Fallon “Retires”

by digby

… as of today.

We talked about this the other day. He was clearly fired. His resignation letter mentions the Esquire article and how it makes it impossible to continue. He was arguably insubordinate, but this is such a high profile firing that it seems clear that this disagreement over Iran was very real.

The Esquire article is here.

Update: CNN military expert General David Grange (ret.) says that this is how an officer responds when he disagrees with an administration’s policies and feels decisions have been made that he can’t in good conscience carry out. I don’t know if Grange knows Fallon or knows his motives, but he seems to think that Fallon resigned in protest — which is actually worse than if he were fired. Read that Esquire article and you’ll see why.

Update II: Spencer Ackerman offers this analysis:

For a good summation of Fallon, the Esquire piece, and the resulting furor, check out this Tom Ricks piece in the Post from last week.

Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes. If the new Central Command chief is General Stanley McChrystal, who ran special operations in Iraq until recently (read: responses to Iranian activities), that’ll be a pretty solid indicator that Bush is going to make the most of his last months in office. McChrystal just got a different command, but that, of course, was before the military’s most prestigious combatant command just opened up. Teheran will look verrrrry closely at who gets the job.

.