Fox Fallon

Admiral (R) Fox Fallon

The neoconservatives were apparently thirsting for some action with China when Admiral Fallon was the commander of USPACOM in 2005. Here is an excerpt:

"There were people who warned me that you'd better get ready for the shoot 'em up here, because sooner or later we're going be at war with China," recalled the commander, William Fallon, a retired navy admiral. "I don't think that's where we want to go. And so I set about challenging all the assumptions."

In his first extensive interview since resigning from the navy this year, Fallon said that the United States desperately needed to come up with a strategy for dealing peacefully with a rising China.

Fallon if you remember, went on to become CENTCOM commander after serving as PACOM commander - an oddity within the senior officer corps. It was as CENTCOM commander that Fallon continued to challenge the Bush administration and some reports state that he had trouble containing his subordinate, then MNF-I commander GEN David Petraeus, whose influence on the White House was growing by the minute. In this piece, Fallon also stated that, the war in Iraq "is essentially over."

"We have some combat activity still ongoing occasionally up in the Mosul area, but other than that it's pretty much over and been over," he said.

But the war in Afghanistan, though showing some progress in recent months as a result of increased cooperation with neighboring Pakistan, is "probably a bigger challenge than Iraq," Fallon said.