Okay, it’s a bit off-topic. But there should be no Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Co-equal Chiefs of Staff, yes.
But having a Chairman puts too much prestige and authority in the hands of one single military person. This is something that the Founders most certainly did not want.
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There should only be Two Branches of the US Military, Army and Navy.
The Marine Corp needs to be folded back into the Naval branch and the Air Force back into the Army branch.
Disband the “Space Force” until such time as we achieve FTL capabilities. Right now it’s just another useless bureaucracy.
“Lemnitzer commands the 7th Infantry Division during the Korean War, and he is selected by Pres. Eisenhower to become the fourth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before retiring, he is named NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.”
Well, that’s one way of saying that Kennedy fired him from the Joint Chiefs after he got sick of all the crazy stuff he kept proposing, like a “surprise” nuclear attack on the USSR, or Operation Northwoods, hijacking US domestic airliners in a false flag to blame on Cuba.
I met and spoke to Vessey in the middle of the night in the Pentagon Intelligence Command Center. It was during the 1985 Athens TWA highjacking. My job was to take telex off the printers and hang them on clipboards by topic on a wall. I was told to not let anyone except the battle Staff touch them because the analysts would still sometimes take them back to their desks to read. I would xerox them if they wanted a copy, but no one could touch them. Written warnings were in big letters on the wall. My job was to be there and ensure that order was obeyed.
Gen Vessey was in his civvies reading them. He took one down so I proceeded to tell him to put the fn thing back. He did! Then the Colonel who ran the battle Staff told me who I just yelled at was. Vessey was cool, though. I apologized and said I didn’t know. He said, “No problem, sergeant glad to see you doing your job!”
Leahy was not only the Chief of Staff, he was also Roosevelts Military adviser and for the last year of his Presidency the unofficial President of U.S. handling many of Roosevelt’s duties as his health declined. He was without a doubt the second most powerful man in the War, wherever Roosevelt went so did Leahy.