"What if a Democrat wins?"

Admiral Mike Mullen conflates the "general's revolt" against Rumsfeld with the notion that it is anathema to the senior military that a "Democrat" could win the Presidency:

The highest-ranking U.S. military officer has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the United States approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.

"The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times," wrote Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway."

"No matter which party" is a ridiculous statement. The Democrats hold power in the House and Senate as a matter of course. The Republicans hold power in the Executive Branch as a technical matter only, since they have proven they cannot govern or adhere to actual Congressional oversight.

The statement to the armed forces is the first essay for the journal Mullen has written as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and veteran officers said they could not remember when a similar "all-hands" letter had been issued to remind military personnel to remain outside, if not above, contentious political debate.

The essay can be seen as a reflection of the deep concern among senior officers that the U.S. military, which is paying the highest price in carrying out national security policy, may be drawn into politicking this year.

The war in Iraq already has exceeded the length of World War II and is the longest conflict the United States has fought with an all-volunteer military since the Revolutionary War.

In particular, members of the Joint Chiefs have expressed worries this election year about the influence of retired officers who advise political campaigns, some of whom have publicly called for a change in policy or others who serve as television commentators.

This is what they are most concerned about--pushback against the policy of staying in Iraq for the next hundred years. The DoD is going to align itself with McCain for purely procurement reasons, even though McCain has forced the DoD to accept some bitter pills in recent years. (The air tanker issue being just one example.)

Among the most outspoken were those who joined the so-called generals' revolt in 2006 demanding the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, as well as former officers who have written books attacking the Bush administration's planning for and execution of the war in Iraq.

The so-called general's revolt is exactly correct. It was not a revolt. It was a respectful and honest assessment that change was needed because the troops were paying too high of a price. It was a wake-up call to an out-of-touch defense secretary who had a laughing, dismissive "stuff happens" attitude that was entirely out of touch with reality. It is a proven lie--McCain never really did call for the "firing" of Don Rumsfeld. But for the DoD to consider aligning itself with McCain is proof that what they fear the most is a Democratic administration that will enforce ethics rules, turn off the lucrative spigot of procurement for many, and reduce the contractor work force.

While retired officers have full rights to political activism, their colleagues still in uniform fear its effect on those trying to carry out the mission, especially more junior officers and enlisted personnel. Active-duty military personnel are prohibited from taking part in partisan politics.

Is that name "Boylan" ringing any bells?

"As the nation prepares to elect a new president," Mullen wrote, "we would all do well to remember the promises we made: to obey civilian authority, to support and defend the Constitution and to do our duty at all times."

"Keeping our politics private is a good first step," he added. "The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia."

Mullen said he was inspired to write the essay after receiving a constant stream of legitimate, if troubling, questions while visiting U.S. military personnel around the world, including, "What if a Democrat wins?" and, "What will that do to the mission in Iraq?"

There USED to be an Honor Code, but that is, apparently, gone.

For the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to actually have to make that statement to a professional military is a clear indication that there ALREADY EXISTS a politicization of the military and that there ALREADY IS a problem that Mullen would like to distance himself from. Clearly, Mullen is getting some bizaare correspondence from officers who ought to know better but are, for some unknown reason, openly and flagrantly positing a very troubling question--should they retire en masse on January 20, 2009 or bureaucratically "resist" the orders of a Democratic President as many did against Bill Clinton in the early 1990s?

Given that Mullen felt "compelled" to have to make such statements, it is more than likely imperative that whoever wins in November will have a choice to make. Either cashier vast numbers of senior flag officers or be prepared to wage an ongoing struggle with an intransigent Pentagon bureaucracy.

There is one other point to make--this blog regularly carries a "Friday News Dump" of bad news released after regular business hours on Friday afternoons. The Pentagon does that to hide embarrassing details or information about certain events or policies from the public in order to benefit the Bush Administration. This is proof positive that there already exists a politization of the defense establishment. The next President, should that President be a Democrat, would do well to ensure that bad news is released when bad news happens, regardless of what day it is.

When the Generals Chose Lies Over Their Soldier's Lives...

We are returning this post to the top of the page. This is the story that everyone should be talking about. This is the story that should have us taking to the streets. Stars on the collar do not automatically equate with honor. These shameless men need to be held up and singled out for special scorn and ridicule. They are traitors and they are complicit in the deaths of 1600+ American service members. Hold them accountable.

UPDATED, to fix the link, to categorize some of the items here, and see below for what we propose to do with this subject as a series of posts throughout the next few weeks or so...




Ultimately, we will never view the words "military analyst" or "retired General" in the same light again. We used to look upon these people as noted experts, members of a small elite of military officers that had perspective that few Americans possessed, and, ultimately, honest brokers of the information that they were sharing with the American people. I'm going to use this article from the New York Times to break down how we have traded the lives of soldiers for access, and how a select group of men have betrayed their country for a few measley dollars.

In April 2006, Pentagon officials, starting with then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, met with various "analyts" who were then appearing on various television networks. These "retired military analysts" were also men who sat on the boards of various defense contractors, and were given increased access to people like Rumsfeld in exchange for properly disseminating a pro-administration view that the war in Iraq was going better than what was really going on. At the time of this meeting, there were generals who were opposed to the war, and opposed to Rumsfeld personally, and they had started what was dubbed a "revolt of the generals" in order to get the message across to the American people that the war in Iraq was going off the rails. When the details of that meeting were leaked, and when they were written about in the New York Times, the American people were only given an inkling of what was really going on--and that is, a major campaign was underway to lie to the American people to give the Bush administration political cover:

In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates.

On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.

“I’m an old intel guy,” said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’ ”

“What are you, some kind of a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the Constitution?”

There was little discussion about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals. Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.”

“Frankly,” one participant said, “from a military point of view, the penalty, 2,400 brave Americans whom we lost, 3,000 in an hour and 15 minutes, is relative.”

That's right--at that point, only 2,400 US troops had lost their lives, and it was being bandied about as all "relative." Think of how many we could have saved if the American people had been told the truth.

The meeting ended and Mr. Rumsfeld, appearing pleased and relaxed, took the entire group into a small study and showed off treasured keepsakes from his life, several analysts recalled.

Soon after, analysts hit the airwaves. The Omnitec monitoring reports, circulated to more than 80 officials, confirmed that analysts repeated many of the Pentagon’s talking points: that Mr. Rumsfeld consulted “frequently and sufficiently” with his generals; that he was not “overly concerned” with the criticisms; that the meeting focused “on more important topics at hand,” including the next milestone in Iraq, the formation of a new government.

Days later, Mr. Rumsfeld wrote a memorandum distilling their collective guidance into bullet points. Two were underlined:

“Focus on the Global War on Terror — not simply Iraq. The wider war — the long war.”

“Link Iraq to Iran. Iran is the concern. If we fail in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will help Iran.”

But if Mr. Rumsfeld found the session instructive, at least one participant, General Nash, the ABC analyst, was repulsed.

“I walked away from that session having total disrespect for my fellow commentators, with perhaps one or two exceptions,” he said.

Omnitec was a company hire to--get this--measure just how much the military analysts were able to effectively spread the pro-war message that the Pentagon was trying to put out there. Never again will we look at these men without wondering..."who has bought them off? Have they been co-opted? What boards do they sit on? Does the Secretary of Defense have a hand up their back and is he moving their mouths?

Better yet--how did this even happen? Well, without Congressional oversight, this is how it all came to be:

In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard [General Wayne Allard] said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”

One of the Generals who participated in the elaborate shell game that helped cover up just how badly the war in Iraq was going back in 2005 used an apt analogy that should send shivers down the spine of everyone who knows just how badly the American people were manipulated during the Vietnam War:

Mostly the analysts attended briefings. These sessions, records show, spooled out an alternative narrative, depicting an Iraq bursting with political and economic energy, its security forces blossoming. On the crucial question of troop levels, the briefings echoed the White House line: No reinforcements were needed. The “growing and sophisticated threat” described by Mr. Bremer was instead depicted as degraded, isolated and on the run.

“We’re winning,” a briefing document proclaimed.

One trip participant, General Nash of ABC, said some briefings were so clearly “artificial” that he joked to another group member that they were on “the George Romney memorial trip to Iraq,” a reference to Mr. Romney’s infamous claim that American officials had “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War during a tour there in 1965, while he was governor of Michigan.

At a time when these men could have--COULD HAVE--stepped up and done something to save the lives of US troops by pointing out the woeful shortages of equipment, these men went before the American people and tried to spin the situation. And I use spin as a euphemism for "fuck the soldiers over to provide political cover for the Bush Administration."

Back in Washington, Pentagon officials kept a nervous eye on how the trip translated on the airwaves. Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. “They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t,” one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes.

“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.

The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.

“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.

“We could not be more excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment — whether to send more troops — the analysts were unanimous.

“I am so much against adding more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN.

What is clear from this article is that the silence of the generals equated to a betrayal--a betrayal bought and paid for with dead Americans. Instead of telling the truth, these generals lied to the American people, so that they could hold on to their "access" to key Pentagon officials and the continued flow of money from the Pentagon into the companies they represented:

Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion, but were careful not to express them on air.

Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq’s purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had “smoking gun” proof.

“ ‘We don’t have any hard evidence,’ ” Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. “We are looking at ourselves saying, ‘What are we doing?’ ”

Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling “very disappointed” after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being “manipulated” to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.

Mr. Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Mr. Cowan, had formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national security contracts.

“There’s no way I was going to go down that road and get completely torn apart,” Mr. Bevelacqua said. “You’re talking about fighting a huge machine.”

Some e-mail messages between the Pentagon and the analysts reveal an implicit trade of privileged access for favorable coverage. Robert H. Scales Jr., a retired Army general and analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio whose consulting company advises several military firms on weapons and tactics used in Iraq, wanted the Pentagon to approve high-level briefings for him inside Iraq in 2006.

“Recall the stuff I did after my last visit,” he wrote. “I will do the same this time.”

Punishment for ANY general who stood up to the Rumsfeld information machine was swift:

On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq. That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the “twisted version of reality” being pushed on analysts in briefings, called the Pentagon to give “a heads-up” that some of his comments on Fox “may not all be friendly,” Pentagon records show. Mr. Rumsfeld’s senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him, yet when he told Bill O’Reilly that the United States was “not on a good glide path right now” in Iraq, the repercussions were swift.

Mr. Cowan said he was “precipitously fired from the analysts group” for this appearance. The Pentagon, he wrote in an e-mail message, “simply didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t carrying their water.” The next day James T. Conway, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs, presided over another conference call with analysts. He urged them, a transcript shows, not to let the marines’ deaths further erode support for the war.

“The strategic target remains our population,” General Conway said. “We can lose people day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that happen.”

“General, I just made that point on the air,” an analyst replied.

“Let’s work it together, guys,” General Conway urged.

Finally, and I know this has been one of the longer posts we've done, the major networks have been shamed into silence by the revelations in this story:

CBS News declined to comment on what it knew about its military analysts’ business affiliations or what steps it took to guard against potential conflicts.

NBC News also declined to discuss its procedures for hiring and monitoring military analysts. The network issued a short statement: “We have clear policies in place to assure that the people who appear on our air have been appropriately vetted and that nothing in their profile would lead to even a perception of a conflict of interest.”

Jeffrey W. Schneider, a spokesman for ABC, said that while the network’s military consultants were not held to the same ethical rules as its full-time journalists, they were expected to keep the network informed about any outside business entanglements. “We make it clear to them we expect them to keep us closely apprised,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Fox News said executives “refused to participate” in this article.

CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.

All I can add is, shame on these men. Shame on them, and may they never make another nickel off of their access or their use of their background. Congress MUST step in and call these men to appear and hold hearings to determine how much a soldier's life is worth. Apparently, the lives of our soldiers are worthless to men who'd rather trade them for no-bid contracts, a meal with Don Rumsfeld, a free plane ride, and a lucrative gig telling the American people that all is well in a war where we now know, finally, at long last, that all is not well.

An Officer Speaks Up for the Defense (better late than never)

When I think about the guts it took for this man to stand up and do what he did, I get a lump in my throat. (Followed immediately by a feeling of revulsion that he didn’t speak up sooner, and that he had to wait for someone to ask.)

I bemoan the undermining of the Honor Code on a regular basis (regular readers can vouch for this). But before I give up and pull the covers over my head to have a good cry, I learn about something that gives me a glimmer of hope that all is not lost.

Lt. Colonel Abraham was an officer at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He served as a liaison between intelligence agencies and the military tribunals that determines the status of the detainees, and he sat in judgment as a member of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT).

Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a 26-year veteran of military intelligence who is an Army reserve officer and a California lawyer, said military prosecutors were provided with only "generic" material that didn't hold up to the most basic legal challenges.

Despite repeated requests, intelligence agencies arbitrarily refused to provide specific information that could have helped either side in the tribunals, according to Abraham, who said he served as a main liaison between the Combat Status Review Tribunals and those intelligence agencies.

"What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence," Abraham said in the affidavit, filed in a Washington appeals court on behalf of a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, who is challenging his classification as an "enemy combatant."

The Pentagon had no immediate comment, but a spokesman said Defense Department officials were preparing a response to the affidavit.

An attorney for al-Odah, David Cynamon, said Abraham "bravely" agreed to provide the affidavit when defense lawyers contacted him.

"It proves what we all suspected, which is that the CSRTs were a complete sham," Cynamon said.

Matthew J. MacLean, another al-Odah lawyer, said Abraham is the first member of a Combat Status Review Tribunal panel who has been identified, let alone been willing to criticize the tribunals in the public record.

"It wouldn't be quite right to say this is the most important piece of evidence that has come out of the CSRT process, because this is the only piece of evidence ever to come out of the CSRT process," MacLean said. "It's our only view into the CSRT."

Abraham said he first raised his concerns when he was on active duty with the Defense Department agency in charge of the tribunal process from September 2004 to March 2005 and felt the issues were not adequately addressed. He said he decided his only recourse was to submit the affidavit.

"I pointed out nothing less than facts, facts that can and should be fixed," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his office in Newport Beach, Calif.

The 46-year-old lawyer, who remains in the reserves, said he believe he had a responsibility to point out that officers "did not have the proper tools" to determine whether a detainee was in fact an enemy combatant.

"I take very seriously my responsibility, my duties as a citizen," he said.

Cynamon said he fears the officer's military future could be in jeopardy. "For him to do this was a courageous thing but it's probably an assurance of career suicide," he said.

The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and 2005, with handcuffed detainees appearing before panels made up of three officers. Detainees had a military "personal representative" instead of a defense attorney, and all but 38 were determined to be "enemy combatants."

Abraham was asked to serve on one of the panels, and he said its members felt strong pressure to find against the detainee, saying there was "intensive scrutiny" when they declared a prisoner not to be an enemy combatant. When his panel decided the detainee wasn't an "enemy combatant," they were ordered to reconvene to hear more evidence, he said.

Ultimately, his panel held its ground, and he was never asked to participate in another tribunal, he said.

Abraham was asked to serve on one of the panels, and he said its members felt strong pressure to find against the detainee, saying there was "intensive scrutiny" when they declared a prisoner not to be an enemy combatant. When his panel decided the detainee wasn't an "enemy combatant," they were ordered to reconvene to hear more evidence, he said.

Ultimately, his panel held its ground, and he was never asked to participate in another tribunal, he said.

I know a little bit about military culture, and while the Upright Citizen With An Unwavering Sense of Responsibility To Do The Right Thing is kinda miffed that it took him until a defense attorney asked to do the right thing – the military part of my makeup understands his inner struggle.

I understand the predicament he found himself in. It’s the predicament someone I love dearly was afraid he would find himself in when this resident was selected. So he resigned before serving this moronic war criminal for a single day.

John Batiste: A Profile in Integrity

By now, everyone who does not live in a neo-luddite Unabomber cabin has seen the VoteVets.org commercial featuring retired Major General John Batiste – the one in which he proclaims openly “Mr. President, you did not listen. You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.”

Everyone also knows by now that CBS News fired the General from his consulting position because of the ads.

Something tells me that General Batiste is not troubled by the fickle devotion of the CBS news division. Not after I read his description of the decision making process that led him to forgo a third star and command of day-to-day operations; casting aside a 31-year military career in the process.

“In the Army, you communicate up the chain of command, and I communicated vehemently with my senior commanders while I was in Iraq,” he said. Of his departure from the Army, he said: “It was the toughest decision of my life. I paced my quarters for days. I didn’t sleep for nights. But I was not willing to compromise my principles for one more minute.”

But General Batiste did not step out of the active duty role just to step into a cushy defense industry job. Instead, he now runs a small steel fabricating plant in Rochester, New York that has no ties to the defense industry at all.

It just looks like the man has scruples in spades. There is no wishy-washiness, there is no flip-flopping and there is zero room for rationalizations or statements like “what you have to understand.” Since resigning and retiring in 2005, he has been steadfast and committed. He was among the first to criticize failed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld (Rumsfailed?) and call for his ouster.

General Batiste said he chose to go public with his critique of the war effort only after 30 years of honoring the Army’s rules of silence. He said it was that time commanding 22,000 troops in combat, in 2004 and 2005, that convinced him that American fighting in Iraq was short of vision as well as troops.

“There was never enough. There was never a reserve,” he said. “Again and again, we had to move troops by as many as 200 miles out of our area of operations to support another sector. We would pull troops out of contact with the enemy and move them into contact with the enemy somewhere else. The minute we’d leave, the insurgents would pick up on that, and kill everybody who had been friendly.”

He is quick to point out that VoteVets is not an antiwar organization – but it is against the Iraq war/occupation. The organization has thus far done an excellent job of walking that tightrope

VoteVets.org says it has tried to calibrate its message carefully, although there is a limit to the nuance that can fit into 30-second television spots. (Two other retired generals, Paul D. Eaton and Wesley K. Clark, speak in the campaign’s other advertisements.)

As described by General Batiste, the message is not antiwar; it argues that continuing the war in Iraq as a civil, sectarian conflict that cannot be won by outside forces is crippling the Army and the Marine Corps. It does not deny the danger of violent Islamic extremism, he says, but contends that the war in Iraq prevents the armed services from preparing to battle other global security threats.

And it says that if terrorism, and especially terrorists armed with unconventional weapons, truly threaten America’s very survival, then the rest of the country — not just the military — should be called to sacrifice.

America stands at a fork in the road. We must choose our path carefully. I vote we follow men like General Batiste and Lt. Colonel Yingling - and Tommy “Stupidest Man on the Planet” Franks and Jack Keane can just fade away - and the sooner the better.

As for me, I will stand shoulder to shoulder and ramrod straight with those who know how a Patriot ought to act.

[Cross-posted from Watching Those We Chose]

Hemorrhaging Officers

The retention of academy-trained officers in the ranks of the military after their five-year commitment is realized is at its lowest point in thirty years.

This does not only bode ill for the troops in the field today - don’t get me wrong – leaders are needed today – but it bodes ill for the future as well.

The Lieutenants and Captains of today are the full Colonels and Generals of tomorrow. If the “wrong” officers stay in and the “right” ones opt to leave the service (most people do not put themselves through the rigors of an academy education with an eye to leaving service in five years) the long-term effects on the overall health of the officer corps will be devastating.

According to statistics compiled by West Point, of the 903 Army officers commissioned upon graduation in 2001, nearly 46 percent left the service last year -- 35 percent at the conclusion of their five years of required service, and another 11 percent over the next six months. And more than 54 percent of the 935 graduates in the class of 2000 had left active duty by this January, the statistics show.

The figures mark the lowest retention rate of graduates after the completion of their mandatory duty since at least 1977, with the exception of members of three classes in the late 1980s who were encouraged to leave as the military downsized following the end of the Cold War.

In most years during the last three decades, the period for which West Point released statistics, the numbers of graduates opting out at the five-year mark were between 10 percent and 30 percent, according to the data.

I can’t reiterate this enough…We are taking more and more wavered troops into the ranks, and the leadership is lacking. Seasoned officers are leaving service at a rate not seen since Vietnam, when fully half of the West Point class of 1969 resigned practically en masse. The reason then was Vietnam, and the reason today is Iraq.

But the Iraq War itself, with its repeated tours of duty and often-shifting military objectives, appears to have dissuaded more graduates than in recent history from continuing their military careers -- even as the Army has stressed that West Point training has become more important in an era of high-tech warfare.

West Point spokesman Francis J. DeMaro said he could not explain why more young officers were opting to leave the Army, and declined to comment further.

When unjust wars are launched, and the Honor Code is compromised – and trust me, it is as compromised right now as it has ever been in the history of the United States military – when the officer corps loses faith in the top brass – the whole delicate balance teeters on the brink.

The Honor Code is all that stands between a military and tyranny over the citizenry. It is really that simple, and there really is that much at stake.