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America's Military Coup:
Donald Rumsfeld has a New War on his Hands - the US Officer Corps has turned on the Government by Sidney Blumenthal
�Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defense secretary, told George Bush in February about torture at Abu Ghraib prison. From the limited detail Rumsfeld recalled of that meeting, it can be deduced that Bush gave no orders, insisted on no responsibility, did not ask to see the already commissioned Taguba report. If there are exculpatory facts, Rumsfeld has failed to mention them.
For decades, Rumsfeld has had a reputation as a great white shark of the bureaucratic seas: sleek, fast-moving and voracious. As counselor to Richard Nixon during the impeachment crisis, his deputy was the young Dick Cheney, and together they helped to right the ship of state under Gerald Ford.
Here they were given a misleading gloss as moderates; competence at handling power was confused with pragmatism. Cheney became the most hardline of congressmen, and Rumsfeld informed acquaintances that he was always more conservative than they imagined. One lesson they seem to have learned from the Nixon debacle was ruthlessness. His collapse confirmed in them a belief in the imperial presidency based on executive secrecy. One gets the impression that, unlike Nixon, they would have burned the White House tapes.
Under Bush, the team of Cheney and Rumsfeld spread across the top rungs of government, drawing staff from the neoconservative cabal and infusing their rightwing temperaments with ideological imperatives. The unvarnished will to power took on a veneer of ideas and idealism. Iraq was not a case of vengeance or power, but the cause of democracy and human rights.
The fate of the neoconservative project depends on Rumsfeld's job. If he were to go, so would his deputy, the neoconservative Robespierre, Paul Wolfowitz. Also threatened would be the cadres who stovepiped the disinformation that neoconservative darling Ahmed Chalabi used to manipulate public opinion before the war. In his Senate testimony last week, Rumsfeld explained that the government asking the press not to report Abu Ghraib "is not against our principles. It is not suppression of the news." War is peace.
Six National Guard soldiers from a West Virginia unit who treated Abu Ghraib as a playpen of pornographic torture have been designated as scapegoats. Will the show trials of these working-class antiheroes put an end to any inquiries about the chain of command? In an extraordinary editorial, the Army Times, which had not previously ventured into such controversy, declared that "the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons ... This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential - even if that means relieving leaders from duty in a time of war."
William Odom, a retired general and former member of the National Security Council who is now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, reflects a wide swath of opinion in the upper ranks of the military. "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq," he told me. It is a "diversion" from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is "phony"; the US army is overstretched and being driven "into the ground"; and the prospect of building a democracy is "zero". In Iraqi politics, he says, "legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail, that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision."
One high-level military strategist told me that Rumsfeld is "detested", and that "if there's a sentiment in the army it is: Support Our Troops, Impeach Rumsfeld".
The Council on Foreign Relations has been showing old movies with renewed relevance to its members. The Battle of Algiers, depicting the nature and costs of a struggle with terrorism, is the latest feature. The seething in the military against Bush and Rumsfeld might prompt a showing of Seven Days in May, about a coup staged by a rightwing general against a weak liberal president, an artifact of the conservative hatred directed at President Kennedy in the early 60s.
In 1992, General Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs, awarded the prize for his strategy essay competition at the National Defense University to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dunlap for The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012. His cautionary tale imagined an incapable civilian government creating a vacuum that drew a competent military into a coup disastrous for democracy. The military, of course, is bound to uphold the constitution. But Dunlap wrote: "The catastrophe that occurred on our watch took place because we failed to speak out against policies we knew were wrong. It's too late for me to do any more. But it's not for you."
The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 is today circulating among top US military strategists.

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Originally posted by Nim the Fanciful:
And that's exactly what happened to Robespierre! He got eaten by his own machine! Ell oh ell.

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Yep..than that machine went and gave us...Napol�on Bonapart�. So if you see any American Generals start running around with their hands tucked in their jacket, start worrying.
 

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Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
It's the short ones you have to look out for. I wonder if you can find a list of the massively-inflated number of generals the US military has these days, organised by height. . .
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
"Bonapart�"? Why do people seem to think that every French word or name has to have at least one accent mark in it?
 

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Posted by Nim the Fanciful (Member # 205) on :
 
It's B�n�p�rte, the "e" is silent.

Hoss the Highwayman: Well he hasn't been impeached yet, let's wait for that and see what happens. If the democrats win the election, chances are the spring cleaning will remove some of the "Cancer-men" out of the machine.
Though they'll just go into sleep-mode, until the next republican comes along.
 

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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
 
And they'll remember.
 

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Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 

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Originally posted by Highway Hoss:

quote:

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Originally posted by Nim the Fanciful:
And that's exactly what happened to Robespierre! He got eaten by his own machine! Ell oh ell.

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Yep..than that machine went and gave us...Napol�on Bonapart�. So if you see any American Generals start running around with their hands tucked in their jacket, start worrying.

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Originally posted by Wraith:Well, quite a few did it in the 19th century; McClellen (probably spelling mistake, can't be bothered to look it up) springs to mind. I've always wondered why people idolise Boney so much. After all, he was a loser. Granted, he had a few fairly impressive victories but his career wasn't quite as uniformly impressive as Wellington (politics aside, at least).

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No suprise about McClellan (proper spelling ); he was called "The Little Napoleon" after all. Thing to remember was that that the armies and generals of the American Civil War modeled many of their tactical and strategic concepts on those used by Napoleon and his army.
True, Napoleon lost in the end, but early on, his victories were very impressive; his victory at Austerlitz alone rates him among the Great Captains of history.
As for Wellington, yes he had an impressive career, but keep in mind what "a close run thing" the battle of Waterloo was; if Wellington lost, well we'd remember him differently.

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Originally posted by Wraith:And if you think what US soldiers are saying about Rumsfeld is bad, you should hear what's said about 'I know nothing about it' Hoon

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True, Napoleon lost in the end, but early on, his victories were very impressive; his victory at Austerlitz alone rates him among the Great Captains of history.
As for Wellington, yes he had an impressive career, but keep in mind what "a close run thing" the battle of Waterloo was; if Wellington lost, well we'd remember him differently.

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One word: Assaye
 

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Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Nim the Fanciful:
It's B�n�p�rte, the "e" is silent.

Hoss the Highwayman: Well he hasn't been impeached yet, let's wait for that and see what happens. If the democrats win the election, chances are the spring cleaning will remove some of the "Cancer-men" out of the machine.
Though they'll just go into sleep-mode, until the next republican comes along.

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Besides, they have their own "cancer men".
 

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Posted by Nim the Fanciful (Member # 205) on :
 
Probably.

Wraith: "After all, he was a loser. Granted, he had a few fairly impressive victories but his career wasn't quite as uniformly impressive as Wellington (politics aside, at least)."

Napoleon acted on just the right time, in just the right way to grant him power and success, just like Hitler.

One tidbit; one of Napoleon's most favored marshals, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, went on to defect, beat several armies of his former emperor and became king of Sweden, kicking our monarchy into higher gear.
Our current king is of the same line, Carl Gustaf Bernadotte.

So nothing bad that doesn't bring something good with it. :.)
 

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Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
What's the exact diffrence between a "defector" and a "traitor"?
 

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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
 
You're a traitor to the side you're defecting from and a defector to the side you're defecting to.
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
The king of Sweden is French? Huh.
 

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Posted by MarianLH (Member # 1102) on :
 
Originally posted by TSN:

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The king of Sweden is French? Huh.

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Why not? The Plantagenets were. And the Windsors have ties to Germany, don't they? Or was it the Netherlands?

Heck, Cleopatra wasn't really Egyptian, for that matter.


Marian
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
I wasn't saying it was unusual. Just that I'd never been aware of it.

The Plantagenets may have been French, but the British royal family had been French (well, Norse/French) since 1066.

And the Germans came into it long before the Windsors. After Queen Anne died in the early 1700s with no heirs, they passed the throne on to George I, a descendant of Charles I's sister who was married off into Germany. That's essentially the same dynasty on the throne today, though the name has changed a few times.

As Blackadder put it when told "I'm not a German spy. I'm as British as Queen Victoria.": "So, your father's German, you're half-German, and you married a German?"
 

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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
 
"Or was it the Netherlands?"

The Dutch royalty has German ties, yes (that is to say, they ARE). Their last queen (Juliana, deceased) married a German jurist (prince Bernard), and had four kiddies. She was succeeded by one of them, Beatrix, who married ANOTHER German (a diplomat this time, Claus, who's also deceased) and had three kiddies herself, two of whom are still in line for the thrown. You do the math. B)
 

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Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 
I notice the Danish Crown prince (I think Danish anyway) has just married an Australian.

And we got William and Mary from the Netherlands after the Glorious Revolution. So really, the various royal families come from all over the place.
 

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Posted by Nim the Fanciful (Member # 205) on :
 
Cartman: "and had four kiddies. She was succeeded by one of them, Beatrix"

Oh ha ha.
 

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Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
Cartman.. I thought you were Dutch? I can't be bothered to use the Search function, though, so am I just plain wrong?
 

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
William and Mary weren't "from the Netherlands", exactly. Mary was the elder daughter of James II. She'd married William, who was Dutch. The only reason he got to be co-ruler was because, otherwise, he'd lose all his power if Mary died before him. And, since he had just driven the old king out, the people were more willing to do what he asked.
 

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