force attack options to help drive Iraq out of Kuwait following Saddam Hussein's invasion of that country earlier that year. In 1995, Admiral Richard Macke, then the head of Pacific Command, was ousted after telling reporters over breakfast that sailors and Marines who beat and raped a 12-year-old Japanese girl should have hired a prostitute...
...Within hours of Fallon's announcement that he would be leaving his post at the end of the month (to be replaced, at least temporarily, by his deputy, Army Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey), Democrats were criticizing what they perceived as his forced departure. "It is no secret that I do not see eye to eye with the Administration on most foreign policy issues, and the credibility which Admiral Fallon brought to the issues he was involved in will be sorely missed," said Senator Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat and member of the Foreign Relations Committee. "A military axiom...
...betting inside the Pentagon is that despite Fallon's departure, war with Iran is no more likely next month than it was last month. The U.S. military, its hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan, could only engage in an air war against Iran's nuclear sites. The ramifications of attacking a third Muslim nation since 9/11 are so extreme, military officers believe, that no President would launch such a war in his final months in office...