He wasn’t Commander for quite a year, but evidently his sin was that he was a Commander on the Ground™ that BushCo did not want to listen to.
Brandon Friedman at Vets Voice has the story.
Admiral Fallon pretty frequently pushed back on the Iran belligerence coming out of the White House, and last spring declined to send an additional carrier group to the Gulf. Fortunately for Fallon, his current boss is Bob Gates, who won’t indulge in the kind of jihad Rumsfeld let loose on General Shinseki.
You can certainly take this as proof that even the White House doesn’t believe its Commanders on the Ground™ mantra. They are firmly running not just policy but ops and they are still doing it to play to FOX news and to prop up their rapidly sinking party. They are certainly not playing this to win or even to settle the region. Vague assertions of withdrawal not being the answer just remind all of the rest of us that there are no better answers on the table. Certainly no better answers that require the Iraqi government to get itself organized and step up and make the sacrifices that our guys and the American taxpayers have been making on their behalf mean something.