This is kind of crazy:
It is a morbid theme, but one that no superpower can ignore. So the Obama administration has quietly reviewed, and revised, the sequence in which Pentagon civilian officials would take command should Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates die unexpectedly, say in a surprise attack.
An executive order published without fanfare this month does away with a system for Pentagon succession instituted by former President George W. Bush, which played down the service secretaries and elevated positions held at the time by trusted aides to Donald H. Rumsfeld, who as defense secretary wanted it that way.
These plans governing Pentagon succession are intended to guarantee civilian control of the military during a doomsday situation, like a nuclear strike or a terrorist attack, when the defense secretary could be taken out of action at the moment when war-fighting decisions must be made. The Bush order, issued in December 2005, continued the traditional sequence of the deputy defense secretary as next in line. But it booted the Army secretary out of the No. 3 slot in the order of succession, in favor of the under secretary of defense for intelligence.
They basically changed the protocol in order to make sure cronies were in charge no matter what happened. Every time you can’t think you will be surprised by these guys, they go out and one-up themselves.
Earl
Yes, crazy, but expected at this point…
SGEW
Does anyone remember Pres. Bush’s 2007 Continuity Of Government directive?
Good times.
El Cid
Clearly this can only mean that Obama is preparing to impose martial law, which will be necessary for the giant uprising of citizen protest following the ramming of death panels down America’s throat in the giant Potomac Spring revolution led by Steve King and Michelle Bachmann. Also Obama changing any policies by Bush Jr. is un-Constitutional.
Mike Kay
remember when rumsfeld fired the sec of the army, Thomas White, because he supported Shinseki.
Mike Kay
See, the Greenwald and the firebaggers are right: Obama is just like Bush
MattF
One can only wonder what Gates thought when he took over at Defense and found booby traps buried all over the place. Alice in Wonderland… except that the Mad Hatter has a machine gun.
JGabriel
Wasn’t this covered at the time? I could be wrong, but I seem to remember some stink being made – in a few diaries at GOS and maybe a mention or two at TPM and/or C&L? – about changes to the succession rules a few years back.
Does anyone remember something like that, or am I just suffering from deja vu dementia again?
.
Gozer
Wasn’t the undersec def. for intel at the time that crazy christian lt. general? Mr. My God Is Better Than Your God?
EDIT: Apparently Mr. Supa-Christian (William Boykin) was a deputy undersec. According to his wiki page one of the Ft. Bragg shrinks wanted to disqualify him from Delta Force for being too religious.
jibeaux
Anyone ever seen the movie In the Loop, with a Rumsfeldian character named Linton Barwick? Who is hilariously insulted by a Scot who says he knows how he feels about cursing, so he calls him an f-star-star-cunt? I just wish we could all collectively call Rumsfeld that.
jeffreyw
@JGabriel: I remember it now that it is mentioned here. Caused a ripple, I’m not interested enough now to look for any articles/blog posts about it.
SGEW
@Mike Kay:
Well, there was also the internal disagreement over weapons platforms, not to mention the Enron connection. So, to be fair, Sec. White’s resignation probably wasn’t entirely motivated by the Rumsfeld – Shinseki power struggle.
Alex S.
So why did they do this? Why change the succession laws when your team wasn’t going to be in power much longer? Did the 2006 election stop their plans?
Brian J
Chalk this up to one more reason why, unless the entire party becomes worse than Joe Lieberman or as corrupt as the Bush administration, I will continue to vote for the Democrats. They may disappoint me far more often I would expect, but they are so far above the other party that it’s hard to describe. Not a high hill to climb, sure, but I’ll take what I can get.
Mike E
@jibeaux:
Rumsfeld revenge fantasy.
Brian J
@El Cid:
Whoa. It’s not often that you can summarize an entire party’s platform in two sentences, but you have done it. (I’d laugh harder if it weren’t a true description of the Republicans.)
Mike E
@jibeaux: Rumsfeld revenge fantasy.
gnomedad
@El Cid:
You’re snarking, but I’m sure a lot of the wingers are thinking exactly this.
Mike E
FYWP–I’ll try this again: Rumsfeld revenge fantasy.
Maude
What happened is that somehow, some way, Bush heard that the Third Reich was going to last 1,000 years.
Bush “thought” yeah, me too.
dan robinson
The Bush camp is trying to rehabilitate his image (and their own) and things like this should not be treated quietly.
I used to think that Bush was an deceitful ass. Accounts by Paulson about the meeting called by McCain (when he suspended his campaign) and chaired by Bush show Bush in a different light. McCain was trying to grin his way through the meeting when Obama put the spot light on him. McCain offered a few platitudes and then meeting devolved into an acrimonious rumble with Barney Frank putting the heat to someone. Bush said “I’ve lost control of this meeting” and left.
1) Bush was at least trying to deal with things. He may not have been smart enough to know what to do, but at least he was trying.
2) Bush was not smart enough to stand up to people like Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Who sang the anthem at the Pentagon, Rick Astley?
El Cid
@gnomedad: I might have been “snarking”, but it’s only a summarized quote of what we’ve seen from the TeaTards and right wing partisan resistance radio.
Ash Can
@dan robinson:
Or willing to. He was “the Decider,” all right, except when there was someone else around.
bkny
@JGabriel:
oh yeah, i completely remember these changes — and watching as the story was buried and long-forgotten until now.
rummy was such a hot man-item in those days; no one dared challenge him.
SRW1
At first I thought that would have meant “the dumbest fucking guy on the planet” Dough Feith, (courtesy T. Franks), but then I realized the person in question would have been Stephen Cambone. Either way, a bullet dodged.
srv
Maybe they should code up rules for a SecDef to stay at his post when the country is literally under attack, rather than going sightseeing and playing hero.
ericblair
@srv: Maybe they should code up rules for a SecDef to stay at his post when the country is literally under attack, rather than going sightseeing and playing hero.
Yeah, that caught me at the time, too: what the hell was Rummy doing running around as a medic when he should have had his ass either in The Tank or on a chopper to a continuity-of-government site. There are some key emergency functions that need the President AND the SecDef, so if the shit had really, cosmically, hit the fan we would have had no functioning National Command Authority. Of course, with those two brainiacs at the helm probably the best course of action for a major event was probably do nothing, anyway.
someguy
.
I kind of like the idea of a leader who personally pitches in if an emergency occurs, but then I hadn’t thought that maybe it’s actually a sign of poor character until just now.
someguy
That would be a sign of gutlessness, which is what Bush showed when he flew to Nebraska on 9/11, instead of returning to D.C. when we were under attack.
Mike in NC
When Rummy dies — can’t be soon enough — they’ll need to dig an extremely deep hole to bury him in to keep the stench from getting out. Poeple at DOD partied late into the night when he quit.
Nellcote
@SRW1:
YIKES! It’s still shocking to see who was running the country under BushCo.
Mnemosyne
@dan robinson:
I think it took him way too long to figure out they were untrustworthy. I figured that out the day that Cheney announced that he had done an extensive, nationwide search for the best possible VP candidate and it just happened to be himself.
For all of the fuckups of Katrina, it did seem to give Bush half a clue that he was getting bad advice, because some things started to change around that time and he wasn’t taking Rummy’s and Cheney’s advice like he used to.