Trump’s Nuke Plan Raising Alarms Among Military Brass
"They say the strategy led by DoD policy wonks could lead to dangerous nuclear escalation."
"They say the strategy led by DoD policy wonks could lead to dangerous nuclear escalation."
"It would be a worrying development if any president of the United States announced, with little debate or discussion, a plan both to build more tactical nuclear weapons and use them in response to non-nuclear attacks; a nuclear strategy that makes the use of nukes more, not less, likely. But when that president is Donald J. Trump, it should be deemed a national, if not a global, emergency."
"Adding together President Trump’s call to the Saudi king, where they discussed Iran’s 'destabilizing' actions, and a preemptive war authorization bill languishing in the US House, the current danger of a US strike on Iran is just an accident – or a false flag – away."
"This is an insane escalation. It tells every country that the US government believes in the first use of nuclear weapons against any and every country. Those responsible for this document should be committed to insane asylums, not left in policy positions where they can put it into action."
"So, why is Vice-president Mike Pence attending the Winter Olympics in South Korea? Is it because he’s a sports fan who just wants to enjoy the quadrennial spectacle of the Olympic games? Unfortunately, no. Pence is going to the games for political purposes. He intends to use them as an opportunity to level a propaganda attack against North Korea, the communist regime that the U.S. government has long been committed to regime-changing."
"Trump is not the originator of this madness. We have spent decades preparing the slippery slope he is gleefully pushing us down."
"Though lawmakers and concerned citizens alike can justifiably balk at the prospect of Trump becoming ‘Napoleonic‘ or wasting money on the pomp and circumstance of military worship, the far more damning truth is that this is only a natural progression of a decades-long fetish for American militarism, which, from the looks of the current climate in the United States, does not appear to be going anywhere anytime soon."
"It’s true that the federal government used to consist of three branches. Bu that quaint notion disintegrated when the federal government was converted to what is known as a 'national-security state' after World War II. Even though it was done without a constitutional amendment, that conversion effectively added a fourth branch of government to the federal government — the national-security branch, which consists of the NSA, the CIA, and the Pentagon. The addition of that fourth branch fundamentally altered the original three-branch concept, especially because the fourth branch quickly became the most powerful branch. The reason is because ultimately government is force, and the fourth branch is where the most force was concentrated within the new, altered governmental structure."
"The FISA court has always done a dismal job of overseeing the vast surveillance regime it helped spawn. FISA provided a stamp of legitimacy for perpetual deceit and perhaps the worst trampling of constitutional rights in American history. Regardless of the outcome of the current brawl, Washington must radically decrease secret surveillance of the American people."
"Anyone who was paying attention during George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses in 2002 and 2003 would have found Trump’s statements frighteningly familiar: Trump used exactly the same justifications for war with North Korea as Bush had for war with Iraq when standing at the same podium."