1115.org

You may have wondered why President Bush picked Admiral William Fallon to succeed Gen. Abizaid as the top US commander in the Middle East, or you may have been busy with other things.

I think it was to make the Commander-in-Chief look good. Fallon’s English is even more fractured than the President’s. Here are some examples from his Senate confirmation hearing:

“One of the things in the back of my mind that I’d like to get answered is to meet with the people that have been working this issue — particularly our ambassadors, our diplomats — to get an assessment of what’s realistic and what’s practical,” Fallon said.
[...]
“…the likelihood that Iraq is suddenly going to turn into something that looks close to what we enjoy here in this country is going to be a long time coming,” he said.

Finally, when asked his views on Iran, he delivered himself of an emptiness that I see as a worthy rival to Secretary Chertoff’s timeless “The first step in addressing that fog is to enhance and expand a hardened set of communications capabilities”:

“They are posturing themselves with the capability to attempt to deny us the ability to operate in this vicinity”.