from the bbc this morning:
There are only two groups of people who would appear to have the capacity to move against Gen Musharraf and arrest him.
One is his immediate subordinates in the army, including the heads of the intelligence services.The other is the corps commanders who constitute the second tier of the leadership of the military.
Gen Musharraf's position depends on the personal loyalty to him of those who serve him and also the institutional loyalty of military men to their chief. On both counts, the odds looked stacked well in favour of Gen Musharraf.
The only positions from which it looks as if a coup could be organised are those of the deputy head of the army and the chiefs of two intelligence services, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI).
Gen Musharraf has handpicked his top men
The present holders of those posts were hand-picked by Gen Musharraf, apparently on the basis of his understanding of their loyalty and competence.
now, i have hope that our military would rise up if something like this happened here, but of course, now our military is not only countered by, but actually is incorporating a private security firm that has, in the past, disarmed out military in iraq....its very, very concerning...privitization is NOT the answer in very case.
....and then i googled "united states military, bush appointments"and found these
Former Iran-Contragate Officials Call the Shotsand
Bear in mind that Richard Armitage had served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security under the Reagan Administration. "He worked closely with Oliver North and was involved in the Iran-contra arms smuggling scandal." 16
In many regards, the pattern of Bush Junior appointments replicate the Iran-Contragate team of the Reagan and Bush senior administrations:
Published on Thursday, October 16, 2003 by the Los Angeles Timesand
General Casts War in Religious Terms
The top soldier assigned to track down Bin Laden and Hussein is an evangelical Christian who speaks publicly of 'the army of God.'
by Richard T. Cooper
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has assigned the task of tracking down and eliminating Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets to an Army general who sees the war on terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.
Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, is a much-decorated and twice-wounded veteran of covert military operations. From the bloody 1993 clash with Muslim warlords in Somalia chronicled in "Black Hawk Down" and the hunt for Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar to the ill-fated attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, Boykin was in the thick of things......
I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."
Lt. Gen. William G. ‘Jerry’ Boykin, speaking about battle with a Muslim warlord
Yet the former commander and 13-year veteran of the Army's top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."
Song of the day:
Christianizing the Military
by Mary
Earlier this week, Chris Hedges wrote about how deeply embedded the evanglical Christian movement had become in the Pentagon and the military. Chris warns that it is particularly dangerous for the military to be so strongly associated with the Christian Right, and it is even worse that this is happening while there is such a strong suspicion on the part of the Muslim world that the United States was waging a religious war against Islam. And he warns that having a large continguent of the military proclaiming fealty to the Christian Right movement is particularly worrying.
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies
it scares me that we have become so religious in our representations, and that the military is now heavily weighted with bush's so called "base"....i dont want to believe that our military would allow this, but with blackwater and religion, all is fair game, i guess
1 comment:
I’ve been worried about where this whole blackwater thing will lead for a while now. That and the privatization of the government agencies including the military, post office, and infrastructure like roads. There are lots of “opportunities” to literally sell off our country without regard for the consequences.
The “religious right” has been infiltrating government and schools for several decades. I’ve seen the local church encourage a member to run as a democrat because they already had a republican member running to insure they had the state rep position wrapped up. They encourage members to run for the school board and go into teaching, though many home-school their own kids so they can keep them ignorant about “evil” stuff. In my experience, the church members are generally good people who want to do the right thing but unfortunately they tend to be ignorant and narrow minded about a lot of life. Many seem to have gone overboard with the first commandment and think breaking the other commandments is justified so long as they can rationalize that in the end they will be following the first one.
There are a lot of economic “opportunities” in religion. Entertainment, books, insurance scams, start-up telecommunication company franchises, and our current political scams are examples. Good well meaning people fall for this stuff because someone who is a “Christian” with a perfect haircut must be totally trustworthy.
I think the underlying problem is the boxes people put themselves into. For example the person who says he is a “city boy” who deprives himself of seeing how things really work, the real world of plants and animals and bugs in nature and what they are telling us about global warming, life on a farm, or a temple in a cave in the mountains somewhere in Asia. Or, the person who says he’s “country boy” who deprives himself of the excitement and convenience of living in the center of a thriving world class city with all of its culture and history. People tend to want to bring others into our “us” box and put everyone else into a “them” box. One problem is that once someone puts themselves in a box they spend a lot of time rationalizing and justifying it and putting down those not in the “us” box.
I think one of the most evil religious concepts is the whole “eye for an eye” thing that Gandhi said makes everyone blind.
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