HUGH SHELTON
(Henry Hugh Shelton)
The general’s view was that if the Secretary found something unacceptable in one of his direct subordinates, then there was something unacceptable about him as he supervised the man and approved of his work. Rumsfeld backed down.
The official asked the Chairman if he could, instead of flying our U2 Reconnaissance planes over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, instead of the safe 70,000 feet, fly the plane much lower so the Iraqis could shoot it down, and then we would have a valid reason to invade Iraq and remove Saddam. Saddam had signed a surrender agreement in the Gulf War giving us the right to overfly all of Iraq, but Saddam claimed that regardless it was sovereign air space, and started to fire missiles at American coalition planes recording any troop movement and weapons intelligence. But the Iraqi weapons were no danger to the American planes as long as they flew high enough. Technically, legally America could change the regime if Saddam had short down an American plane, but in addition to the excuse to start a war, an American pilot of the low flying planes.
Henry Hugh Shelton is a former United States Army officer who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001.
