Posted on 04/29/2019 10:41:26 PM PDT by bitt
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis declined to carry out orders from President Trump or otherwise limited his options in various attempts to prevent tensions with North Korea, Iran and Syria from escalating, The New Yorker reported Monday, the latest account of Trump’s own officials trying to check his worst instincts.
"The president thinks out loud. Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation," a former senior national security official told The New Yorker.
"We prevented a lot of bad things from happening."
In 2017, following a series of North Korean ballistic missile tests, Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin removing the spouses and children of military personnel from South Korea, where the U.S. military has a base. An administration official told the magazine that "Mattis just ignored" the order.
In another instance in the fall of 2017, as White House officials were planning a private meeting at Camp David to develop military options for a possible conflict with North Korea, Mattis allegedly stopped the gathering from happening. He ignored a request from then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster to send officers and planners, according to a former senior administration official.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
That figures.
Thanks.
I don’t know nearly enough about the military or this situation or Butler to give an adequate response.
I would not be shocked to learn the military has been used for less than perfect reasons.
Nonetheless, that is the basis of his right to ignore orders.
>> Disobeying a direct order is a punishable offense.
He left the Haditha Marines to hang.
I didn’t go read the article but from the excerpt I note they aren’t quoting Mattis they are quoting an anonymous former senior national security official. I take anonymous sources with a grain of salt.
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