I Think General Pace is Taking His Name too Seriously

Bad timing for General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a thoroughly delightful, even inspirational man. He was traveling in the Pacific, and maybe the jet lag got to him. Reviewing the recent intelligence on Iran’s role in Iraq, he remarked

“

that does not translate that the Iranian Government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this…What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldier.”

Evidently General Pace, whose Italian surname translates as “peace,” hadn’t checked in with the boss. Somebody asked Tony Snow if we were confident that the shaped explosives were delivered to Iraq with the explicit ok of the Iranian Government, and he simply said “yes.”

Indeed, the military briefers in Baghdad had said that recently interrogated Iranian military officers had made it clear they had approval from the highest levels of the mullahcracy. It’s hard to imagine otherwise, since the operations chief of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards (one of the arrestees), reports directly to the Supreme Leader.

I love the Marines, and I’m totally in the bag for Peter Pace, but if I were the president I’d fire him.