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Who Should Manage the Nuclear Weapons Complex, Civilians Or Military?
Lasrick writes "For the first time since 1946, Congress is seriously debating whether the U.S. nuclear weapons complex should be under civilian or military control. That the article is in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is significant, as it was many of the scientists who founded BAS who argued for civilian control in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They believed that atomic energy was too destructive, and the military too secretive, which would possibly thwart scientific discovery and erect a major obstacle to international control and cooperation. The article talks about how management has changed over the decades and explains the discussion that needs to happen before Congress acts."
Whoa, easy, this isn't about government vs. commercial (private), this is about Civilian (government) vs. Military (government, specifically the DOD). So, the mention of a corporation isn't correct.
Isn't the military supposed to be under civilian control already? Have they gone rogue and I just haven't heard of it until now?
The problem is how you define "advisory". Some of the worst acts from our government, both from civilians and military, can be traced back to a private contractor who "advised" a government official to do one thing or another. Sometimes it was "advice" that was just biased to serve the interest of the contractor and the official just wasn't smart enough to pick up on it. Other times free dinners, Christmas presents, "business entertainment", and an implied offer of future employment accompanied the so-called "advice". And more common than we would like to see officials have been simply flat-out bribed to knowingly serve the interests of private corporations and individuals at the expense of taxpayers and risk to citizens.
If you mean that rendition stuff, that's because it has been determined they didn't break any laws. Sorry, but if you're talking accountability by the top brass for that, anything they did was at the direction President Bush and his civilian leadership. They can't go down unless he goes down since it appears Bush didn't take the convenient step of throwing one of them under the bus.
If you mean the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, up to lieutenant colonel rank was tried, as that was the highest level of person who was actually involved (unfortunately, someone didn't read him his rights, letting some charges be dismissed). Above that, his colonel received non-judicial punishment for dereliction of duty, and his general was demoted just because that happened under her command.
But as far as generals in general (haha) being court martialed, it does happen. Just recently they tried the highly respected BG Jeffrey Sinclair of the 82nd Airborne for sexual misconduct with subordinate officers and abuse of his power. This guy was like a god in his unit, practically revered like Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, and he still went down. Even if found not guilty, his career is over.
There is much more accountability if it's military. They don't even have to break a regular criminal law to go down, a simple finding of dereliction of duty is enough. Imagine if our recent high-profile CEOs could have been criminally prosecuted for dereliction of duty, without even having to try to prove intentional fraud.
That never happened, you Trekkie idiot.
I guarantee the 19 year old guard was brought to the admiral's quarters, naked, to be raped by the Admiral and his entire staff, after which, the EM was forces to felch his own ruined asshole with a feeding tube.
It does happen, I saw a full Commander laid out on the deck of a missile tender during a nuclear weapons security drill. When the marines come running and say hit the deck, you damn well better hit the deck. The new (to the tender) Commander didn't think he had to, why I can only guess. Myself and the enlisted guy beside me backed up against the wall and slid down to our butts and sat there. After being told 3 times by the marines, and ignoring them, lets just say the sound of the butt of a weapon against the back of the head is a sick sound. The Commander did try to have the marine brought up on charges, the CO of the tender informed him of who was actually in the wrong.
I worked with the Poseidon sub based missile system, the military makes NO JOKES about safety and deadly force is authorized to protect them, period. Security of anything nuclear, including say spent fuel from a boats nuclear reactor is guarded like For Knox and you will be killed if you try to access any of it you are not authorized and this was before 9/11. I can only imagine it has been even more tightly controlled since then.
So next time, make sure you know what your talking about before calling someone an idiot.