Gen Milley: Traitor

[rogue06]

I can imagine a US president and Xi meeting and they might bring along their generals to make sure they don't misspeak about something, like how many naval vessels are in a specific sea (something like that).

What I can't imagine is generals from both sides getting together on their own for ... anything.

More often than not it has been a president who have done things like inadvertently reveal pretty highly classified information. Both Obama and Trump did it. And Biden literally gave Putin a list of specific parts of our infrastructure that he better not hack because they are too crucial to tamper with

[Ronson]

More often than not it has been a president who have done things like inadvertently reveal pretty highly classified information. Both Obama and Trump did it. And Biden literally gave Putin a list of specific parts of our infrastructure that he better not hack because they are too crucial to tamper with

Loose lips ...

It's logical that presidents more often than generals are letting secrets out, since generals are supposed to keep their mouths shut (for the most part). It illustrates that we aren't getting the best and the brightest in the White House.

[Cow Poke]

Loose lips ...

It's logical that presidents more often than generals are letting secrets out, since generals are supposed to keep their mouths shut (for the most part). It illustrates that we aren't getting the best and the brightest in the White House.

What's interesting is that the Democrats had already rushed to his defense in the disastrous exit from Afghanistan. He's their GUY!!!!!

[rogue06]

It's starting to look like that the reason the Chicoms and a couple others were nervous and needed reassuring in the first place was due to Milley running around expressing his paranoid fantasies to anyone who would listen.

[Stoic]

It's starting to look like that the reason the Chicoms and a couple others were nervous and needed reassuring in the first place was due to Milley running around expressing his paranoid fantasies to anyone who would listen.

I wouldn't hold it against anyone for thinking that Trump was insane after the way he responded to losing the election.

[Gondwanaland]

Trump Rhetoric Prompted Joint Chiefs Chairman To Assure China U.S. Attack Was Not Imminent

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be okay,” Milley told him. “We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.”

According to the book, Milley even went so far as to pledge he would alert his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack, stressing the rapport they’d established through a backchannel. “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.” Li reportedly took Milley at his word.


https://hillreporter.com/report-trum...mminent-112394

That sounds an awful lot like providing aid and comfort to the enemy to me. How is this man not in front of a courtmartial tribunal right now?

[rogue06]

I wouldn't hold it against anyone for thinking that Trump was insane after the way he responded to losing the election.

So it was a good idea for him to run around doing his best imitation of Chicken Little ("The Trump is falling! The Trump is falling!"), raising fears in friends and foe alike.

I thought you were just arguing that we should not raise fear in our enemies because it could cause them to strike first. Well, Miley was doing just that and even upping the ante to nuclear sneak attack threat. So, wouldn't this risk the Chicoms striking first with nukes thanks to Milley's spreading his paranoid fantasies?

Sure sounds like you're trying to have it both ways.

[Gondwanaland]

Moreover, it looks like he was asking senior officers to swear an oath to him.

This was verging on a military coup.

Indeed, that was my thought when I heard this described on the radio this morning.

[Stoic]

So it was a good idea for him to run around doing his best imitation of Chicken Little ("The Trump is falling! The Trump is falling!"), raising fears in friends and foe alike.

I thought you were just arguing that we should not raise fear in our enemies because it could cause them to strike first. Well, Miley was doing just that and even upping the ante to nuclear sneak attack threat. So, wouldn't this risk the Chicoms striking first with nukes thanks to Milley's spreading his paranoid fantasies?

Sure sounds like you're trying to have it both ways.

You are assuming without evidence that Milley was the only one who was concerned about Trump's state of mind.

[Stoic]

I do think Biden needs to get rid of him. I mean, what if Biden, for some reason, thought it was appropriate to launch a nuclear attack?

Can't have the military getting in his way, can we?

[Cow Poke]

Trump Acting Defense Secretary Miller 'Did Not' Authorize Milley China Calls

Top U.S. military commander Gen. Mark Milley was never authorized to have secret calls with his Chinese counterpart in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency over concerns Trump could spark a war, former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller told Fox News Wednesday.

Miller added that if the allegations prove true, the general must resign immediately or be ousted.

The phone calls were described in excerpts from the forthcoming book “Peril” by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The book says Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that he would warn his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack.

In a statement to Fox News, Miller called the allegations “disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination” and said the U.S. Armed Forces, from its inception, has "operated under the inviolable principle of civilian control of the military."

"The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer whose sole role is providing military-specific advice to the president, and by law is prohibited from exercising executive authority to command forces," Miller said. "The chain of command runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense, not through the Chairman."

Milley, who was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2019 by Trump and kept on by Biden, does not command any troops but acts as an adviser to the president and to the secretary of defense.

[rogue06]

You are assuming without evidence that Milley was the only one who was concerned about Trump's state of mind.

You are vainly trying to insert red herrings to distract from your contradictory positions.

There's a word for that.

[rogue06]

Trump Acting Defense Secretary Miller 'Did Not' Authorize Milley China Calls

Top U.S. military commander Gen. Mark Milley was never authorized to have secret calls with his Chinese counterpart in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency over concerns Trump could spark a war, former acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller told Fox News Wednesday.

Miller added that if the allegations prove true, the general must resign immediately or be ousted.

The phone calls were described in excerpts from the forthcoming book “Peril” by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The book says Milley told Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that he would warn his counterpart in the event of a U.S. attack.

In a statement to Fox News, Miller called the allegations “disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination” and said the U.S. Armed Forces, from its inception, has "operated under the inviolable principle of civilian control of the military."

"The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer whose sole role is providing military-specific advice to the president, and by law is prohibited from exercising executive authority to command forces," Miller said. "The chain of command runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense, not through the Chairman."

Milley, who was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2019 by Trump and kept on by Biden, does not command any troops but acts as an adviser to the president and to the secretary of defense.

Ya ninja'd me

Source: Trump Defense Sec. Miller denies giving Milley OK to China call

Then-President Donald Trump‘s last secretary of defense said Wednesday that he did not sign off on a call from Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his Chinese counterpart days after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Christopher Miller, who led the Pentagon on an acting basis between the 2020 presidential election and the inauguration of Joe Biden, told Fox News that Milley’s action “represents a disgraceful and unprecedented act of insubordination by the Nation’s top military officer”.

The Jan. 8 phone conversation between Milley and People’s Liberation Army Gen. Li Zuocheng is detailed in the forthcoming book “Peril,” written by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward and reporter Robert Costa. The authors report that Milley told Li that the US government was “100 percent steady. Everything’s fine. But democracy can be sloppy sometimes.”

Woodward and Costa write, Milley feared Trump had suffered a “mental decline” following his defeat by Biden the previous November — and told senior military officers to check the validity of any orders the lame-duck president issued involving nuclear weapons with Milley himself.

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the highest-ranking military officer whose sole role is providing military-specific advice to the president, and by law is prohibited from exercising executive authority to command forces,” Miller said Wednesday. “The chain of command runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense, not through the Chairman.”

Woodward and Costa also report in their book that Milley, the top-ranking US military officer, called Li in October of 2020 and reassured his Beijing counterpart that “we are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.” In fact, Milley reportedly added, if Trump did order military action against China, “I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”

On Wednesday, Miller denied a report by Fox News that the October and January calls were carried out with the full knowledge of then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Miller himself, respectively. His statement added that if the details of the calls as reported by Woodward and Costa were true, then Milley “must resign immediately or be fired by the Secretary of Defense to guarantee the sanctity of the officer corps.”

“Pursuit of partisan politics and individual self-interests are a violation of an officer’s sacred duty and have no place in the United States military,” said Miller, who noted that “a lesser ranking officer accused of such behavior would immediately be relieved of duty pending a thorough and independent investigation.”

Miller also echoed Trump’s denial that he had any intention of starting a war with China. Woodward and Costa report that the October call from Milley to Li stemmed from intelligence that Beijing believed a US attack was imminent.

“Any accusations that President Trump was intent on starting a war with China are completely unfounded,” Miller said. “President Trump absolutely believed and advocated for a more aggressive approach to China, but he was elected to end our Nation’s wars, not start new ones. I was proud to play a small role in achieving those goals.”

Miller concluded his statement by saying that he looked forward to “a full, non-partisan investigation of the accusations made by Woodward to guarantee that the genius of our Founders and following generations that established a system and culture of the subservience of our military – the most powerful force in our Nation – to civilian control endures.”

Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for the Joint Staff, acknowledged earlier Wednesday that the conversations between Milley and Li took place and claimed they were “in keeping with [his] duties and responsibilities conveying reassurance in order to maintain strategic stability.”

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Biden “has complete confidence” in Milley’s “leadership, his patriotism and his fidelity to our Constitution.” Biden himself echoed that comment moments later, telling reporters that “I have great confidence in General Milley.”

Trump said in his statement released Tuesday that Milley — who he called “Dumbass” — should be “tried for TREASON” if the report by Woodward and Costa proved true “in that he would have been dealing with his Chinese counterpart behind the President’s back and telling China that he would be giving them notification ‘of an attack.’ Can’t do that!”

In the same statement, the 45th president said he believed the report to be “Fake News concocted by a weak and ineffective General together with two authors who I refused to give an interview to because they write fiction, not fact.”

“I never even thought of attacking China — and China knows that,” Trump insisted. “The people that fabricated the story are sick and demented, and the people who print it are just as bad.”


Source

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[Stoic]

You are vainly trying to insert red herrings to distract from your contradictory positions.

There's a word for that.

There's a word for saying I have contradictory positions when I don't.

[Terraceth]

That sounds an awful lot like providing aid and comfort to the enemy to me. How is this man not in front of a courtmartial tribunal right now?

It isn't providing aid and comfort to the enemy because China isn't an enemy in the sense of the term used in the Constitution. To recap, the United States Constitution says the following: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

Compared to many countries, the United States actually has a rather narrow definition of treason--this was intentional due to the fact in the past some British rulers would slap their political enemies with accusations of treason to get rid of them. While the US did take those definitions of treason from the Treason Act that Britain had, it cut out some of the other definitions that were used by sovereigns to accuse enemies, leaving only the two above.

What's important here, though, is the meaning of "enemies." It refers specifically to states that the United States is in active hostilities against. That, clearly, is not China. China may not be friendly to the US--well, outside of the money they can get from business anyway--but that doesn't make it an enemy.

This article explains it fairly well:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...5fc_story.html

It is, in fact, treasonable to aid the “enemies” of the United States.

But enemies are defined very precisely under American treason law. An enemy is a nation or an organization with which the United States is in a declared or open war . Nations with whom we are formally at peace, such as Russia, are not enemies. (Indeed, a treason prosecution naming Russia as an enemy would be tantamount to a declaration of war.) Russia is a strategic adversary whose interests are frequently at odds with those of the United States, but for purposes of treason law it is no different than Canada or France or even the American Red Cross. The details of the alleged connections between Russia and Trump officials are therefore irrelevant to treason law.

This was true even in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg handed over nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, they were tried and executed for espionage, not treason. Indeed, Trump could give the U.S. nuclear codes to Vladimir Putin or bug the Oval Office with a direct line to the Kremlin and it would not be treason, as a legal matter. Of course, such conduct would violate various laws and would constitute grounds for impeachment as a “high crime and misdemeanor” — the framers fully understood that there could be cases of reprehensible disloyalty that might escape the narrow confines of the treason clause.

So who are the current enemies of the United States? North Korea is a possible enemy, since the Korean War was never formally concluded. Certain nonstate actors can also count as enemies, and terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State probably fit the definition.

And before anyone dismisses it by saying the Washington Post is liberal, note that (1) the context of that is defending the Trump administration from accusations of treason, and (2) it was written by a law professor, not a simple journalist.

Milley's actions (if these actions have been accurately described) may have violated other laws--military or civil--but weren't treason.