Reply #17: More creepy is the recent change in succession at the Pentagon [View All]

[HamdenRice]

With the uniformed officers at the Pentagon in open revolt -- or at least as close to open revolt as they can get within their tradition of deference to civilian leadership -- it is curious that last December, Rumsfeld changed the order of succession in the Pentagon, demoting the secretaries of the individual armed services and replacing them with neo-con civilians.

The main thing to keep in mind about any order of succession is that it only operates in a "doomsday" scenario. Whether we are talking about succession to the presidency or control of the Pentagon, succession would only happen in the even of a catastrophe, such as a successful decapitating military strike against Washington or some sort of coup d'etat. Other than that, it is purely symbolic, because in fact, neither order of succession has ever been used, except of course the replacement of the president with a vice president.

In the past, the order of succession was Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and then the Secretaries of the services -- Army, Air Force and Navy. Order of succession is different and separate from the chain of command.

Rumsfeld bumped the secretaries of the services down and replaced them with his trusted aides, the undersecretaries for policy, then for intelligence, then for acquisition.

Is Donald Rumsfeld worried about a coup?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901242.html