H.R. 669 Dumbest Piece of Legislation Ever

Presidential autonomy in ordering a first strike is NOT a foreign affairs issue, how dumb are these idiots.

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Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred
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Technically, I suppose it "could" be a foreign affairs issue. .... but only until it detonates. :)

(After that, no more foreigners; no more affairs.)

Reply to
mpm

During peacetime without broad support from the military such an order would be deemed an illegal order and ignored and any President giving it treated as deranged.

With the broad support required to carry such a thing out, for whatever reason, the President's authorization would be merely a formality; any President who attempted to stall a strike which most high-ranking members of the armed forces judged a really important thing to do right away would again find himself rapidly removed.

The whole point of putting the launch codes under the President's immediate authority was to rapidly deal with the exempted situation in the second paragraph, which should be obvious. Worrying about any President giving the order to launch apropos of nothing (or very little) and the military blindly carrying out those orders like robots is madness

Reply to
bitrex

What do you expect from Dem sponsors?

Reply to
cameo

Being a Republican congressman is an easy gig. You just sponsor bills to terminate and de-fund stuff, naturally everything except your own job.

Reply to
bitrex

afaiu orders from a drunk Nixon was ignored or stalled long enough for him to sober up several times

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

The only references I can find for Nixon being "drunk" are from those media who rank right down there with The National Enquirer: businessinsider, politico, theguardian, wearethemighty (whoever in hell they are), and, of course, time.

So I wouldn't hang my hat on Nixon being drunk, he was just mean ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Huh? Where are you getting that insanity. The president is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The armed forces is not a democracy, they exist to take orders.

Where are you getting this broad support stuff? There is no such requirement.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

They did catch him having conversations with some of the portraits hanging on the wall in the WH.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

"Fuck the Queen! said the King, and fifty men were killed in the rush, for the King's word was law."

You can write or not write down any kind of "requirements" you like. I'm talking about the real world involving real people where the nuclear arsenal and manpower of the US strategic rocket forces won't be launched against Zanzibar because a President-gone-off-the-rails demands it to be so, no matter what authority he may believe he has or how much he stomps and yells.

Reply to
bitrex

Oh it must definitely could be. The missile launch personnel are tested for that all the time. Anyone who hesitates is out.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

You are posting useless addenda.

Maybe you should be killfiled as well? ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Maybe if they all got their launch orders directly from the President over a special telephone. They don't. The President only provides authorization, the Emergency Action Messages still have to be authenticated, verified, and filtered down through a chain of command starting with the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs, and at each step of the chain the message is checked to see if it's a valid message coming from the proper link in the chain.

That is to say f*ck all happens without at the very least the Sec. of Defense (he has the other half of the required codes) and Joint Chief's implicit approval. If they were vehemently opposed and that President attempted to press forward anyway by attempting to "you're fired" everyone that President _would_ be removed; the power dynamic in that situation wouldn't be much different than a gang whose leader forgot who they were really working for.

Reply to
bitrex

i.e. power doesn't come into being out of nothing, the powerful are only powerful because they're working for someone else's best interests. Any leader of any type of country who imagines they're a law unto themselves and thinks everyone else is just there to take their orders regardless of their own self-interest finds himself looking down the barrel of a gun in short order.

Reply to
bitrex

Fantasize much? Nobody has the time for all the filtering, checking and approval. When the president says it's a go, it happens, it doesn't go through a chain of command.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

Only /lawful/ orders may be obeyed. The armed forces must disobey unlawful ones. It may be no easy matter deciding if an order from the president is lawful or not, but I think that if someone in the chain of command believes the orders to be breaking the Geneva conventions, breaking the US Constitution, or endangering the American people then he or she would have to disobey the order.

You don't get to break the law (national or international) and claim "I was only following orders" as a defence - ergo, you have to disobey orders that would be breaking the law.

Reply to
David Brown

An infamous recent example, with some surprising participants...

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Reply to
Tom Gardner

How else would the order to launch filter down to the guys sitting in the silos? Again, the President does not have a direct line to ring them up and order them to launch personally, with good reason. The order has to come in the form of a properly-authenticated EAM; an order given through any other form of communication would be regarded as invalid, even if someone claiming to be the President himself called up on the telephone.

Ideally if necessary the filtering, checking, and approval can happen very quickly, a couple of minutes, and it was a decades-long effort of refining and streamlining the process. It doesn't at all mean that it's all automated and there isn't still a chain of command with many other people "in the loop."

The President can't even issue the first step in the chain unilaterally without the other half of the codes held by the Secretary of Defense. A President who attempted to seize those somehow by force would have guns drawn on him - I guarantee it.

Reply to
bitrex

That's not the way the system can possibly work. The U.S. may be down to mi nutes to get the missiles out of those silos and on their way in response t o a first wave strike against it. And the people actually carrying out the orders won't even know the designated targets. They don't know if it's a fi rst strike or a retaliatory strike. You're crazy if you think there's anyon e in the loop running a legality check! The U.S. needs to thoroughly destro y NK now, and the nuclear option is a good one and Trump needs to use it.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

OP acts like the SoD, Joint Chiefs, and other top military officials aren't independent entities with their own ideas about who does and does not need shooting. Even though the EAM system is streamlined such that orders can be authenticated and dispatched quickly those people are not robots and the orders still have to go through a chain of command, starting with the top brass - nothing happens without at least their implicit approval.

A President who attempted to bully that top brass into carrying out a clearly unlawful order that they were vehemently opposed to would rapidly be at best temporarily removed from office, and at worst on the receiving end of a military coup; that is he would find out who really is holding most of the power in "his" administration.

Reply to
bitrex

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