War With Iran Closer?

General William Fallon, who until this week was the most recent head of CentCom and the atrocity that is Iraq, has been referred to many times as perhaps the only person standing in the way of Bush-Cheney's nightmare folly of war with Iran.

Now Fallon has been effectively forced out.

I dunno. Scott Ritter predicted an April 2008 all-out war, us vs. Iran. Fallon's departure makes me damned scared this IS it. (Bush has pushed out countless people who dared suggest his plans were bad.)

Anyone else concerned?

Jack Murtha: American Military Leaders Have Lost His Confidence

Mind you, while the right loves to treat any criticism of its leaders with CentCom and elsewhere among the Pentagonians as "speaking ill of our soldiers", this is just not the case. Americans as a whole and Democrats specifically have made it abundantly clear that, by and large, they see Bush and the Pentagon having let down our soldiers, rather than the reverse. From Matt at Think Progress:

lOn ABC’s This Week today, host George Stephanopoulos asked Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) about whether Congress would “move again to get a timetable for withdrawal in September if the benchmarks aren’t met, even if General Petraeus…comes to Congress in September and says he needs more time.” “He has an awful lot of credibility,” he added.

Murtha quickly disputed Stephanopoulos’s premise. “George, let me tell you, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in many of the military leaders. Because they say what the White house wants them to say,” said Murtha. Asked if he included Petraeus in his lack of confidence, Murtha added, “I’m waiting to see what he has to say. But I am absolutely convinced there has been this overly optimistic picture of what’s going on in Iraq, while the figures show the opposite.” [...]

Unfortunately, Murtha is right. Petraeus, and other military officers, have a history of supporting the administration line, despite the facts on the ground.
In April, while Congress was preparing to vote on its Iraq timeline legislation, the administration brought Petraeus back to the United States from Iraq for a rare visit, which Murtha slammed as “purely a political move.” Petraeus has allowed himself to be used as a “political prop” to support the White House’s war czar nominee. He has also echoed Bush’s line that al Qaeda, not sectarian civil war, is the greatest threat in Iraq — an assessment that contradicts the intelligence. l

Progress? Bush & Pentagon Win Battle Over Corruption In Iraq

This is one of those rare times when even I must admire how effectively President George W. Bush and the Pentagon/CentCom have found one major and seemingly very successful tactic for combatting the sky-high corruption in Iraq, much of it introduced by the U.S. itself (directly through war profiteers like Bush-friendly private contract companies and indirectly by the way we set up operations in the occupied Iraq.

What's the BIG secret to their success in drastically reducing reports of corrupt in Iraq?

Simple: stomp on any attempts to investigate said corruption.

Gee. Why didn't we think of this before? Silly us!

New Head of CentCom: No Civil War in Iraq

If the rest of this man's information is as wildly flawed as his understanding of what goes on in Iraq, we shouldn't only ask what the new CentCom commander has been smoking. No, we need to truly, truly be concerned about where the military is headed if they only rubber stamp and say yes to whatever Bush tells them to say. From CNN:

Iraq isn't engulfed in a civil war, and there are signs of hope outside strife-torn Baghdad, the new leader of U.S. Central Command says.

But the country needs "more pervasive security" -- as well as a more efficient and responsive government -- before the United States starts withdrawing troops, says Adm. William J. Fallon, whose command is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and covers the Middle East, central Asia and eastern Africa.

Fallon, interviewed by CNN's Kyra Phillips, stresses that security in Iraq is clearly the biggest challenge for the nascent government and the U.S.-led coalition.

Fallon says there can be no Iraqi confidence in the new governmental system without strides in keeping the peace. If law and order can't be implemented, he says, "we're not going to be able to get there."