ONE COUP WAS BAD ENOUGH, RIGHT? STILL... THE ONLY CONSTITUTIONAL WAY OUT OF THIS IS FOR PELOSI TO END THE "OFF THE TABLE" NONSENSE

Today's NY Times examines a debate raging over the war and occupation of Iraq-- but not the debate in Congress or among candidates for office or voters or on college campuses. This is a debate among serious active duty Army officers based in Ft. Levenworth, Kansas. And it's a debate, that at its heart goes right to the relationship between the military and the civilian authorities. It starts with who bears more responsibility for mistakes in Iraq-- the Bush Regime or the generals who timidly acquiesced to them.

“The secretary of defense is an easy target,” argued one of the officers, Maj. Kareem P. Montague, 34, a Harvard graduate and a commander in the Third Infantry Division that was the first to reach Baghdad in the 2003 invasion. “It’s easy to pick on the political appointee.”

“But he’s the one that’s responsible,” retorted Maj. Michael J. Zinno, 40, a military planner who worked at the headquarters of the Coalitional Provisional Authority, the former American civilian administration in Iraq.

No, Major Montague shot back, it was more complicated: the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top commanders were part of the decision to send in a small invasion force and not enough troops for the occupation. Only Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who was sidelined after he told Congress that it would take several hundred thousand troops in Iraq, spoke up in public.

“You didn’t hear any of them at the time, other than General Shinseki, screaming, saying that this was untenable,” Major Montague said.

As the war grinds through its fifth year, Fort Leavenworth has become a front line in the military’s tension and soul-searching over Iraq. Here on the bluffs above the Missouri River rising young officers are on a different kind of journey-- an outspoken re-examination of their role in Iraq.

Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling's brilliant and controversial article, "A Failure of Generalship," is required reading at Ft. Levenworth. A premise is that "If he general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results."

But even with the civilian authority in the hands of so illegitimate a force as the Bush Regime-- and even in light of the regime's incompetence, self-serving criminality-- disobeying orders is not something that gets taught in Army 101. The debate at Levenworth, nonetheless, focuses "on where young officers might draw a 'red line,' the point at which they would defy a command from the civilians," even civilians of the low caliber and standing of Bush and Cheney.

“We have an obligation that if our civilian leaders give us an order, unless it is illegal, immoral or unethical, then we’re supposed to execute it, and to not do so would be considered insubordinate,” said Major Timothy Jacobsen, another student. “How do you define what is truly illegal, immoral or unethical? At what point do you cross that threshold where this is no longer right, I need to raise my hand or resign or go to the media?”General Caldwell, who was the top military aide from 2002 to 2004 to the deputy defense secretary at the time, Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq war, would not talk about the meetings he had with Mr. Wolfowitz about the battle plans at the time. “We did have those discussions, and he would engage me on different things, but I’d feel very uncomfortable talking,” General Caldwell said.

Like these officers, we have to ask ourselves that despite the theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections and all that has transpired since then, “Do you want to have a coup d’etat? You kind of have to decide what you want. Do you like the Constitution, or are you so upset about the Iraq war that you’re willing to dismiss the Constitution in just this one instance and hopefully things will be O.K.?"

Yesterday's Times-- and today's Stars and Stripes-- led with a scathing indictment of the Bush Regime's Iraq project by Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top American commander in Iraq. He said what only bloggers have been willing to say out loud-- the the Bush Regime's prosecution of the war has been "incompetent" and he warned that the country is "living a nightmare with no end in sight." Will they call him a dirty fucking hippie too? Don't be silly; of course they will have.

General Sanchez is the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war. Asked following his remarks why he waited nearly a year after his retirement to outline his views, he responded that that it was not the place of active duty officers to challenge lawful orders from civilian authorities.

He blamed the Regime for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability. Sounds like something you;'d expect to read at Firedoglake or Kos or from Glenn Greenwald or Taylor Marsh. They're just been a little ahead of their time. This is the General speaking, not John Amato: "There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders... derelict in their duties [and guilty of a] lust for power.”

glumbert - What if the Military had disclaimers like Pharma Ads?