Jim Robbins of National Review notes that Fallon "... may be as much a victim of [Esquire writer] Thomas Barnett's weirdly hyperbolic prose style as anything else. 'If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon...' Come on, could anyone buy that? Contrast it with the allegation (since denied) that Fallon called General David Petraeus an "*ss-kissing little chickensh*t." Considering General Petraeus's demonstrated bona fides in the strategic brilliance department, you have to wonder what was really going on backstage."

Abraham Lincoln would likely have responded to the alleged Fallon quote about Petraeus much as he did when Ulysses S. Grant was accused of being a drunken lout:

"I don't care if Petraeus is an a**-kissing little chickensh*t. I can't spare this man--he fights!"

"'If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man."

Funny, I thought Congress was the only part of the government that had the ability to declare war. Apparently this journalist thinks that power has been vested in one man.

On the other hand, it could be argued that we are already in a state of war with Iran. Qods forces, official agents of a hostile nation, have attacked and killed US troops. This can be considered an act of war. Since the Supreme Court refuses to adjudicate a formal interpretation of the War Powers clause, we see precedent for both broad and narrow interpretations (see Tripoli, Lincoln's Southern Blockade, and Vietnam).

See video: Why Fallon's Resignation is Frightening Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not have to accept Admiral Fallon's resignation. "The military people think basically that Admiral Fallon was PUSHED OUT" - Mark Thompson Time Magazine National Security Correspondent
Fallon is described as "the one person in the military or Pentagon standing between the White House and war with Iran."

I have it from a very reliable source that Fallon's exit has nothing to do with his stance on Iran, but due to some other issues.

Burnett's article in Esquire may have been purposeful seppuku on Fallon's part, though I will not elaborate as to why at his time.

Wow, Barnett - based on this small excerpt, sounds every bit as silly and lightweight as my previous limited exposure to him indicated. He did an interview on a radio show and said the most absurd things about Iraq and Iran - pure, Beltway, NYT-level, lightweight, indefensible nonsense. Everything based on the implicit bizarro-world premise that AVOIDING military action is the stragegic objective - not any actual objective like preventing a nuclear Iran, coercing adversaries, etc. How do people like this get books published, much less hired by DOD to do anything substantive? Astonishing, discouraging, and completely routine, I guess.

We are, in a word, screwed. The likelihood of any country staging a conventional of guerrilla nuclear attack on the US is slim, at best. Even if Iran developed the know-how to create a nuclear weapon THEY HAVE NO DELIVERY SYSTEM. What are they going to do; have the Iranian shotput champion hurl it at us? And transporting a fissile nuclear material or a completed suitcase nuke is much, much harder than Tom Clancy as led you to believe. To risk a broader (and more catastrophic) conflict in the Middle East than already exists in the nightmare we have created in Iraq to alleviate this "risk" is, well, in word, stupid. The soldier you want fighting at your side is the one who knows when not to fight. If we strike Iran the US death toll in Iraq will double in less than a year! Mark my words. The tacit, secret assistance the Iranians are giving the Iraqi insurgency could become, in their eyes, defensible and as such their support for the Iraqi insurgency would become overt. Money, weapons, training and men to fight would pour over the boarder. Add to that the fact that almost every ally we have that still has troops committed would likely began planning their withdrawl. This is about saving the dollar and oil. What do all Iraq, Venezuela and Iran all have in common? They all have oil and they have threatened to or already begun trading their oil against the Euro and not the dollar. And when that happens our recession kicks into over drive. So we have corrupt wall street bankers destroying the credit base of US citizens, reclaiming\foreclosing on millions of homes and sending jobs over seas. Attacking Iran is not going to do any good.