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Bush's Burgeoning Body Count: Fallen Legion II

By Nick Turse  Posted by Rob Kall (about the submitter)       (Page 3 of 3 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   No comments

General Kevin P. Byrnes: A Vietnam veteran, he ranked third in seniority among the Army's 11 four-star generals and headed the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRACDOC). While Byrnes was said to have "a previously unblemished record [and] was set to retire" after 36 years of service," he was sacked -- the first case, said Army officials, of a "four-star general being relieved of duty in modern times." The official reasons for this, wrote the Washington Post, were "allegations that he had an extramarital affair with a civilian." But the newspaper also noted, "Relieving a general of his command amid such allegations is extremely unusual, especially given that he was about to retire" and some commentators raised
the possibility that the "White House's need to block anti-torture legislation on detainees" figured into the general's firing. A number of others similarly called attention to the odd fact that, as Ariana Huffington wrote, at the Pentagon, "Torture is Rewarded While Sex is a Firing Offense."


The Mounting Toll


Over the years, presidents who have launched illegitimate military actions and pursued ruinous policies have often left a trail of wrecked careers in their wake. While he publicly defended Lyndon Johnson's policies, Undersecretary of State George Ball privately argued against military escalation in Vietnam, eventually resigning his post in 1966. Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, resigned in protest over the failed military operation to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran, which he had opposed. In all, "eight of Jimmy Carter's cabinet members eventually resigned during his one term in office," while "[o]ther top administration officials, including Carter's Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, were forced out" because of unauthorized meetings with PLO leaders."
Analysis of their archives by Lexis-Nexis researchers found that Ronald Reagan "saw all but one of his cabinet positions change hands during his two terms in office from 1981-1989" and that he had a total of "four chiefs of staff and six national security advisors." Lexis-Nexis also determined that "[b]efore he finished his second term in office, [Bill Clinton] had 10 of his original cabinet members resign and several of their replacements also resign." Further, resignations on moral and ethical grounds during the Clinton Administration included "top Department of Health and Human Services officials Peter Edelman, Mary Jo Bane and Wendell Primus." They resigned in protest "over President Clinton's decision to sign a welfare bill that the officials thought would be a disaster for the poor and the country." Meanwhile, in a 1998 article in the New York Times, a then-less-known Judith Miller reported that a then-less-known United Nations weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, had resigned"[from his UN post] charging that the U.N. secretary-general, the Security Council and the Clinton administration had stymied the inspectors" ." Not exactly one of Clinton's "Fallen," but, in light of revelations since, worth mentioning nonetheless.


Over the years, many public servants from many administrations have been fired, forced out, or have quit their posts in protest. Unfortunately no one, to my knowledge, has bothered to catalogue them all. Despite a lack of precise figures, it also seems that no administration in recent memory has come close to the Bush presidency in producing so many high-profile public statements of resignation, dissatisfaction, or anger over administration policies, actions or inaction. Even discounting an entire class of ambiguously "fallen" officials and appointees, from Whitman and Powell to Valerie Plame (who is, apparently, still a CIA employee) and her husband ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson (the one-mission man), there are a seemingly endless number of legionnaires whose names have yet to be inscribed next to the approximately 217 already on "the Fallen Legion Wall." When added to the rolls of the real "Fallen" -- Iraqis and Afghans; Americans and other coalition forces; civilians, guerillas, mercenaries, and soldiers -- the human cost of the Bush administration's actions and policies will prove staggering.


[NOTE: If you know of others, or are one of the "Fallen Legion" yourself, please send the information (and whatever supporting material you would care to supply) to fallenlegionwall@yahoo.com with the subject heading: "fallen legion" to add another name to the "wall." This is a subject TomDispatch will definitely return to in the future.]


Nick Turse works in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University and is the Associate Editor and Research Director of TomDispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch on the military-corporate complex, the homeland security state, and various other topics. In addition to sending in suggestions of possible fallen legionnaires, if you have whistles to blow or muck you think Nick should rake, send your insider information to fallenlegionwall@yahoo.com.



Copyright 2005 Nick Turse


originally published on tomdispatch.com

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Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

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