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| OMG! What if Trump orders this before Jan. 20! But that cannot happen, read on to see why - and why Nancy Pelosi's urging of a military coup against Trump must be condemned. |
Even the New York Times characterizes one of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's recent actions as coming narrowly close to inciting a military coup against the president. According to the NYT,
Ms. Pelosi also said she had spoken with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes.” . . .
But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.
Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.
The NYT did not have to print what those Pentagon officials said. That the reporter and editor included it proves they agreed with that assessment.
And yet, somehow it is only Donald Trump who is trying to destroy the foundations of our government, amirite?
Reuters reported the phone call, too, with a truly uninformed nitwit being quoted:
While Pelosi’s letter highlights the concern among lawmakers about what Trump may try to do during his remaining time in office, there are questions about what Milley or anyone could actually do to stop a president from using nuclear weapons.
“There is no legal way to do this. The president has sole, unfettered authority to order the use of nuclear weapons with no ‘second vote’ required,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.
I am sure Prof. Lewis is an expert on something. Nuclear launch procedures are definitely not one of them. This sentence he spoke is factually incorrect, period: "The president has sole, unfettered authority to order the use of nuclear weapons with no ‘second vote’ required."
I was a nuclear-target analyst during part of my military career. I decrypted and validated Nuclear Control Orders, which are the most tightly controlled messages and actions used by the Defense Department, and in two assignments I would have been directly in the chain of command had actual launch orders come down. I can tell you authoritatively that Nancy Pelosi knows bupkus about what it takes to launch a nuke. If she had ever been briefed, she would never have made this phone call.
Fact: Only the president can originate the order for a nuclear strike by US armed forces, but the president is only one of the people who must approve the launch. Actually, a valid and actionable launch order can be sent and acted upon without the president's order or even his involvement - but only under extremely unusual and pre-defined circumstances. It is safe to say, though not precisely accurate, that a nuclear launch cannot occur without a president's orders -- but it is simply wrong that the president alone (note that word: alone) can order it.
Prof. Lewis' statement would be accurate this way: "The president has the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, but there are other 'votes' that must concur; some are technical procedures and some are not."
I will not list the steps that have to be done to launch a nuke. In fact, I will never reveal them. But here is a clue: the Denzel Washington/Gene Hackman movie Crimson Tide just scared the crap out of me.
And here is Bloomberg News' explanation of launch procedures. It, like the sequence in Crimson Tide, is accurate as far as it goes, but at least it does not say, as Prof. Lewis does, that the people in the chain of command from the White House down to the launch crews are mere puppets in the hands of a president.
It is not credible that any speaker of the House would not know what these procedures are. I do not believe that Pelosi therefore really thought that Trump might go rogue and start nuking Moscow and Peking and Pyongyang (or San Francisco?).
So what was Pelosi really trying to accomplish with this phone call, especially since those of us who served in the Pentagon can tell that Gen. Milley basically told her to mind her own business?
It is not coincidental that Pelosi was already scheduled to be on CBS News 60 Minutes program the evening after she made the call. And she gave a press conference after the call, also. So what was the real purpose of the call? It was certainly not to restrain a rogue president from ordering nuclear launches.
The purpose was the shameless self promotion of one Nancy Pelosi and the further demonization of Donald Trump. It was to signal the American people that they are all going to die in nuclear war except for her heroic steps and that (here is the real point:) President Trump must be removed from office now, either by impeachment or via the 25th Amendment.
As always, Nancy Pelosi has no goal but "get Trump." No matter what, he will be out of office at the stroke of noon Jan. 20. And what will Nancy Pelosi do then?
Maybe this is relevant: "National Guard Troops Deploying to DC Will Come With Lethal Weapons."
Army and Air National Guard members deploying to Washington, D.C. to help guard the capital and stay through the Jan. 20 inauguration will have access to lethal weapons at their commanders' discretion, Guard commanders said Friday.
On inauguration day 2016, Antifa et. al. rioted most of the day and burned down blocks of D.C.'s stores and buildings. Who was sent to bring them under control? DC police whose use of rubber stun bullets itself became the target of violent protests.
But for this inauguration, military weapons. And not by Trump's order, but by demand of D.C.'s Democrat mayor. But remember: Trump is the fascist.
