The Peter Pace-Parker Principle

I don’t know if Gen. Peter Pace was forced to step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to avoid what surely would have been a difficult confirmation hearing with the Senate over his role in the nightmare of Iraq (I’m sorry, but I can’t place a lot of faith in an individual who did not believe the Iraq was in the middle of a civil war in March 2006 and who expressed confidence publicly in Don “The Defense Secretary You Have” Rumsfeld in October of that year, as noted here).

I also don’t know if he was forced to step down because he publicly opposed a nuclear attack on Iran (as Prof. Marcus noted here - that earns him props as far as I'm concerned). I also don't know if, based on this Wikipedia article about Admiral Michael Mullen (Pace’s successor due to take over in September), Bushco wanted Mullen because of his stated goal that the Navy should be “first and foremost a fighting, sea-going service,” as opposed to some of Pace’s comparatively less bellicose language.

However, I am certain that Pace was not asked to step down because he confronted “the liberal agenda and gay lobby” as numbskull corporate media freeper columnist Kathleen Parker alleged here recently (yes, I know I shouldn’t waste my time, but some nonsense is too idiotic to ignore).

See, Parker alleges that the confirmation hearing for Pace would be contentious not because of the tragic state of the Iraq carnage, but because of Pace’s quote in March of this year that he felt that “homosexuality is immoral”; Parker envisions all kinds of moments where Pace would be chastened over that as opposed to the escalating toll of our dead and wounded service people, to say nothing of innocent Iraqis. Here’s more of her tripe…

Whether that single remark would cause Pace's removal seems doubtful. Others surmise that his replacement by a Navy admiral is sending a message to the Army to shape up. Mullen has said that one of his first priorities is to upgrade the Army. Still others say the move is a way for the Democratic Congress to further undermine President Bush.

Of course, none of this is substantiated anywhere, since we’re in Corporate Media Pundit Fantasy Land here, boys and girls.

And you know Parker will find a way to create some imaginary linkage to Hillary Clinton on this, since Sen. Clinton site on the House Armed Services Committee, with Parker’s laughably inane comment that “no one benefits more from Pace's removal than Clinton, who would have had to vote for or against the man and be stuck with a position that could hurt her.”

And for good measure, rely on Parker to resurrect the utterly failed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of HRC’s husband, with Parker’s vile interpretation that “(the policy is) not about the rights of gays to serve, but about the rights of non-gays to be protected from forced intimacy with people who may be sexually attracted to them,” as if all gays are degenerates who see same-sex professionals as nothing more than instruments of their own pleasure.

Getting back to Gen. Pace, I should be fair and note that he has a lengthy list of service awards and has worked himself up the chain of command steadily since the late 1960s, a commendable feat. However, as far as I’m concerned, all of that has been tarnished by his tacit complicity with a lawless regime that has led us to war without end in Iraq. That, more than anything else, is why he should not have been renominated, delusional freeper propaganda notwithstanding.