WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- The abrupt resignation of Middle Eastern commander Adm. William J. "Fox" Fallon over a controversial interview and profile in Esquire magazine was a carefully choreographed exit for the 63-year-old Navy aviator. The first Navy man appointed to head the Central Command, which stretches from the Middle East to South Asia and includes Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, he is now one of three former Centcom commanders who are opposed to bombing Iran's nuclear facilities if the mullahs keep on trucking their nuclear weapon ambitions.

UPI Almanac for Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Why did President Bush raise the specter of World War III on Oct. 3 when he had known for at least six months what the gist of the National Intelligence Estimate would say? The key questions for talking heads on television programs are what did the president know and when did he know it?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- “I very much fear the risk of civil war” was the gist of the e-mail UPI received from Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani leader now under house arrest.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Osama Bin Laden “is a man on the run, from a cave, who’s virtually impotent other than the tapes” he releases from time to time. That was the mid-September assessment of Frances Fragos Townsend, top adviser to President Bush on homeland security, terrorism and counter-terrorism. A former assistant commandant of the Coast Guard for intelligence, Townsend was also a counsel to the attorney general for intelligence policy. The best and the brightest in the Bush White House, she served as deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism before her elevation to czar (or czarina) for transnational terrorism.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who once denied the World War II holocaust that consumed 6 million Jews ever took place, has had his wings clipped by his superiors. Iran’s most-popular television series tells the story of an Iranian diplomat based in Paris in 1940 who falls in love with a French Jew and then helps her and some 500 other Jews escape to what was then Palestine, with forged Iranian passports.

UPI almanac for Friday, Aug. 3, 2007.

BLACKSBURG, Va., May 11 (UPI) -- Virginia Tech honored the 32 students and faculty killed in last month's massacre at Friday's graduation ceremony.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush's nominee to lead Central Command, Adm. William Fallon, told a senate committee Tuesday current Iraq policy "has not been working."