On April 23rd, Army General David H. Petraeus became the President's nominee for head of CENTCOM. This was in conjunction with the nomination of his second in command, Lieutenant General Raymond T. Odierno to pin on a fourth star and take his place. Petraeus was praised for his dedication and having spent four of the last five years in Iraq. (He is the blind leading the blind.) Senator Kennedy said, “In his new position, General Petraeus will have a much larger regional and strategic responsibility,” and McCain had the hot air that we have come to expect from him for these, “two remarkable fighting men.”
The “remarkable fighting man” who resigned to make room for these two bunglers to get promoted was of course, the courageous, but similarly bungling, Admiral William J. Fallon. According to the conservative Washington Times, he was pressured to resign for letting Iranian fighters into Iraq. This just having happened to come right after an interview that he did with Esquire magazine in which Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College wrote, “it may well mean that the president and vice president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.” He has also openly opposed “the” surge in Iraq. (It's really more like the fifth or sixth, but who's counting? It's just the first to be marketed as THE surge.)
There is so much wrong with this picture, I don't know where to start. An administration hell-bent on starting another unnecessary war. A CENTCOM Commander not preventing the surge from happening. A Commander In Chief replacing commanders for speaking out. A media that doesn't realize it is being set up. And that gets to the most important part. Petraeus has been groomed, and branded, and molded into the perfect political football to be tossed around by Democrats and Republicans. He has become the modern face of war, and his promotion to a role with more “strategic responsibility” can only mean one thing: he will soon be the face of an expanded war.
Petraeus: "The big green weenie that we are giving to the troopers after politely asking them to bend over with 'stop-loss' and 'involuntary extension' is about this big. And it's called the fifteenth month deployment."
