Friday, December 23, 2005

Rummy to be replaced by 9-11/Abu Ghraib figure?

A new Executive Order may be another sign that changes are coming at Defense.
The White House has formulated a new order of succession within the Department of Defense.
If Rumsfeld should vacate his post, taking over would be the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Who is the Deputy? Well, that leads us to some interesting possibilities...

Paul Wolfowitz resigned on May 13, and since then the spot has not been officially filled. The ~Acting~ Deputy Secretary is Secretary of the Navy Gordon England.
As acting Deputy, he might be next, but as he is fully the Secretary of the Navy, that puts him seventh in line.
If he is not considered the Deputy per the order of succession, the next in line is the Undersecretary of Defense for Intellegence, a position that did not exist until just two days before Wolfowitz resigned.

So far the only man to ever hold the office is Stephen Cambone. His job includes oversight of the NSA and of Defense Intelligence.
As his office is so new, I speculate that the purpose of the new order of succession was to insert him.

Cambone was discussed at length in this AmericanProgress.org article about the failures of 911 Intellegence.

It includes such passages as...

A name that we have not frequently heard mentioned, however, is Stephen Cambone. As the nation's first ever undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Cambone wields vast power within the intelligence community; yet, his only qualifications for the post are a fierce loyalty to Donald Rumsfeld and an unshakeable right wing ideology.
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Cambone has since conceded that he was personally behind sending Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to Iraq with orders to find more effective ways of interrogating prisoners.
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When Sen. John Warner asked Cambone if his office had "overall responsibility for policy concerning the handling of detainees," Cambone coyly responded with, "Not precisely, sir." And when Cambone was pressed on the question of whether he and Rumsfeld believed that the prisoners in Iraq were protected by the Geneva Convention, he again ran for shelter beyond the shelter beyond the word "precise":
Sen. Levin: You this morning said, again, the Geneva Convention applies to our activities in Iraq, but not precisely.

Mr. Cambone: No, sir. I think what the secretary - I - let me tell you what the facts are. The Geneva Convention applies in Iraq.

Sen Levin: Precisely?

Mr. Cambone. Precisely.

Sen. Levin: (Inaudible) -

Mr. Cambone: They do not apply in the precise way that the secretary was talking about...

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