If you feel you’re living in an alternative universe, you can be excused. By all normal standards, up has become down and down has become up. Some of us have seen this coming for a very long time, but for others, it has crept up on them, slowly, slowly, but surely, surely. And still others persist in thinking things remain normal, which says how readily people can be misled by a slight of hand while the other hand of those in power is busy about creating the black magic, assisted by more than a little deceit by their lackeys in the corrupt mass media.
The alleged revelations that came out this week in the new book by professional “It’s Worse Than Watergate” profiteer Bob Woodward and long-time Washington Post reporter Robert Costa help cement the idea that up and down have been reversed. The book’s title, Peril, may be accurate, but for reasons other than the authors intend.
Now let me say at the outset that I am not assuming that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley is guilty of the things he’s accused of, given Woodward’s spotty record in some of his more sensational claims and his use of 200-some (!) unnamed sources in writing the book. And there have been comments made by knowledgeable people who have come down on both sides of the issue. But I do think there should be a full Congressional investigation of Milley and the allegations in an effort to get at the truth. Now do I believe there will be any real accounting? No, I don’t. Already Milley has denied any wrongdoing, without denying the allegations, and Jello-O Joe Biden, looking like a deer in the headlights, has pledged his full support of the general. So much, once more, for respect for the Constitution or the well-being of the country or the truth or the rule of law in this administration, much less the need to perform proper oversight.
I can’t be alone in relating the allegations against Milley to the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. In the film, a renegade general, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (shown in the featured image above, played by actor Sterling Hayden), goes mad and takes over a bomber wing and launches an atomic attack against the Soviet Union. If — and I stress if –the allegations against Milley are true, fiction and reality certainly have merged.
The Milley Plot
So what is this all about? Assuming you haven’t been ensconced in an ice cave in Antarctica the past several days, you’ve heard the shocking claims the book makes. Among other allegations, it says that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley actually called his Chinese counterpart in the waning days of the Trump administration and assured him that America would not launch an attack and, if it did, he’d alert him in advance. According to reporting on the book by the Washington Post, Milley made two calls to Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, the first on Oct. 30, 2020, four days before the presidential election, and again on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the protest at the Capitol.
“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley is reported to have told Li. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”
Milley, the book alleges, went on to assure Li that he would alert him in the event of a U.S. attack.
“General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise,” Milley is said to have told his Chinese counterpart.
Milley, according to the book, also inserted himself into the chain of command in ways neither constitutionally nor otherwise permitted. The book says he demanded pledges of allegiance to himself by senior military officials in the National Military Command Center, insisting that they not take orders from anyone if he was “not part of the procedure.”
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See the interview of Project Dynamo’s Jen Wilson on Steve Hilton’s The Next Revolution
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Now if these allegations are accurate — as the authors insist they are — then Milley should immediately be removed from his post and face charges as serious as these allegations indicate. While the crime of treason can only be charged in time of war, there are other laws — possibly sedition, or, if there was a real insurrection, this would be it — that apply. Further, one has to ask, given the seriousness of the allegations, why did Woodward and Costa sit on them all these months and not pass them to the appropriate authorities? There is the crime known as misprision of felony, which would appear to apply in this case to the authors.
Naturally — need we wonder? — these acts, again, if true, which in wartime would be considered treasonous, were inspired by the rampant, if unfounded, view that the Orange Man in the White House was off his rocker and would use a nuclear strike on China as a way of — what? — securing his place as President. Milley, according to the book, was egged on by none other than Speaker Nancy Pelosi — speaking of unhinged — who is said to have called the President, and Commander-in-Chief, “crazy.”
The Nexus of a Coup d’Etat
“What I’m saying to you is that if they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do?” Pelosi is reported to have said. “And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this? You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time.”
The book says Milley agreed with her “on everything.” And if Milley took his cue from Pelosi, that would implicate her in whatever crimes Milley may have committed.
Never mind that others who were present in the White House at the time, and otherwise in close contact with the President, say the idea that Trump was not in full control of his faculties or planned some sort of nuclear attack is utter nonsense. Notably, among others, another general, retired Lt. Gen. Joseph “Keith” Kellogg, who served as Chief of Staff of the National Security Council, has said Milley “needs to resign or he should be removed.”
Until the facts are sorted, including a full review of the transcripts of the calls and testimony under oath by all concerned, those would be reasonable expectations in a constitutionally ruled nation which, by any means, wishes to avoid governance by military coup. Given the further incompetence and malfeasance shown by Milley and others, from Biden (who, as Commander-in-Chief bears ultimate responsibility) on down, in the recent disastrous withdrawal — surrender is a more apt term — from Afghanistan, resignations or removals would be warranted for that alone. But as I said in a recent post, there seems to no longer exist any sense of shame, disgrace, or even admission of failure in this country, and so far no one responsible for this debacle has indicated any acknowledgment of the massive failure they designed and oversaw.
As troubling, if not predictable, is how those on the left and in the corrupt media, who normally, one might think, would be opposed to military rule, have circled the wagons around Milley, as if he’s some sort of national hero. It’s impossible to add insult or exaggeration to the degraded state of most of the American media, and if the country’s democracy further recedes until it no longer is recognizable, as it might, they bear a large part of the responsibility for it.
If you thought military coups were solely the province of Third World countries, or that a renegade general could take things in his own hands only in 1960s black comedies, welcome to the reality of the new America.
Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper, played by actor Sterling Hayden, from Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Used under Fair Use.
Gen. Mark Milley, source unknown, from senegal24news.com. Used under Fair Use.
Nancy Pelosi, source unknown, from americanconservativeherald.com. Used under Fair Use.
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