Boo-blog

« Kermit is the only crossover | Main | To all our friends who use Moveable Type: »

March 05, 2004

Dick and John, always thinkin'

Girl-E reads The Atlantic Monthly, and during the few days it takes her to finish the magazine, she is superbly pretentious. First, she is certain that anyone who bothers to read a series of 8,000 word articles is in the top eschelon of American media consumers. Second, the stories assume a fairly high level of previous knowledge about, say, the events surrounding the fall of the Soviet Union, or the chronology of American military conflicts in the past 10 years. We can tell when she actually gets a story because her continuously knitted brow briefly morphs into a smirk.

This month's issue includes a particularly creepy story about the activities of Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft during the Reagan years. We're thinking of this because within the last hour, Ashcroft has been admitted to intensive care for a "serious pancreatic ailment". And no, we're not going to link to the Eagles Soaring thing. Anyway, in the 1980s, Dick and John, neither of whom ever actually served in the Reagan Administration, set up an elaborate extra-constitutional plan for leading the government during nuclear war with the USSR. Basically, there were several secret locations around the U.S. where they would practice drills with rotating teams of skeleton governments-- each team including a Cabinet secretary, a chief-of-staff-type, and like 60 secret police. The plan was based on the idea that if the President and Vice President were killed in a nuclear attack, it would take too long to go down the chain of succession and legally install a new leader. Convening Congress would also be a drag. So instead, the instant the radiation hit the real Commander in Chief, one of the mini-White Houses would be ready to take over. If location #1 were bombed, location #2 would take over, and so on. This would ensure, they thought, "continuity of government," which would be essential in time of nuclear war. To prove the new President's legitimacy, they'd have him summon a submarine to surface, or some such thing.

Now, we happen to think that in some instances, the government does need to have shady secret plans, because if the rest of us knew about them we would fuck it all up. But this one seems particularly yucky. I mean first of all, the people involved would disappear for days, not even telling their wives where they were(we'd say spouses, but that's probably not necessary). Second, you can't just pick when the Constitution applies-- call us idealists, but we're pretty sure it was designed to apply, like, always. Even during a horrible war, which it seems would be a time you'd particularly want to prevent anarchy. I mean, why not just bring a few slaves with you to the secret hideouts, and plop a cross out front.

After the Soviet Union fell, the exercises stopped-- until September 11, 2001. Remember Cheney and all that "undisclosed location" stuff? Well, they were planning for the possibility that continued attacks would take out Bush and the teams would spring into action. So anyway, that's all pretty fucking scary if you ask us, and we're glad Girl-E's moved on to a story about the guys who keep Lenin's body pretty (you know they do that?).

Posted by The Twins at March 5, 2004 09:56 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/237

Comments

Posted by: snowy at March 5, 2004 02:10 PM

Posted by: nikita at March 5, 2004 03:08 PM

Posted by: EV at March 5, 2004 03:35 PM

Posted by: nikita at March 6, 2004 05:14 PM