Helen Thomas: Telling Bush the truth is costly

[babylonsister]

Telling Bush the truth is costly

HELEN THOMAS


WASHINGTON -- A salute is due Adm. William Fallon, who tried to prevent a wider war with Iran.

After serving one year as commander of U.S. Central Command, Fallon has resigned, saying he was quitting because his differences with official U.S. policy had become a "distraction."

But there is a widespread perception that he was pushed out by the neo-conservatives among President Bush's aides, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, because of Fallon's reluctance to go along with the administration's hawkish moves toward Iran.

Cheney, who took five consecutive draft deferments to stay out of the Vietnam War, does not mind keeping the U.S. in the Iraqi quagmire he helped create. The same goes for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, who said that leaving Iraq is not a U.S. option.

McCain once said the U.S. could stay in Iraq for 100 years.

As head of Centcom, Fallon's command ran from the Mediterranean to South Asia and included Iraq, where he ran afoul of Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander there.

Petraeus would maintain the 130,000 pre-surge U.S. troop-level in Iraq, probably till the end of the Bush presidency. Fallon was concerned that keeping so many troops in Iraq could leave the U.S. unprepared for any new crises that might occur elsewhere.

more...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/356246_thomas25.html

[Catch22Dem]

1. Do you think Helen ever gets tired of being right? (n/t)

[spiderpig]

3. No. Just like * never gets tired of being wrong.

:loveya:Helen!

[malaise]

2. Tell them Helen

Expose the war criminals

[screembloodymurder]

4. Fallon should have stayed and fought them every step of the way.

Resigning is quitting.

[bdamomma]

5. I thnk so too, or why is he (Fallon) not getting the back from his

colleagues on this next horrendous event, have any of those other Generals met up with each other to stop these filthy SOB's.

[gratuitous]

6. Apparently joining the military is a suicide pact

If you're not willing to follow orders right to your own death - even when those orders are illegal, wrong, self-defeating, or worst of all, just plain stupid - then you have to resign or get fired. This is not sold in the recruiting brochures as a suicide pact, naturally. It's dressed up in sucker language and words like "duty" or "honor" or "integrity," aided and abetted by a society drunk on violence which celebrates every death as that of a "hero" no matter how pointless or negligent.

[Supersedeas]

8. he joins a string of military advisors whose advice has been dismissed

[LanternWaste]

10. Sometimes, the better fighter wins through words.

"Resigning is quitting."

Resigning is also giving him the opportunity to say things he has up till now been prevented from saying.

Sometimes, the better fighter wins through words.

[tavalon]

11. Unfortunately, it's the military way

I doubt he gave it a moments thought.

[DemoTex]

7. Remember, Adm. Fallon dissed Bu$hco's St. Petraeus to his face a year ago.

Fallon called Petraeus "an ass-kissing little chicken-shit." That's when I knew that the good admiral's days were numbered. All we can hope is that there are some more flag officers like Fallon that still might be able to pull off an intervention.

[Ravachol]

9. If he resigned and was so opposed to war in Iran...

It's because he probably felt he was "powerless" - to a certain extent -, that he couldn't stop what will go on against Iran and didn't want to associate himself with such a crime.

If so, I doubt anyone ranked below him will be able to do anything to stop these murderous bastards.

[calimary]

12. God Bless the Lady Helen! Damn she's great.

She's one of our Cassandras. She told it like it was early-on, before it was "cool." And she paid a price for it. Remember when she dared to ask an "impertinent" question early in this nightmare, and she was abruptly moved to the back of the press room? And never called on again for several years? And she HAD been the occupant of one of the front row seats ever since she began there with UPI, and was the Dean of the White House Press Corps for years, covering every president since Kennedy. The routine was: she would ask the first question, always, and then always close the news conference with "thank you, Mr. President." When SHE spoke, the conference was over. And they moved her to the back of the room - and the other weasels in the White House Press CORPSE didn't say Word-ONE about it. NOBODY came to her defense. NOBODY objected or complained on her behalf or expressed any outrage about what ari fleischer and rove did to her, publicly humiliating her in front of her peers like that. NOBODY stood up for her. NOT A ONE of them! Guess they were all skeeeeered or somethin'...

She's a patron saint. And a national treasure.