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Home » So the Woodward allegations about General Milley and China were true

So the Woodward allegations about General Milley and China were true

The New Neo Posted on by

John Hinderaker explains here:

Now, based on this statement by Joint Staff Spokesperson Col. Dave Butler, it appears that Woodward’s reporting is, shockingly, accurate. Col. Butler’s statement was issued in response to Woodward’s report and the firestorm of controversy that it ignited. Thus, the most significant fact about the statement is that it does not deny the truth of any part of Woodward’s account. Rather, Col. Butler tries to put Woodward’s reporting in a sympathetic light…

So Milley did talk with his Chinese counterparts at the time alleged by Woodward. His only defense is that those conversations were normal. They “convey[ed] reassurance.” Well, that is what Woodward wrote: Milley told the Communist Chinese that if President Trump intended to launch an attack against them, he, General Milley, would betray his country by giving them advance warning. No doubt that was reassuring to the CCP.

The Joint Chiefs spokesman’s statement also confirms Woodward’s claim that Milley met with other senior military officers to instruct them not to obey certain possible orders from President Trump…

The Democrats and the MSM and Milley’s people are trying to spin this as business as usual. Ha! But when you have the MSM on your side, you can often get away with just about anything.

Hinderaker adds:

The idea that President Trump was likely to order a nuclear strike on China is fanciful, to put it politely. That the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs took such a fantasy seriously demonstrates how out of touch he was, and is. Trump, for better or worse, was the least warlike of presidents. Did he ever order American servicemen into a new conflict? Unlike just about every president since Eisenhower? No, he did not.

General Milley is obviously a slave to left-wing ideology, which is why he has inflicted Critical Race Theory on America’s fighting men and women. This far-left ideology is also reflected in his view that President Trump, against all evidence, was some kind of warmongering loose cannon, and his even more sinister view that the leaders of China’s armed forces were his peers and his allies in undermining the foreign policy of the United States.

This of course brings up the old old question: knave, fool, or both? Hinderaker seems to come down mostly on the side of “fool” – that Milley has such poor judgment about Trump, as a result of Milley’s own leftist political bias, that he is reading him all wrong.

And that could be the case. But there’s the alternate “knave” theory. As I wrote earlier today in a comment:

They don’t call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome” for nothing.

Yes, [Pelosi and Milley] were either deranged or the whole thing was a sham and a pose and an excuse for undermining Trump once again, and dropping a rumor that Trump was acting so deranged that they had to do this, as patriots.

And, as commenter “Insufficiently Sensitve” writes:

That catechism [Pelosi and Milley] recited back and forth was simply their pledge of allegiance to one another. Once their fealty was established, the next move would be to find the means sufficient to deliver the desired end, and that would take whatever law-bending was needed to emplace Milley’s ‘authority’ sufficiently to displace that of the President. Hence the oath-taking by those Officers – who’ll make fine witnesses in case Pelosi and her stooges can’t head off Congressional investigations, or a military court-martial, of dear General Milley. Stay tuned.

I lean slightly to the “knave” explanation here. But the “fool” is also possible.

I predict that nothing much will happen to Milley, although perhaps he’ll resign. Unfortunately, he’s already done inestimable damage to the US and to the world.

Comments

So the Woodward allegations about General Milley and China were true — 59 Comments

  1. Me, I prefer Traitor.
    Milley should be Courts Martialed, convicted, stripped of all Rank, and be sent to Leavenworth.
    Nothing we can do about Pelosi though. Maybe if the Rep take the House she can be censored, removed from the House somehow. Won’ happen though.

  3. The interesting part of Butler’s statement to me was that Milley’s conversation’s were OK because they were not secret. Which to me is much worse. Milley isn’t some loose cannon, he represents the thinking of the DoD and the intelligence agencies who have been out to get Trump from the beginning. Of course I would like to see Milley held accountable but if he is he would only be a sacrifice. To clean up the rot would require the firing and/or arrest of hundreds if not thousands of employees at DoD, State, CIA, NSA, FBI etc. etc.

    I’m not holding my breath.

  4. “The Democrats and the MSM and Milley’s people are trying to spin this as business as usual.” neo

    Which makes them complicit in Milley’s treason.

    “18 U.S. Code § 2382 – Misprision of treason
    Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both.”

    They are those who are no longer our countrymen.

  5. A bit off topic but if you want to see what a typical Dem voter still is thinking right now, here’s a direct quote concerning the September 18 rally and regarding Trump:

    “You can’t make this stuff up:

    “… he thinks it’s a setup to damage his reputation … ”

    Damage. His. Reputation.

    That’s what he said. SMH. Sigh. OMG.”

    There is no way to reach these people on Afghanistan. Miller, Trump, etc etc

  6. I like it Paul. People like him deserve every bit of ridicule and scorn we can heap upon them. How about,

    Thoroughly Immodest Milley? A little lacking in bite or punch perhaps.

  7. The disturbing implication here for me is that the JCS doesn’t know a legal order from an illegal one. Rather frightening.

  9. Some retired military person now in the commentariat referred today to Milley as as “wind sock.” If we take that as more literally true than just a random slight, then it suggests that maybe Milley really wasn’t acting on his own initiative. The next logical step might be that Pelosi took the initiative and Milley made his usual choice to blow with the wind that Pelosi was making.

    If you read the Woodward story literally, my take is that Pelosi is directing Milley. Now a sensible chairman of the JCS maybe would respond the way Milley did (well, almost) then hang up the phone and say, “Screw off Nancy.” But not the wind sock.

    Now either the above is nonsense, or Pelosi wields some kind of incredible power.

  10. The Democrats have managed to politicize everything. Eight years of Obama and the military upper ranks , the DOJ, the intel community,, and more – all politicized. These politicized, perfumed princes in the upper ranks actually believe they have the right to work against a C-in-C who has different politics. And the MSM backs them up. Things are really out of whack.

    At most Milley will resign as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He should be court martialed.

  11. I agree with Le Clerc in the previous thread about Milley: “Woodward’s intent in flogging his latest ‘best seller’ heading to the remainder bin is this: Trump is unfit to lead and crazy as a loon. Woodward is making a gift to the floundering Biden.”

    So neither knave nor fool, but a Hero Keeping Us Safe. Milley is out of the same playbook as Comey with his “higher loyalty.” The tale of his heroism is the perfect palate cleanser after the difficult bolus of the Taliban takeover for the 9/11 anniversary as a “success.”

  12. @NancyB:

    So much for the the Bolus. Eyes on a swivel keeping a look out for the Clyster that’s headed up the pike!

  13. Nothing will happen to Milley. Nothing.

    Biden can’t fire him because Milley will rat out Joe’s feeble mental state. Milley has blackmailed Biden.

  15. I want some Senator to ask Milley what exactly he expected the Chinese to do with a warning America was going to attack? Shoot down American planes ?
    If these reports are true, He promised Treason.
    Treasonous piece of trash.
    Benedict Arnold Milley.
    The modern Democrat party is the party of projection.

  16. Perhaps Benedict Milley planned to slow walk American preparations for a theoretical war while his Beijing buddies launched their own pre-emptive strike?

    Was that what he wanted?

  18. Back fifty years plus, from time to time, the Group’s officers and Sergeant Major would sit in a briefing by our intel office. Question was…the state of the world this week.
    Ran into a naval intel guy who’d spent time at the Naval War College. You get deep reading–history, etc.–plus state of the world this week.
    Now, if your job is keeping your weapons on line, that might be all of it until the next week. But it’s pretty thorough with options and possibilities. And you’re probably thinking about it because…it might end up being your job with about fifteen minutes’ warning. Or a week, or whatever.
    But if your job is running a command–Centcom,etc.–plus running those commanders. Or advising POTUS, you get a surfeit of the state of the world this week.
    Point is, Milley isn’t so dumb as to get off as a fool, given what he must, cannot not, have known about the effects of his work(s).

  19. Woodward is no fool, and in fact served as an officer in the military. Briefly. He knows exactly the consequences of what he published, in ordinary times.

    That the Speaker of the House, of any party, was trying to influence the military chain of command should be grounds for immediate expulsion.

    That a US general officer actually took the call and colluded with her should cause Biden to dismiss Milley instantly. Because, Joe, if they did it to Trump, they can do it to you, too, with more justification!

    But no, that would screw with the precious freaking narrative of January 6. These people have no idea what they are unleashing.

  20. @jon baker:

    “The modern Democrat party is the party of projection.”

    Yes. But that’s too narrow. IMHO (heh) there needs to be a conscious move beyond looking at these things in party-label terms. The UniParty R/D cage match is just a Punch & Judy show to keep the Rubes distracted. The fact that you or I might have one or two or even three Republican politicians who we might kind of like is neither here nor there in this. They’re about as relevant in 2021 as the Answer to the Schleswig Holstein Question.

    Simply: A preponderance of American (and Western Elites) and their Camp Followers have Gone Rotten. Forget the labels.

    The likes of Milley prospered under Obama and under Trump. Cue standard Bleats about Trump being betrayed by those around him yadda yadda… but that’s exactly the point. At this point anyone who is anyone is suspect.

    Which is where your wished-for Senator comes in. What you’re looking forward to is Trash Trashing Trash. Might be entertaining. Might even be fun if Milley becomes scapegoat for the Afghan Debacle — he sure deserves to suffer. But won’t change a thing.

    Instead of Trash Trashing Trash, what’s required is more along the lines of Sartor Resartus… but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

    For now, the West is collectively #$@%ed. In time, popular discontent will bubble up and be put down and bubble up and be put down… and Elite infighting will breed winners and losers… and eventually some of the Elite Losers and / or Marginal Elites will defect and become the Vanguard of the Deplorables(*). And then there’s hope. But not yet. Not for a while.

    *Popular misconception is that successful revolutions are lead from below. They are not. There’s reasons that Peasants are Peasants… and MAGA Shamans are retards (because mostly people belong where they are). It’s going to take a strong cadre of Colonels and Deep State Dropouts and Yalies and all the other ‘Bad Guys’ defecting (in the hope of coming out on top in New Dispensation) to direct the gutting of the Beast.

  21. “Nicki Minaj has suffered more consequences for questioning the Biden* Administration than Milley has for Treason.”

  22. I am considering writing Biden and my (Dem) congressmen to urge investigation of Milley, because silence = acquiescence.

    Milley Vanilley and Austin Black Power, Men of Mediocrity.

  23. The swamp critters fear a 2024 “re-election” of Trump would give him a real opportunity to actually drain that swamp.

  24. One of the most undercovered stories of the past five years was all the Republicans retiring from Congress or other elected positions because they couldn’t tolerate not being able to play “Failure Theater” any more. I just saw a tweet that almost as many Republicans are retiring from the U.S. House as Democrats, even though the chances of the GOP regaining control of the House are extremely good right now.

    Mike

  29. @ Neo > “The Democrats and the MSM and Milley’s people are trying to spin this as business as usual.”

    For them, it is.

  30. @ JimNorCal > “Nicki Minaj has suffered more consequences for questioning the Biden* Administration than Milley has for Treason.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/09/16/rap-star-nicki-minaj-compares-cancel-culture-in-u-s-to-communist-china-dont-yall-see-whats-fking-happening/

    As the mainstream media attacks her for expressing skepticism about the coronavirus vaccine, rap superstar Nicki Minaj has hit back against cancel culture, comparing it to the suppression of free speech in Communist China.

    In a recent Instagram stories post, Nicki Minaj defended her right to question government authority when it comes to the vaccine.

    “You should be able to ask questions about anything you’re putting inside your body,” she said, noting that women often interrogate much more innocuous things, like wig glue.

    “But you can’t innocently ask question about something going in your body?” she continued. “I remember going to China and they were telling us you cannot speak out against the people in power there, et cetera, and I remember all of us thinking, oh, ok, we understand and we respect the laws here and that it’s so different from where we live.”

    Minaj warned about cancel culture’s insidious effects on free speech.

    “But don’t y’all see what’s **** happening?” she said. “Don’t y’all see that we are living now in that time, where people will turn their back on you for not agreeing? People will isolate you if you simply speak and ask a question.”
    …
    Nicki Minaj has faced widespread criticism for her social media posts expressing skepticism about the coronavirus vaccine, including one in which she said she turned down an invitation to the Met Gala over its vaccine mandate.

    “If I get vaccinated, it won’t be for the Met,” she tweeted earlier this week. “It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research. I’m working on that now.”
    …
    The rapper has also faced backlash for sharing clips from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, which has defended Minaj’s right to speak her mind.

    The future of the Republic is now in the hands of celebrity rappers and career officers retiring from the military.

    Resignation letter of Navy Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f1863cb4a0d8737127f952c6c66682fc62dd92147795011bbc91b3d9e7964b0e.jpg

    Resignation letter of Navy Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hague.
    https://notthebee.com/article/a-lt-colonel-just-resigned-and-gave-up-his-retirement-and-he-absolutely-railed-against-biden-the-vax-mandates-and-the-creep-of-marxist-power-i-cannot-and-will-not-contribute-to-the-fall-of-th

  31. Nicki Minaj also issued to a call for blacks to leave the plantation:

    Right. I can’t speak to, agree with, even look at someone from a particular political party. Ppl aren’t human any more. If you’re black & a Democrat tells u to shove marbles up ur ass, you simply have to. If another party tells u to look out for that bus, stand there & get hit

    https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1438256221660663812

  32. He deserves a fate worse than death, insubordination, contact with a enemy and giving up a military arsenal to the enemy.
    Benedict Arnold is off the hook, we have a new name for turncoat.

  33. Milley is a fool, Pelosi a knave.

    Plenty of repercussions, there will be no consequences.

    Here is the argument against treason: Milley told them, the CCP, that he would give them a heads up if Trump ordered an attack. No attack was ordered, thus no warning, a treasonous act, was given to our enemy.

    That’s the story and he’s going to stick with it.

  34. One of the most undercovered stories of the past five years was all the Republicans retiring from Congress or other elected positions because they couldn’t tolerate not being able to play “Failure Theater” any more.

    John Boehner and Paul Ryan, to name two.

  43. On the Fool/Knave spectrum, I’ll put on my armchair psychiatrist hat.

    We all know that most people don’t imagine themselves to be the bad guy. Pelosi and Milley are the heroes in each of their own stories. That said, I strongly suspect Pelosi is generally aware that she does far more harm than good in her relentless pursuit of her own self interests. She’s a D’Alesandro. She knows when she’s lying and stealing. And we all know she hates Trump with a passion due in no small part to his impudence and mocking of her. All of these things make her a knave.

    As for Milley, as a lifetime member of the military who has never been in actual combat and never really put his life on the line for his country, I imagine that he’s very sensitive to any slights to his image. People who reach the highest possible stations in their career and have a very public face, yet don’t really have any accomplishments that people outside of their vocation may be impressed by, can often be a bit overly sensitve. This is especially true when they’re in the Military, a vocation where you literally wear your career milestones on your chest. And we all know that Trump never minces words. I’ve no doubt that Trump probably called him a dope or failure or something. And that hurt Milley’s ego far more than it might have another person.

    So that’s a long way of me saying that I think Milley is probably more fool than knave.

  44. Corrupt and incompetent are not mutually exclusive. See e.g. news media, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Michael Mann and Baghdad Bob.

  45. I predict that nothing much will happen to Milley, although perhaps he’ll resign.

    Please allow us a wee hope that he’s indicted before he pulls the resignation plug. His retirement benefits should be on the line with all his other emoluments.

  47. I really don’t get it. Milley, from the time he joined ROTC, never put a foot wrong. Every thing that he needed to happen, as a matter of circumstance, to promote his career happened. Everything which could have stymied his career…didn’t happen. Every time he came up for promotion he was the best in the class.
    Anything where he went out of bounds is not discovered or, if discovered, ignored.
    And he did this as woke from the first day?
    Or was he a late convert?

  48. “Every time he came up for promotion he was the best in the class.”

    Here, I think, are two points that kind of sketch out who General Mark Milley may be:

    1. While he served several tours in combat, I can’t find any reports or accounts of what he actually did or accomplished on the battlefield. That’s a little weird considering we’ve been on a low-level war footing for the last 20 years. You’d think there’s be at least a few stories of heroism or great leadership out there.

    2. “Milley’s last command as a Lieutenant General was Commanding General, III Corps, and Fort Hood, TX. During LTG Milley’s command, on 2 April 2014, Army Specialist Ivan Lopez, who had been treated for mental problems, was armed with a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and opened fire on the Fort Hood military base, killing three and wounding 16, before turning the gun on himself.

    On 15 August 2014, Milley was promoted to the rank of four-star general and became the 21st Commanding General of U.S. Army Forces Command (CG FORSCOM), serving from 15 August 2014 to 9 August 2015.”

    When you’re the guy in charge of a U.S. military base gets that gets shot up by a lone gunman and three soldiers killed…should you really be getting a fourth star just four months later?

    Mike

  49. The system selects for high-functioning goal-driven (tautology alert) psychopaths. And the people we get at the top are constantly surprising us with their psychopathy?

    Actually you want psychopaths at the top of many organizations and in many professions — not much point being a neurosurgeon if you fall apart every time you poke your chopsticks into someone’s brain.

    The trick is that the Cursus Honorum has to be designed/evolved such that it selects the *right kind* of psychopaths. Current ‘process’ over actual real world results ‘meritocracy’ is not doing the job; it’s failing catastrophically.

  50. Zaphod:

    We’re looking for a few good … psychopaths.

    During Steve Jobs’ heyday I recall corporate self-help literature argued the pros and cons of psychopath CEOs.

    I once joked with a friend that there ought to be a self-help book titled, “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from the Gestapo.”

  51. @huxley:

    We’re going to get them ruling over you and me whether you want them or no. It’s not optional. So best have a better class of psychopaths doing it — ones where their goals are not totally orthogonal to us Cattle they farm, err I meant to say: Lead.

    This is how the world is. There’s no Cincinnatus and his plough. In fact John Deere (run, doubtless by a psychopathic CEO) goes out of its way with cryptographic engine and system management software magic to bar third party repairers from working on their fiendishly expensive but essential equipment.

  52. @huxley:

    Steve Jobs was definitely a psychopath. He had a low tolerance threshold for woke BS and it’s a pity he killed himself with his new age stupidity. Would be super amusing to see him running Apple today. Definitely would do it better than current incumbent reptile.

    “I once joked with a friend that there ought to be a self-help book titled, “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned from the Gestapo.”

    In a world run by the Gestapo we’d all be getting around in these:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_Traction_Avant

    And wearing long leather coats. Plus Nazi Moon Bases! Which would be way cool.

    OTOH I wouldn’t be able to troll half the good folks here with my morning coffee. Solipsism Uber Alles! So, three small cheers for Stalin.

  53. Zaphod:

    From an Evolutionary Psych POV psychopaths are a useful part of human diversity. Not for everything, but when you need a psychopath, you need one.

    Not so good for those unlucky enough to be in the way.

  54. @Huxley:

    Re: Evo Psych

    You’ll get no arguments from me on that. And yes, don’t be caught standing between one and whatever he/she is after at any given moment.

  55. Zaphod:

    Did you catch this Finnish marvel, “Iron Sky”:
    ________________________________

    Iron Sky is a 2012 Finnish-German-Australian[4] comic-science-fiction action film …[]which tells the story of a group of Nazi Germans who, having been defeated in 1945, fled to the Moon, where they built a space fleet to return in 2018 and conquer Earth.
    ________________________________

    I’ll have pull my copy off the hard drive…

  56. @Huxley:

    “Iron Sky”

    That’s Nachrichten to me. Please don’t rune it for me with any spoilers! 😛

  57. Mike,

    Fort Hood’s been a jumping place recently, what with murders and suicides. The military knows that stuff just happens., You have a lot of people who are either bored or stressed. Question is whether it’s more than what might be considered the average allowance.
    I haven’t been able to find out what was going on 2013-14.
    Last year, the entire leadership team was relieved.
    So I suspect one might compare what was going on when Milley was there to what was going on five or six years ago. Not sure the earlier period has been pulled together due to investigations, so I’m not in a position to judge.
    I never deployed, so I’m not in a position to judge “combat time.”. Back fifty plus years, I encountered an Infantry lieutenant who had an Indianhead patch–insignia of the 2ID–on his shirt front. Didn’t look authorized. I asked. It was unofficial, division-specific. You got it for “forty missions into the zone”, which is the DMZ in Korea. Patrolling, looking for Norks doing the same, laying intel devices, mines, etc. Sweaty work.
    Shortly thereafter, I found those holding the award were retroactively qualified for the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. It’s the blue panel with a laurel wreath represented. It’s worn above all fruit salad but the MoH.
    So the 2ID guys were in combat, or not, depending on whether the CIB had been authorized wen somebody as looking at their records.
    The CIB doesn’t cover everything Tankers in the savage fighting in the ETO didn’t qualify. And Armor doesn’t have an equivalent, as far as I know.
    Milley has a CIB. For what?
    No way to tell from the outside, but if you’re in a mostly defensive role, with fire coming in on a regular basis, it might be considered Infantry combat without one actually doing something notable.
    Anybody in Infantry combat qualifies, on the understanding that it’s about as bad as it gets. My father, Infantry platoon leader, CIB, SIlver Star, several Purple Hearts, remarked that anybody who took one step forward deserved a medal. You don’t have to be a hero. Take one step forward and don’t let down your buddies. Or just keep it together-command wise–while in a defensive role.

    So I’d ask if Milley’s CIB was awarded while the guys in his command were or were not awarded same. Or other guys in similar situations.

    LBJ got a Silver Star for almost going on a recon flight, iirc. So it depends on who you are.

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