Pace is Out at Joint Chiefs (Updated)

Gen. Peter Pace is out as Joint Chiefs Chairman, according to MSNBC and Think Progress. He's being replaced by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen. "Pace's early departure is said to be related more to the triggering of certain retirement benefits than his close association with the discredited former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld."

About a month ago, the* New York Times* proclaimed, "Bush Expected to Renew Term of Chairman of Joint Chiefs."

In a news conference, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Senators were the ones who put the kibosh on the re-nomination. The confirmation hearings were going to be contentious or "backward looking" as Gates put it -- focused on failures in Iraq, in other words.

Last year,on Meet the Press, Pace said things were going just swimmingly there -- "very, very well," in his words.

...whether it be on the political side where they’ve had three elections, they’ve written their own constitution, they’re forming their government. You look at the military side where this time last year there were just a handful of battalions in the field, Iraqi battalions in the field. Now there are over 100 battalions in the field. They had no brigades—that’s about
3,000 men each. Now they’ve got about 31 brigades. No matter where you look at their military, their police, their society, things are much better this year than they were last...

...what happened in Iraq was you have the extremists who see that the
Iraqi people are going to the polls and voting for their own freely elected government. The terrorists are becoming more desperate—so desperate that they destroy one of their own most sacred shrines in an attempt to cause civil war and strife. The Iraqi people—the Kurds,
Sunnis, and Shia—have walked up to that abyss, looked in and said,
“That’s not where we want to go.” The Iraqi police, the Iraqi armed forces have maintained good calm, and the Iraqi people themselves and their leaders are saying, “Let’s remain calm and let’s figure this out together.”