Bush-Petraeus Spin Job Undercuts Admiral Fallon's Command

Not to mention the consensus of many other officers and military people on the ground in Iraq, and overseeing the whole War Operation, the global empire military enterprise dubbed "Global War on Terror", which is turning into "Global Terror Farming Operation".

If you're gonna have a war, at least let it be run by warriors, or military people. That's one more thing the Bush administration did NOT do, which has led to the total Disaster called the Iraq War. The latest in a long line of fiascos is Gen. Patraeus and the Surge Spinsters. No, they're not spin doctors, which would imply a certain level of expertise, not to mention human concern. Spinsters. They're on their own, they can't have children, and nobody wants to hook up with them. Welcome to Club Surge.

Here in this Club you have to say "My War, Right or Wrong". Now that's a new spin on patriotism. Now we have Admiral Fallon, the top dog on the ground in Iraq, in other words, Commander of CENTCOM, the superior, I repeat, superior officer over Gen Patraeus, saying the surge is a failure, it was wrong to begin with, and Patraeus is... well, let's hear it from the man in charge himself:

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of 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.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.

The enmity between the two commanders became public knowledge when the Washington Post reported Sep. 9 on intense conflict within the administration over Iraq. The story quoted a senior official as saying that referring to "bad relations" between them is "the understatement of the century".

Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the CENTCOM commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources. The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

If you have the two top leaders in a war at complete odds with one another, and the one whose decision is taken is the underling, then you've got trouble. Real, bad trouble. Again, this means the Commander in Chief is basically using an officer lower in the command chain to circumvent his superior in order to spin out his own pet policy. It's not what Petraeus thinks is right. It's what Petraeus thinks is expedient to his own enhancement. It's called "ass-kissing." That is, Patraeus' spin job. But what Bush did is called "subordination", I believe.

Military guys, give me a clue. What do you call this messing with the chain of command? Is it the job of the Commander in Chief to not only set goals, but to set how those goals are to be achieved even though the consensus on the ground says otherwise? That's what military dictators do with their armies.

I used to think we were different.
"A Republic, if you can keep it." (Ben Franklin.)
Not with Bush and his like-minded "ass-kissers" in power.