A Very Good Piece
by Ray McGovern
"......Two years ago I lectured at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. I found it highly disturbing that, when asked about the oath they took upon entering the academy, several of the "Mids" thought it was to the commander in chief.
This brought to my mind the photos of German generals and admirals (as well as top church leaders and jurists) swearing personal oaths to Hitler. Not our tradition, and yet.....
You may be forgiven for thinking: Isn't 41 years of service enough; isn't resigning in order to remove myself from a chain of command that threatened to make me a war criminal for attacking Iran; isn't making my active opposition known by talking to journalists – isn't all that enough?
With respect, sir, no, that's not enough.
The stakes here are extremely high, and with the integrity you have shown goes still further responsibility. Sadly, the vast majority of your general officer colleagues have, for whatever reason, ducked that responsibility. You are pretty much it......
Indeed, there are clear signs the media have been given their marching orders to support attacking Iran.
At CIA I used to analyze the Soviet press, so you will understand when I refer to the Washington Post and the New York Times as the White House's Pravda and Izvestiya.
Sadly, it is as easy as during the days of the controlled Soviet press to follow the U.S. government's evolving line with a daily reading. In a word, our newspapers are revving up for war on Iran, and have been for some time......
So Mullen and Petraeus live, uninhibited and unembarrassed, to keep searching for Iranian weapons so the media can then tell a story more supportive to efforts to blacken Iran. A fiasco is only a fiasco if folks know about it.....
Always willing to do his part, the malleable CIA chief, Michael Hayden, on April 30 publicly offered his "personal opinion" that Iran is building a nuclear weapon – the National Intelligence Estimate notwithstanding.......
I was one of his first branch chiefs when he was a young, disruptively ambitious CIA analyst. When Ronald Reagan's CIA Director William Casey sought someone to shape CIA analysis to accord with his own conviction that the Soviet Union would never change, Gates leaped at the chance......
Needless to say, Scowcroft was given his walking papers and told never to darken the White House doorstep again.
There is ample evidence that Sharon's successors believe they have a commitment from President Bush to "take care of Iran" before he leaves office, and that the president has done nothing to disabuse them of that notion – no matter the consequences......
What you can do, Admiral Fallon, is speak authoritatively about what is likely to happen – to U.S. forces in Iraq, for example – if Bush orders your successors to begin bombing and missile attacks on Iran.
And you could readily update Scowcroft's remarks, by drawing on what you observed of the Keystone Cops efforts of White House ideologues, like Iran-Contra convict Elliot Abrams, to overturn by force the ascendancy of Hamas in 2006-07 and Hezbollah more recently. (Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress, but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Dec. 24, 1992.)
It is easy to understand why no professional military officer would wish to be in the position of taking orders originating from the likes of Abrams......."
by Ray McGovern
"......Two years ago I lectured at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. I found it highly disturbing that, when asked about the oath they took upon entering the academy, several of the "Mids" thought it was to the commander in chief.
This brought to my mind the photos of German generals and admirals (as well as top church leaders and jurists) swearing personal oaths to Hitler. Not our tradition, and yet.....
You may be forgiven for thinking: Isn't 41 years of service enough; isn't resigning in order to remove myself from a chain of command that threatened to make me a war criminal for attacking Iran; isn't making my active opposition known by talking to journalists – isn't all that enough?
With respect, sir, no, that's not enough.
The stakes here are extremely high, and with the integrity you have shown goes still further responsibility. Sadly, the vast majority of your general officer colleagues have, for whatever reason, ducked that responsibility. You are pretty much it......
Indeed, there are clear signs the media have been given their marching orders to support attacking Iran.
At CIA I used to analyze the Soviet press, so you will understand when I refer to the Washington Post and the New York Times as the White House's Pravda and Izvestiya.
Sadly, it is as easy as during the days of the controlled Soviet press to follow the U.S. government's evolving line with a daily reading. In a word, our newspapers are revving up for war on Iran, and have been for some time......
So Mullen and Petraeus live, uninhibited and unembarrassed, to keep searching for Iranian weapons so the media can then tell a story more supportive to efforts to blacken Iran. A fiasco is only a fiasco if folks know about it.....
Always willing to do his part, the malleable CIA chief, Michael Hayden, on April 30 publicly offered his "personal opinion" that Iran is building a nuclear weapon – the National Intelligence Estimate notwithstanding.......
I was one of his first branch chiefs when he was a young, disruptively ambitious CIA analyst. When Ronald Reagan's CIA Director William Casey sought someone to shape CIA analysis to accord with his own conviction that the Soviet Union would never change, Gates leaped at the chance......
Needless to say, Scowcroft was given his walking papers and told never to darken the White House doorstep again.
There is ample evidence that Sharon's successors believe they have a commitment from President Bush to "take care of Iran" before he leaves office, and that the president has done nothing to disabuse them of that notion – no matter the consequences......
What you can do, Admiral Fallon, is speak authoritatively about what is likely to happen – to U.S. forces in Iraq, for example – if Bush orders your successors to begin bombing and missile attacks on Iran.
And you could readily update Scowcroft's remarks, by drawing on what you observed of the Keystone Cops efforts of White House ideologues, like Iran-Contra convict Elliot Abrams, to overturn by force the ascendancy of Hamas in 2006-07 and Hezbollah more recently. (Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misleading Congress, but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Dec. 24, 1992.)
It is easy to understand why no professional military officer would wish to be in the position of taking orders originating from the likes of Abrams......."
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