Dick F*cking Cheney Signed This Thing
You couldn't get all 10 living Secretaries of Defense together to sign off on a breakfast order. But they've published an op-ed that is just as scary for what it doesn't say.
_By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 4, 2021
I admit, this unnerved me quite a bit, more for what it doesn't say than for what it says, and what it says is bad enough. From the Washington Post:
The former Pentagon chiefs issued their warning Sunday evening in an opinion piece that they co-wrote and published in The Washington Post. Its authors include Trump’s two former defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper, as well as each surviving, Senate-confirmed Pentagon chief dating back to Donald H. Rumsfeld in the 1970s...
“Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted,” the former defense secretaries wrote. “The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.”
Hey, DICK FCKING CHENEY SIGNED THIS THING!
As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, “there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.
I don't think you could get these guys together to sign off on a breakfast order, let alone an op-ed in which they tell the incumbent president* to get stuffed. Unless, of course, one or several of them know something that scares the daylights out of them. And if you start putting the context together—the decapitation of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon in favor of unqualified cronies, the current blustering centered on Iran, the simple fact that El Caudillo Del Mar-a-Lago is capable of anything—it's easy to concoct scenarios that are halfway between Seven Days In May and Duck Soup. I feel very sure that this group did not get together in order to defend some vague love for the constitutional order. I think something made them go cold down to their toes.
Update (1:08 p.m.): A couple of people have noted this David Ignatius column in the Washington Post that I missed over the weekend, and that may have prompted the remarkable letter from the former Secretaries of Defense.
Government officials fear that if violence spreads, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military. Then Trump might use “military capabilities” to rerun the Nov. 3 election in swing states, as suggested by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Trump “could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election,” Flynn told Newsmax in a Dec. 17 interview.
The Pentagon would be the locus of any such action, and some unusual recent moves suggest pro-Trump officials might be mobilizing to secure levers of power. Kash Patel, chief of staff to acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller, returned home “abruptly” from an Asia trip in early December, according to Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin. Patel didn’t explain, but in mid-December Trump discussed with colleagues the possibility that Patel might replace Christopher A. Wray as FBI director, one official said. Wray remains in his job.
I feel so much better.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl22506773
You couldn't get all 10 living Secretaries of Defense together to sign off on a breakfast order. But they've published an op-ed that is just as scary for what it doesn't say.
_By Charles P. Pierce
Jan 4, 2021
I admit, this unnerved me quite a bit, more for what it doesn't say than for what it says, and what it says is bad enough. From the Washington Post:
The former Pentagon chiefs issued their warning Sunday evening in an opinion piece that they co-wrote and published in The Washington Post. Its authors include Trump’s two former defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper, as well as each surviving, Senate-confirmed Pentagon chief dating back to Donald H. Rumsfeld in the 1970s...
“Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted,” the former defense secretaries wrote. “The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.”
Hey, DICK FCKING CHENEY SIGNED THIS THING!
As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, “there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.
I don't think you could get these guys together to sign off on a breakfast order, let alone an op-ed in which they tell the incumbent president* to get stuffed. Unless, of course, one or several of them know something that scares the daylights out of them. And if you start putting the context together—the decapitation of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon in favor of unqualified cronies, the current blustering centered on Iran, the simple fact that El Caudillo Del Mar-a-Lago is capable of anything—it's easy to concoct scenarios that are halfway between Seven Days In May and Duck Soup. I feel very sure that this group did not get together in order to defend some vague love for the constitutional order. I think something made them go cold down to their toes.
Update (1:08 p.m.): A couple of people have noted this David Ignatius column in the Washington Post that I missed over the weekend, and that may have prompted the remarkable letter from the former Secretaries of Defense.
Government officials fear that if violence spreads, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military. Then Trump might use “military capabilities” to rerun the Nov. 3 election in swing states, as suggested by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser. Trump “could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election,” Flynn told Newsmax in a Dec. 17 interview.
The Pentagon would be the locus of any such action, and some unusual recent moves suggest pro-Trump officials might be mobilizing to secure levers of power. Kash Patel, chief of staff to acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller, returned home “abruptly” from an Asia trip in early December, according to Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin. Patel didn’t explain, but in mid-December Trump discussed with colleagues the possibility that Patel might replace Christopher A. Wray as FBI director, one official said. Wray remains in his job.
I feel so much better.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...nl22506773
