Seven Days in April

Over at Common Dreams John Farmer has an excellent commentary, Bush's Band of War-Happy Simpletons. I suggest you go read the entire piece but I'm going to pick three paragraphs out.

Some years ago, a Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey produced a Washington novel called "Seven Days in May" in which a cabal of Pentagon generals plans to depose the nation's civilian leaders and militarize foreign policy. It was a page-turner of a yarn. But they got it all wrong, for now we have the real thing -- and the seizure of power is by Bush civilians in the Pentagon, determined to ignore or overrule the more cautious instincts of the generals and militarize U.S. foreign policy.

Writing in the current issue of the New Yorker, Sy Hersh, perhaps the best investigative reporter of my time, recounts a conversation with a Pentagon adviser who worries about "a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians" -- the neoconservatives around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who, with Vice President Dick Cheney as their enabler, authored the misadventure in Iraq.

Some generals are considering resignation as a means of protest, the adviser told Hersh. It's "a juggernaut that has to be stopped," the adviser added.

When Rep John Murtha came out for a withdrawal from Iraq it was widely assumed that he was channeling the top Pentagon brass. In the last few days we have had no less than six retired flag officers demand that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld step down and as Joe Gandelman reports in spite of the spin from the right this is not routine.

Tin foil hat time
In recent months, or maybe years, tinfoil hats have gone from attire for oddballs to a reasonable precaution. The latest comes from Digby who recounts a CNN interview with Former U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner who thinks the decision to invade Iran has already been made and in fact may have already started. Digby concludes:

My tin foil hat is beeping and honking like crazy right now. These generals coming forward is huge.

I really think it's possible that Bush and Rummy have already got a secret war going on, one that has not been revealed to congress in any form. It's designed that way. Bush is not going to fire Rummy --- he can't. He's already committed himself to this thing. This could be the ultimate action of the unitary executive.

So could it be that this recent attempt by the Pentagon brass to undermine Rumsfeld really an attempt to stop this insanity before it goes any further? Think about it before you put your tinfoil hat away.