Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace
Gen. Peter Pace to Retire as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman
Fox News
WASHINGTON — Marine Gen. Peter Pace will retire as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced on Friday.
Gates said while he intended to renominate Pace for another two-year term as chairman, after consulting with congressional leaders, the confirmation hearing was likely to be “a backward-looking and very contentious process.”
“The focus of his confirmation process would have been on the past, rather than the future,” Gates said at a press conference at the Pentagon.
Instead, Gates he will recommend that President Bush nominate Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Pace has been either chairman or vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past six years.
Pace, a Vietnam War veteran, will turn 62 in November. He will leave his post when his term ends on Sept. 30, 2007.
Wild Thing’s comment……….
I’ll miss General Pace. He seemed a steady hand. The man is a Marine and he just got his ass kicked unjustly. You will be missed.
WT – From 1942-1945 the Leathernecks secured Iwo Jima, Guadal Canal, Tarawa and Okinawa… and over the last four years we haven’t secured or leveled Baghdad? This rips my heart out – bigtime! And now the Marines are afraid of facing Washington DC confirmation hearings? Al-Qaeda is laughing, and so are the turd world countries. So sad and perhaps we are a paper lion and not a hungry lioness on the hunt!
Peter Pace is a class act.
But he was not allowed to do his job.
Rules, rules, rules–I’m sick to death of rules.
Just let us do the job, stop micromanaging it and
let nature take it’s course.
Get the monkeys away from the controls.
And stop letting the media ruin everything by telling us what we should and should not think.
We have to stop being the laughing stock of the world.
We’re far superior to that.
That’s the problem when Congress gets involved with selecting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. That position should be top military leader and advisor but congress regulates it to a political position. The only persons who should have a say who is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the President and SecDef. That, my friends, is civilian control.
I haven’t read in the Constitution where congress has a say in selecting the JCS Chairman. If it’s there, could someone give me chapter and verse?
Lynn, I don’t think it’s Pace who fears Congressional hearings. Rather, I think it’s Gates and Pres. Bush who fear the hearings. Congress may ask questions about the war that the administration doesn’t want asked in that type of forum and as a decent honorable man, Pace will answer them truthfully and his answers may made the administration look bad, real bad.
Another loss for freedom. They want yes men in the top eschelon, it’s the U.N. way.
My mistake. I meant to answer my last response to darth, not Lynn.
Pace is being sacrificed to the dimwittocRATS cause he called homosexuality immoral. The hearings would have been framed around Iraq, but the unspoken problem the dems have with him is they will not tolerate any public official saying something like that about homosexuality. He’s being sacrificed for that reason.
General Pace is the first Teufel Hund (Devil Dog) in the Nation’s history to hold the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and one of the very few Marines to hold four stars without being the Commandant (Lew Walt was the first). Semper Fi Marines!!!
Darth, ….”So sad and perhaps we are a paper lion and not a hungry lioness on the hunt!”……
that is very true about our leadership. Our military are wanting to be that hungry lioness on the hunt and when allowed to be they have done so great. But it is the allowed to be that concerns me so much.
Lynn,Pace was wonderful and did a great job. Your so right about letting the military do their job and stop letting politics enter in and that includes the agenda of our President. sigh
Bob, I agree Pace will tell the truth.
Jack your right, that is what they want to make the UN happy.
Rock Hard, I agree Pace certainly is being sacrificed. I just hope he knows those of us out here have truly appreciated him.
Jack wow thank you so much for the information.
The American people should be outraged that such a fine General Officer is being sacrificed on the alter of dimwittocRAT party worship of homosexuality, but won’t ever be told about it. It’s an absolute disgrace they won’t know about. His being releived has almost nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with protection of homosexuality.