Posted on 06/28/2009 12:05:22 PM PDT by SloopJohnB
The novel and the movie Seven Days in May were based on a very potential reality. See James Bamford's 2002 book, Body of Secrets, which is about the National Security Agency. General Edwin Walker, mentioned in another review, was only the least of what was going on in the higher echelons of the U.S. military near the end of the Eisenhower Administration and the beginning of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration.
At military bases, and even at the National War College in Washington, the most rabid preachings took place about the real threat of communism coming not from Russia or Cuba, but from high-ups in the domestic power structure, including the government.
The entire Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), led by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, was very right wing and rabidly obsessed with the idea that American civilization could not endure unless Cuba was militarily conquered and occupied in the long-term. They repeatedly threw suggestions for this at Eisenhower, who never took the bit. When Ike left the Oval Office and Kennedy, who had never been a military higher-up, replaced him, Lemnitzer felt adrift and became very paranoid. There were all sorts of JCS contingency plans, never implemented, for creating an incident that could be blamed falsely on the Russians and/or the Cubans to justify an invasion - a sort of second sinking of the battleship Maine.
The more far-fetched of these ideas included terrorism at home to be blamed on Cuba and an attack on a friendly Central American country that could be falsely blamed on Cuba, all without the President's approval. Lemnitzer, according to Bamford, had little use for the concept of civilian control of the military. In fact,enough of this atmosphere within the U.S. military was in the wind that there was a secret Congressional inquiry into the potential for a military takeover of the government, which was based on more than idle wonder. Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee (the father of the recent Vice President), a member of the investigating committee, called for Lemnitzer's firing. Kennedy did not fire him, but did not re-appoint him to a second term as Chairman, preferring the more rational Maxwell Taylor.
>>< Abort, Revolt, Ignore? >
>
>Like the first two and added it to my tagline!!
>
>Ignore too dangerous and how we got into this fine mess.
Agreed, however it was more a reference to the old DOS days where there was an error message reading: “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abort,_Retry,_Ignore%3F
http://www.globalnets.com/education/htmlbook/poepoem.html
"10-4, WILCO, over and out!!"
Please forward it as much as possible.
*his name is obozo, because hes nothing more than a pathetic Marxist clown.
First posted on FR months before the November "election"
While it's not profesionally done it speaks a great deal of truth IMO.
Pray we don’t get there.
And realize that it would be a very long and bloody fight. The cost may not be worth it.
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