Fallon Fallen From CENTCOM

Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, commander of US Central Command in Tampa, Fla., resigned after an article in Esquire magazine portrayed his views on Iran as being at odds with those of his commander in chief, President Bush.

Thomas PM Barnett, the one who brought you The Pentagon's New Map, continued his sometimes lucid liberal diatribe against the Bush administration in his latest offering The Man Between War and Peace based on Fallon. If you remember, Barnett was initially for the Iraq War, but once turned south on it once he saw how it was handled and rails against Bush in such colorful prose it appears to be personal for Barnett.

In Fallon, Barnett has found a sympathetic voice, or one that at least sounded sympathetic enough, to coax a few lines out of Fallon that Barnett could use to beat Bush over the head once more in regards to Iraq.

This time Barnett has stymied his own cause by getting the one flag officer he agreed with fired.

Here is an offering from Fallon in an interview with Al Jazeera, "This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."

He survived that statement, but Barnett premised Fallon's fall from grace.

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

As it turned out Barnett was the catalyst for Fallon not getting away with it for much longer.

Fallon himself rejects the Esquire article. "Asked about the article yesterday, Fallon called it 'poison pen stuff' that is 'really disrespectful and ugly.' He did not cite specific objections."

In the end Barnett used Fallon as his own personal devise to bash Bush once more over Iraq and ending the career of the "man of strategic brilliance."