When the Village People sang ‘In the Navy’, they laid out all the attractions of life as a seaman.
Where can you find pleasure
Search the world for treasure
Learn science technology
Where can you begin to make your dreams all come true
On the land or on the sea
Where can you learn to fly
Play in sports and skin dive
Study oceanography
Sign of for the big band
Or sit in the grandstand
When your team and others meet
Nowhere in that recruiting pitch did they mention that you could fight a landwar in Asia. That kind of thing has been traditionally held for the Army and Marines. But that doesn’t concern George W. Bush. Bush thinks outside of the box.
ABC News’ Martha Raddatz Reports: ABC News has learned that the president intends to nominate Admiral William J. Fallon to replace General John Abizaid at Central Command. The announcement is expected next week, before the president gives his Iraq strategy speech, according to US officials…
…Fallon, who is in the Navy, is currently head of Pacific Command; he will be overseeing two ground wars, so the appointment is highly unusual.
I have nothing against Admiral Fallon. I’m sure he is an excellent commander of the Pacific Fleet. And, I am equally sure, he has not had the kind of training our Army and Marine Generals went through for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This continues a tradition that Bush set when he used an attack on our country by Saudi religious radicals holed up in Afghanistan to attack a secular regime in Iraq. He tried to appoint Harriet Miers, his personal attorney with no judicial experience, to the nation’s highest court. And now he has assigned an Admiral to command our forces in the largest and most volatile landmass in the world, including in the landlocked nation of the Afghans.
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, that does not make sense!!
No word yet on whether the Navy will be sailed up the Tigris and Euphrates.
Perhaps Bush is planning ahead toward war with Iran, via the Persian Gulf?
Leslie
Either that Northcountry, or it’s so tough for Bush to find yes men in the Army, he has to resort to the Navy.
Hay, it’s called on-the-job training. It’s been working for Bush for years. Then again, maybe not.
For putting a whole bunch of Air Force Generals up there and having them send the Army and the Marines to their deaths so Rumsfeld finally found some Army guys who he could stand named Abizaid and Casey. Those two haven’t been having much fun though and everything that happened before was Rumsfeld fault so lets try having the Navy send the Army and Marines to their deaths under New Secretary of Defense leadership. In W’s playbook, it isn’t over until you run out of other people to blame.
In W’s playbook, it isn’t over until your run out of people to send to fight except for Jenna and Barbara(not-Jenna).
can’t be the issue. Murtha’s latest comments about how stretched ground troops are is spot on 100% and we haven’t enough time to properly train new troops even if we do find them in foreign countries and they sign on. The only thing he can do is bomb the Holy Shit out of Iran and I am told by people in the know that they doubt our bunker busters can fully take out their best hardened targets…..they have to go tactical nuke to get’er done and the troops sitting in Iraq will be sitting ducks of the first degree for angry people from every place in the middle east and an extra 20,000 is throwing a cup of water on a big grease fire. These people are insane.
These people are insane.
A Navy Aviator is the right person to select to lead a prolonged air campaign against Iran; Rolling Thunder II.
For Bush.
If you want to attack Iran, the Navy will be a big piece of it. If you want to escalate large numbers of troops, the Navy can move more troops (although slowly) than can the Air Force. If you want to withdraw over the horizon, what better force than a fleet of ships 20 miles out (over the horizon) to symbolically meet that commitment. If you want to move large amounts of materials to construct permanent bases, what better than the Navy to move it.
What is shows is that Bush (or his advisors) realize that Army command on troops on the ground in Iraq is not where the leadership and coordination needs to be. Either the lower ranking officers actually in Iraq know better about what the Army and Marines can do or they’ve run out of ideas.
And it also says that the Army command has told Bush “No”, so he goes to the Navy to get the “Aye, aye, sir”
My analysis is on the sidebar.
This makes a lot of sense if you think Iran.