{"id":292,"date":"2007-12-17T19:15:46","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T02:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=292"},"modified":"2007-12-19T18:39:08","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T01:39:08","slug":"outrageous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=292","title":{"rendered":"Outrageous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up to the rank of colonel, the military grows and promotes its own officers, independent of political influence.\u00a0 This is sacred.\u00a0 Is there a military man or woman anywhere, active or retired, alive or dead, who would not be outraged to learn that President Bush wants to take control of the promotion of military lawyers<\/a>?<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.<\/p>\n

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Granted,\u00a0presidents do have a hand in\u00a0the promotion of generals, the one percent of career officers who make it to the top.\u00a0\u00a0But it is the military, and only the military,\u00a0who\u00a0molds future generals by promoting them up through the ranks to colonel.\u00a0 Now President Bush wants to plug himself into promotions down at the captain and major level.\u00a0 Oh sure, we’re only talking about lawyers . . . or are we?\u00a0 If the military hands over JAG promotions to Bush and Cheney,\u00a0what’s to stop this administration\u00a0from interfering with regular line officer promotions?<\/p>\n

Nothing, that’s what, and pretty soon we’ll have an officer corps of political yes men, bending to every\u00a0wind blowing out of Washington DC.\u00a0 Okay, you say, but General Petraeus is just such a yes man, and so what?\u00a0 Because General Petraeus is balanced out by non-political generals and admirals, particularly his own immediate superior, Admiral Fallon, the commander of US Central Command, who is anything but a political yes man<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus\u2019s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.<\/p>\n

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be \u201can ass-kissing little chickenshit\u201d and added, \u201cI hate people like that\u201d,<\/strong> the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We won’t have military leaders like Admiral Fallon if Bush and Cheney get\u00a0their way.\u00a0 Why do we need military leaders like Admiral Fallon?\u00a0 Because they bring sanity to war planning:<\/p>\n

For two hours, President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad, making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Planning for other potential threats in the CENTCOM area of operations is Admiral Fallon’s job.\u00a0 Bush and Cheney can pretend everything’s hunky-dory with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia; Admiral Fallon cannot, a responsibility which requires him to stand up to the president.\u00a0 How did a man like that ever get as far as he has?\u00a0 Because the military grew him and promoted him.\u00a0 We need to protect that independence.<\/p>\n

As a former military officer, I’m outraged by this power grab.\u00a0 I’ve resisted commenting on the growing calls for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, but now my<\/em> ox is about to be gored, so I will comment: this administration,\u00a0through its attempts to create a “unitary executive<\/a>,”\u00a0has declared war on the U.S. Constitution and\u00a0must be stopped.\u00a0 Will Bush and Cheney simply run out of time before they can finish off our constitutional system of checks and balances?\u00a0 We’d be foolish to count on that.<\/p>\n

Credit where credit’s due:<\/em> Avedon Carol<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update (12\/19\/07):<\/em><\/font> Outrage widespread.\u00a0 Proposal withdrawn<\/a>.\u00a0 For now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up to the rank of colonel, the military grows and promotes its own officers, independent of political influence.\u00a0 This is sacred.\u00a0 Is there a military man or woman anywhere, active or retired, alive or dead, who would not be outraged to learn that President Bush wants to take control of the promotion of military lawyers? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,14,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-current-events","category-military","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}