https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/08/all-enemies-foreign-and-domestic-open-letter-gen-milley/167625/

An Open Letter to Gen. Milley

By John Nagl and Paul Yingling

August 11, 2020

Dear General Milley:

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you are well aware of your duties in ordinary times: to serve as principal military advisor to the president of the United States, and to transmit the lawful orders of the president and Secretary of Defense to combatant commanders. In ordinary times, these duties are entirely consistent with your oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”

We do not live in ordinary times. The president of the United States is actively subverting our electoral system, threatening to remain in office in defiance of our Constitution. In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. We write to assist you in thinking clearly about that choice. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.

Due to a dangerous confluence of circumstances, the once-unthinkable scenario of authoritarian rule in the United States is now a very real possibility. First, as Mr. Trump faces near certain electoral defeat, he is vigorously undermining public confidence in our elections. Second, Mr. Trump’s defeat would result in his facing not merely political ignominy, but also criminal charges. Third, Mr. Trump is assembling a private army capable of thwarting not only the will of the electorate but also the capacities of ordinary law enforcement. When these forces collide on January 20, 2021, the U.S. military will be the only institution capable of upholding our Constitutional order.

There can be little doubt that Mr. Trump is facing electoral defeat. More than 160,000 Americans have died from COVID 19, and that toll is likely to rise to 300,000 by November. One in ten U.S. workers is unemployed, and the U.S. economy in the last quarter suffered the greatest contraction in its history. Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The Economist estimates that Mr. Trump’s chances of losing the election stand at 91 percent.

Related articles

The Military Won’t Save Us – and You Shouldn’t Want Them To

Who Decides Who Is a ‘Domestic Enemy’?

Milley's Chance to Right His ‘Mistake’

Faced with these grim prospects, Mr. Trump has engaged in a systemic disinformation campaign to undermine public confidence in our elections. He has falsely claimed that mail-in voting is “inaccurate and fraudulent.” He is actively sabotaging the U.S. Postal Service in an effort to delay and discredit mail-in votes. He has suggested delaying the 2020 election, despite lacking the authority to do so.

The stakes of the 2020 election are especially high for Mr. Trump; in defeat, he will likely face criminal prosecution. The Manhattan District Attorney is investigating the Trump Organization for possible bank and insurance fraud related to the overvaluation of financial assets. New York’s Attorney General is conducting similar investigations, having successfully subpoenaed Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank. Mr. Trump allegedly pressured the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain to pressure the British Government to move the British Open golf tournament to Trump Turnberry Resort in Scotland. This incident is but one of many examples of self-dealing that may lead to federal criminal charges against the president.

Given this dizzying array of threats not merely to his political prospects, but also his liberty and wealth, Mr. Trump is following the playbook of dictators throughout history: he is building a private army answerable only to him. When Caesar faced the prospect of a trial in Rome, he did not return to face his day in court. He unleashed an army personally loyal to him alone on the Roman government. No student of history, Mr. Trump nevertheless appears to be following Caesar’s example. The president’s use of militarized Homeland Security agents against domestic political demonstrations constitutes the creation of a paramilitary force unaccountable to the public. The members of this private army, often lacking police insignia or other identification, exist not to enforce the law but to intimidate the president’s political opponents.

These powerful crosscurrents—Mr. Trump’s electoral defeat, his assault on the integrity of our elections, his impending criminal prosecution, and his creation of a private army—will collide on January 20. Rather than accept the peaceful transfer of power that has been the hallmark of American democracy since its inception. Mr. Trump may refuse to leave office. He would likely offer as a fig leaf of legitimacy the shopworn lies about election fraud. Mr. Trump’s acolytes in right-wing media will certainly rush to repeat and amplify these lies, manufacturing sufficient evidence to provide a pretext of plausibility. America’s greatest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War will come about by a president who simply refuses to leave office.

America’s political and legal institutions have so atrophied that they are ill-prepared for this moment. Senate Republicans, already reduced to supplicant status, will remain silent and inert, as much to obscure their complicity as to retain their majority. The Democrat-led House of Representatives will certify the Electoral College results, which Mr. Trump will dismiss as fake news. The courts, flooded with cases from both Democrats and Mr. Trump’s legal team, will take months working through the docket, producing reasoned rulings that Trump will alternately appeal and ignore.

Then the clock will strike 12:01 PM, January 20, 2021, and Donald Trump will be sitting in the Oval Office. The street protests will inevitably swell outside the White House, and the ranks of Trump’s private army will grow inside its grounds. The speaker of the House will declare the Trump presidency at an end, and direct the Secret Service and Federal Marshals to remove Trump from the premises. These agents will realize that they are outmanned and outgunned by Trump’s private army, and the moment of decision will arrive.

At this moment of Constitutional crisis, only two options remain. Under the first, U.S. military forces escort the former president from the White House grounds. Trump’s little green men, so intimidating to lightly armed federal law enforcement agents, step aside and fade away, realizing they would not constitute a good morning’s work for a brigade of the 82nd Airborne. Under the second, the U.S. military remains inert while the Constitution dies. The succession of government is determined by extralegal violence between Trump’s private army and street protesters; Black Lives Matter Plaza becomes Tahrir Square.

As the senior military officer of the United States, the choice between these two options lies with you. In the Constitutional crisis described above, your duty is to give unambiguous orders directing U.S. military forces to support the Constitutional transfer of power. Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état. You were rightly criticized for your prior active complicity in the president’s use of force against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. Your passive complicity in an extralegal seizure of political power would be far worse.

For 240 years, the United States has been spared the horror of violent political succession. Imperfect though it may be, our Union has been moving toward greater perfection, from one peaceful transfer of power to the next. The rule of law created by our Constitution has made this miracle possible. However, our Constitutional order is not self-sustaining. Throughout our history, Americans have laid down their lives so that this form of government may endure. Continuing the unfinished work for which these heroes fell now falls to you.

Lest you forget:

“I, Mark A. Milley, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The fate of our Republic may well depend upon your adherence to this oath.

Respectfully yours,

John Nagl and Paul Yingling

John Nagl, a retired Army officer and veteran of both Iraq wars, is Head of School at The Haverford School outside Philadelphia.

Paul Yingling, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, served three tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia, and a fifth in Operation Desert Storm.

Steve Thomas

14 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Larry's blog on Jean Rene Soutre seems to demolish any French Connection assassin.  Steve, are you in agreement with that?   The Christian David interviews pointing to Sarti seemed pretty interesting to me.

Pete,

This is from an exchange Larry and I had back in 2018:

The way I see it, you've got three tracks to the "French Connection"

1) You've got Steve Rivele and his work with Christian David and Lucien Sarti.

2) You've got Fensterwald and his work on Mertz and Souetre

3) You've got William Reymond and his work on the Three Tramps.

JFK : autopsie d'un crime d'État

http://oasassassinatjfk.e-monsite.com/pages/les-vraies-clochards-et-vagabonds.html

He identified Souetre as being one of the shooters using the code name, "Max"

(A tantalizing clue here is that "Maxime" was the radio call sign for the 40/541 parachute unit Souetre commanded in Algeria between 1957 and 1960).

If anything, I'm inclined to go along with Rivele who said in later years that if he were to do it over again, he'd concentrate on Paul Mondolini - drug trafficker out of Montreal (where Mertz was also sent after his double-cross in the Pont-sur-Seine affair and also involved in narcotics trafficking). As I read it, the Americans were tracking Mertz the drug smuggler, but lost him shortly before JFK's assassination. This is what Lamar Waldron says in his Legacy of Secrecy.

The "French did it" is just as bad as people who say, "The CIA did it."

It doesn't' lead anywhere except in circles.

- END OF EXCHANGE -

I have some raw notes I've taken on Mondolini. I can post them if you'd like, but they go back about 13 years, and run to about 20 pages.

After his escape from prison camp in February, 1962, Souetre and Mura sent this letter to the prison commandant:

“Monsieur. Respectueux des décisions de justice qui ont fait de nous des hommes libres, nous avons jugé de notre devoir de nous soustraire à une mesure incompatible avec notre état d’officier. Nous aurions été indignes de notre uniforme en acceptant de remplacer dans votre camp ceux que la France nous avait donnés pour mission de combattre. Respectueux de nos serments, fidèles aux traditions de notre Arme, convaincus de la justice de notre cause, nous ne pouvions demeurer plus longtemps dans une expectative coupable. Nous sommes persuadés Monsieur qu’il vous est facile de comprendre. Nous en appelons à votre dignité en vous demandant de vous refuser à remplir à l’avenir des fonctions qui déshonorent le Corps de la Police française. Mura et Souètre.”

(Arch. dép. du Gard, CA 1568).

“Respectful of the judicial decisions which made us free men, we felt it our duty to avoid a measure incompatible with our position as officers. We would have been unworthy of our uniform by agreeing to replace in your camp those whom France had given us to fight. Respectful of our oaths, faithful to the traditions of our Arms, convinced of the justice of our cause, we could not remain longer in a guilty expectancy. We are convinced Monsieur, that it is easy for you to understand. We appeal to your dignity by asking you to refuse to fulfill in the future, functions that dishonor the French Police Corps. Mura and Souètre."

I just don't think assassins talk like that. I believe that Souetre was a patriot as he understood patriotism to be.

Steve Thomas

16 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Does anyone know what percentage of African Americans (including "Americans" from the West Indies) had paternal ancestors who were slave owners?

I don't know what the modern genetic studies have shown, but my guess is that it's a fairly high percentage.

I guess Thomas Jefferson's progeny could never be patriots then huh?

Steve Thomas

The Foreword to Michael Cohen’s book is out.

Disloyal, The Foreword: The Real Real Donald Trump

The President of the United States wanted me dead.

https://disloyalthebook.com/download-the-disloyal-foreword-written-by-michael-cohen/

Steve Thomas

When asked by Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo about extra funding for the Post Office during a Thursday morning interview, Trump explicitly tied his refusal to give the USPS what it needed with his desire to block mail-in voting.

“Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.”

Post Offices are enshrined in the Constitution. He swore an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States".

It's time for another impeachment.

Steve Thomas

On 6/10/2020 at 8:49 PM, Bill Simpich said:

The above facts do not prove that Lee Oswald was a CIA agent.  If he was operating as the witting agent of any intelligence organization, my best bet is that he may have been doing it with some assistance with the Office of Naval Intelligence.  Although I am not yet convinced, ONI would be my first choice for any fake "military defector program" that included Oswald - Donald Moneir told the ARRB that he was aware of an operation known as Navy Code 30, a fake defector program run by ONI.

Bill,

From Item# 35 in my list of Harvey Lee Oswald references:

35. Transcript of ARRB Interview of Donald Monier conducted August 12, 1996 by Dave Montague and Christopher Barger

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-Oct2017/ARRB/CBARGER/WP-DOCS/MONIER.WPD.pdf

(see p. 6)

Monier:"I was with the 112th CIC Group in Dallas-- “I can remember doing some things relative to that, but none of that had to do with Harvey Os-- Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Steve Thomas

9 hours ago, John Butler said:

 In preparation for the 2013 interview, the Radio Free Europe reporter Pavel Butorin had studied Oswald’s essay entitled “The Collective” that was prepared in the United States after he returned from the Soviet Union.  Butorin recognized that the report was so detailed about Soviet working and living conditions that “it’s as if he had been on a research mission here.” [30]

John,

You know, I have kind of wondered about that myself.

That "Collective" is so detailed, it seems almost impossible to have been written simply by memory. To me, you would had to have had notes to go by.

My question has been, how did he get those notes out of Russia? Wasn't he searched before he left?

Was he smuggling notes out all along? And, if so, what was his method?

Steve Thomas

2 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

Callaway - rolled Tippit over, grabbed his gun and placed it on the hood of Tippit's car

Callaway - Somebody put the gun on the front seat of Tippit's car

Tony,

From Callaway's Deposition taken on 11/22/63

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/callaway.htm

"I got the officer's gun and hollered at a cab driver to come on, We might catch the man."

Corroborates Benevides

Quite the vigilante wasn't he?

Steve Thomas

Comes now the day of "Nasty" women causing "Good Trouble".

They shall be adorned in Pink Hats

They will kick your butts, and look good doing it.

Buckle your seat belts.

Steve Thomas

3 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

I've had some extensive posts on Mertz and Soutre on my blog;  Steve probably remembers them...might be worth taking a look there - we had some good give an takes on it a couple of  years ago.

One of those articles on Larry's blog is in his Archives for December, 2018 here:

https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2018/12/

Steve Thomas

I watched the news on TV and online a lot yesterday.

What I saw was a lot of happy and smiling people.

I was taken aback.

It's been six months or so since I saw people actually smiling and and happy.

This has a force behind it that isn't measurable by any standard polling.

Steve Thomas

On 8/11/2020 at 1:38 PM, James DiEugenio said:

All good questions Steve. 

https://apnews.com/321832b186f689e6d8ce20087a6b1c0d

"Berryman had approached the uniformed officer just before 6 p.m. Monday at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks from the White House,..."

An unarmed man, blocks away?

I grew suspicious when, during his Press Conference, Trump kept asking Correspondent, John Roberts, "You heard gunshots right? You've been in combat situations, those were gunshots right?"

gunshots, plural.

I asked myself, why the need for independent verification?

Steve Thomas
 

Steve Thomas

Deleted

Steve Thomas

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/kanye-wests-lawyer-demands-democrats-prove-mickey-mouse-didnt-really-sign-his-ballot-petition-in-wisconsin/

On Tuesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Michael Curran, an attorney for rapper Kanye West’s independent presidential campaign, is demanding Democrats prove their assertion that Mickey Mouse didn’t really sign West’s petition to qualify him for the ballot in Wisconsin.

“Curran … dismissed most of the other technical challenges as ‘misguided and ill-informed,’ including the claims that the nomination papers included obviously fake names, such as ‘Mickey Mouse’ and ‘Bernie Sanders,'” reported Daniel Bice. “He said the complaint must prove these are fraudulent signatures.”

Steve Thomas

2 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Cheers Steve.

There is a chapter on Mertz in Kross' book..., SDECE agent,

Pete,

Have you ever read Maurice Phillips's blog, "I have some secrets for you"?

http://somesecretsforyou.blogspot.com/2006/01/links-between-jfk-assassination-and.html

Something a poster wrote in a commentary on the blog makes a lot of sense to me.

Anonymous said...

“I think that Michel Mertz is the one person, who, when we learn more about what he was doing in Dallas on 11/22/63, will blow the whole case wide open and reveal JFK's assassins...likely Mertz himself, was one of the assassins. Mertz had Diplomatic Immunity, and this might be why the Justice Department ushered him out of the country within 48 hours of the Kennedy killing. Not that they would ever reveal that there was more than one gunman (Oswald wasn't one of the assassins)”

I would recommend Maurice's book, De Dallas à Montréal: La filière montréalaise dans l'assassinat de JFK, but it's $185.00 in pbk form. (1996).

Steve Thomas

Mount Rushmore is too small for Trump

Opinion by Michael D'Antonio

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/10/opinions/mount-rushmore-is-too-small-for-trump-dantonio/index.html

"Why not a new national attraction -- Mt. Trumpmore -- that could be established as a private (why not make some money on it) monument to the Trump clan?"

That way, he wouldn't have to share it with four other what's their names.

Steve Thomas

Constraints gone, GOP ramps up effort to monitor voting

By ERIC TUCKER and NICHOLAS RICCARDI

ASSOCIATED PRESS

https://apnews.com/31fd62b679a43387369cde91c10aa553

The Pennsylvania lawsuit seeks to overturn state law that says poll watchers may serve only in the counties where they live. Republicans are asking a judge to allow monitors to be present any place votes are cast, including any locations where absentee or mail ballots are returned.

Even before the coronavirus reconfigured the election, both parties were bracing for a titanic battle over voting in courts and at the polls.

Intensifying the conflict was a judge’s 2018 decision to lift a consent decree, in place for nearly 40 years, that required the RNC to have court approval for organized poll monitoring activities, such as interrogating prospective voters about their qualifications before they cast ballots or deputizing civilians as law enforcement officials.

Steve Thomas

- Donald Trump -

 “The Great Pandemic was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Probably ended The 2nd World War, all the soldiers were sick. That was a terrible situation.”

I wonder if he thinks Hitler is still alive and living in a bunker somewhere.

Steve Thomas

Deleted

Steve Thomas

7 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Alleged plans of Secret Army Organization in Portugal for post deGaulle takeover in France.  Report #DB-3/655,207. 25th June 1963.  This document ends with comment on Souetre.  "Information from both press and official French sources indicate that the Souetre is the name of a former French army captain who escaped from a detention camp in 1961.

Pete,

A small note.

Souetre escaped from the Saint Maurice de l'Ardoise prison camp in the late hours of February 18, 1962 and early hours of February 19th.

He married for the second time while he was the prison camp on January 20, 1962. It was quite the scandal at the time.

For the Frenchman flitting back and forth between Mexico and Montreal, I would look at Victor Michael Mertz.

Read up on his connections to the Montreal underworld and Paul Mondolini.

Steve Thomas

29 minutes ago, Pete Mellor said:

Any long term reader of Kennedy's assassination in Dallas will be aware of the mysterious French assassin Soutre/Mertz/Sarti figure

Pete,

I have come across no evidence that Jean-Rene Souetre was an assassin.

Steve Thomas

Important?

I'll tell you what's important.

https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/school-dress-code-pajamas/67-b55acb9d-e081-4b72-8348-9cfeff37bfdf

WGRZ reports that the dress code for Springfield’s (Illinois) learn-from-home plan includes a ban on pajamas.

"News radio station WMAY described the pajama policy as an extension of the district's preexisting rules which prevented students from wearing PJ pants to in-person classes. The radio station said students also won't be allowed to do remote learning from the comforts of their beds."

Let's get our priorities straight here.

Steve Thomas

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kodak-loan-hold-up-trump-administration_n_5f2f7944c5b64d7a55f471a2

"The development bank loan was the first of its kind under the Defense Production Act in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense. When President Donald Trump announced the massive loan, he called the arrangement “one of the most important deals in the history of U.S. pharmaceutical industries.” But after news broke of an SEC review of Kodak stock trading, Trump said of the deal at a news conference: “I wasn’t involved in it.”"

Eastman Kodak: Donal Trump's ITT.

Steve Thomas

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/08/mnuchin-threatens-to-make-taxpayers-pay-back-money-unless-trump-is-reelected/

"Wallace also wondered if executive action would cause a reduction in Social Security and Medicare benefits.

“That’s not the case,” Mnuchin said without evidence. “There would be an automatic contribution from the general fund to those trusts funds. The president in no way wants to harm those trust funds.”

“We’re already running huge deficits,” Wallace observed. “So how are you going to pay for it from the general fund?”

“You just have a transfer from the general fund,” Mnuchin insisted. “We’ll deal with the budget deficit when we get the economy back to where it was before.”"

I suppose if you can make diseases magically disappear, you can make money magically appear too.

Steve Thomas

Cosmo Asked Every Single Member of Congress if They’d Postpone the Election Like Trump Wants To

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a33470554/congress-representatives-senators-trump-postpone-election/?utm_source=digg

Steve Thomas