It's Draft Time: Impeachment Edition

[Dill]

(02-21-2017, 02:24 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Obama didn't say no go.  They had to wait for the next moonless night which came after the transition according to what I read.  If the military says it is good to go, the President has no way of ascertaining whether they are or not.  I'm not sure what you expect here, or maybe i'm misunderstanding.  

I didn't know we were talking about only American dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinook_shootdown_in_Afghanistan

Now can we retroactively impeach?

Waiting for "the next" moonless night means Obama said no go and would have reconsidered circumstances again once the mission was set. And yes, the president would have real time intel assessments for this situation, including from drones and satellites. Since the Bay of Pigs every president till Trump knows you don't just rubber stamp Pentagon oks. And the Pentagon knows it is only supposed to provide assessments and intel, not urge the president one way or the other. The CJCS is one (advisory) voice on the NSC.  

I was in Afghanistan when that Chinook went down. Unless Obama himself shot it down, I don't see the problem or an analogy here. That Chinook was engaged in a tactical level operation in a war zone, ordered out from a FOB in Logar (probably Shank). https://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/wardak_executive_summary.pdf  Back then it was war-fighting every day in every province along the Paki border from Nurestan to Helmand. Even the CentCom commander could not monitor all that.

And yes, for most US voters, American bodies are what count. Blowing up a children's hospital in Iraq will just not create the blowback of four Americans killed and dragged through the streets of Fallujah.

The standards are different too, depending upon the party in office. 4,000 dead owing to cooked intel vs 4 dead in Benghazi in response to a random video just will not result in the same number of Congressional investigations.