Counterthink - High-ranking military leaders fail to provide ethical leadership

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NTN: Counterthink - High-ranking military leaders fail to

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Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:37:38 -0700

 

 

 

NewsTarget Insider COUNTERTHINK alert (www.CounterThink.com)

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Today on CounterThink, guest columnist Paul Craig Roberts examines

the totalitarian military culture that led to the unjust U.S. invasion

of Iraq despite the misgivings of high-ranking military officers and

cabinet members. Read this insightful feature to learn why Roberts

believes the system is failing to protect us from the potential

Armageddon of a U.S. attack on Iran.

 

 

( Powell's whole successful career (since Vietnam) has been based upon

helping cover up the truth, promoting lies and kissing politicians

butts. Why stop now? Maybe to distance him from Bush and to position

him for some puppet position in 2008.)

 

 

 

 

Read the full story at http://www.counterthink.org/019320.html

 

Iraq, Iran: Following Orders Is No Excuse

 

Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 by Paul Craig Roberts

 

" A hoax on the American people, the international community, and the

United Nations Security Council. "

 

That is how Secretary of State General Colin Powell's February 2003

Iraq WMD speech to the UN was described last Friday (Feb. 3) on PBS by

one who ought to know, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to

Secretary Powell.

 

In a February 2005 interview with Barbara Walters on ABC News " 20/20 "

program, Powell himself declared his UN Iraq speech to be a blot on

his reputation. Since departing the Bush administration, both

Wilkerson and Powell have made it completely clear that they had

serious doubts about the " evidence " of Iraqi weapons of mass

destruction and malevolent Iraqi intentions that was loaded by the

White House into Powell's UN speech, a speech designed by

neoconservatives to initiate the invasion of Iraq. Both Powell and

Wilkerson knew that the " evidence " was greatly overstated if not an

outright fabrication. What if Secretary Powell had shared his doubts

with the UN? What if instead of reading the Speech of Lies Powell had

addressed the UN as follows:

 

" As a loyal soldier following orders I came here today intending to

deliver the Bush Administration's evidence against Saddam Hussein. Now

that I am standing here before you, I find myself caught in conflict

between following orders and doing the right thing. I should have

resolved this conflict before I arrived. I do so now by delivering the

speech to you in its written form -- here it is -- but I refuse to

deliver it out of my mouth. I cannot participate in an act of

deception against the United Nations Security Council, the

international community, and the American people. I have no confidence

in the evidence in the speech. Under the Nuremberg Standard

established by the United States in the trials of Nazi war criminals,

following orders is no excuse. I will not participate in the war crime

of naked aggression against another state. I hereby resign as

Secretary of State of the United States. "

 

Related book: Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in

Bush's War on Iraq The book includes a glossary- " Propaganda: A User's

Guide " - and resources to help Americans sort through the deceptions to

see the strings behind Washington's campaign to sell the Iraq war to

the public... continues...

(Concept: Iraq)

 

 

Powell would have saved the world from a strategic blunder, the

disastrous consequences of which are only beginning to unfold. The

maelstrom set in motion by the treachery of the neoconservatives,

people who Powell has described as " crazy, " has already cost tens of

thousands of dead and wounded and hundreds of billions of dollars,

destroyed America's reputation, and radicalized Middle East politics.

 

If Powell had refused three years ago to deliver the Speech of Lies,

we would not now be watching an identical duplicity being rolled out

against Iran. The ultimate cost of the deception being practiced on

the American people will dwarf the terrible price that has already

been paid. Why didn't Powell do the right thing? His own reputation

would have been forever secure as a man of integrity. Why did he

sacrifice his integrity to the crooked scheme of his commander in chief?

 

Alas, that is the way our generals are bred. In the politicized US

military, no officer can advance beyond the rank of Lt. Col. unless he

toes the political line. The game is played to advance in rank as high

as possible, collect the pension, and be rewarded for compliant

behavior with consultancies. Real leadership means making waves, and

that is not tolerated. Even in rare instances of a real man, concerned

with the honor of his country and the safety of his troops, reaching

the top, he is powerless to prevent disastrous mistakes of the

ignorant civilian authorities.

 

Consider the fate of US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, who

correctly informed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that the US invasion

force was not sufficiently numerous to successfully occupy and subdue

Iraq once the pitched battles were over.

 

Shinseki was fired for telling the truth -- as was Secretary of the

Army Thomas White, Lt. Gen. John Riggs, and four-star general Kevin P.

Byrnes.

 

Riggs was framed, demoted, and retired for saying that the US army was

overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops.

 

 

Byrnes, who was in charge of Army training, was framed on adultery

charges for objecting to bottom of the barrel recruitment policies

that accepted criminals and immigrants with a lack of English proficiency.

 

Nothing like having an army that can't understand orders.

 

The only way a military can constrain their civilian masters from

cooking up a war is to resign en masse. If every general and colonel

had resigned, there would have been no invasion of Iraq.

 

But this would require a military with leadership and a tradition of

sticking together. A military in which promotion is the highest virtue

is powerless to prevent disastrous mistakes, such as the invasion of Iraq.

 

The Bush administration went to war on the basis of its fantasy that

if merely a few US troops marched into Iraq, the regime would collapse

and the population would welcome Americans as liberators with flowers

and kisses. It was to be a " cakewalk war. "

 

No general officer in the US military believed that. Yet few spoke out

(Marine General Anthony Zinni was a notable exception). The entire US

military command could only produce a handful of men to warn of the

looming catastrophe. Who can forget the orchestrated media dismissals

of " over-cautious generals " that greeted these few?

 

The reason Colin Powell disgraced himself is that he could not free

himself of the conditioning that breeds success in the US military.

 

Who today will stand up to stop the potential Armageddon of a US

attack on Iran?

 

Dr. Roberts is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal

and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the

co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions

 

 

 

Iraq, Iran: Following Orders Is No Excuse

Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 by Paul Craig Roberts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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