Marsha Blackburn Quotes

He supported the Presidential concept as the least worst option.

The President told McNamara that if the administration does not send the troops the Generals want, they will be blamed for any military failures that occur. If they do send all the troops that the Joint Chiefs wanted, they would be going far beyond the limits that the Defense Secretary recommended and the President would have preferred. JBJ felt he really had no political choice. He authorized the wanted troops further escalating the war. See his special assistant’s question about that decision in {617151}.

This seemingly prosaic quotation is one of the most significant quotations in history. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the telegraph was rapidly developing as a communications technology. One of Lincoln’s greatest achievements was the appreciation of the new technology and the deployment of it to gain an immense strategic advantage which was a major factor in all warfare thereafter. Lincoln placed ALL telegraphy of the North under the control of the military. He then had a telegraph terminal installed in the War Department right next to the White House. He would spend many hours in the Telegraph Room reading dispatches as they were coming in. To the distress of some of his military commanders, the Commander in Chief actually, for the first time in history, received virtually real time intelligence about a battle, and issued orders to the commanders in the field in real time. The quotation is one of the early examples. Ironically, Lincoln had more real time battlefields information in the Civil War than most of our Presidents did until the Vietnam War when digital, radio communications were exploited for the purpose.

MacArthur had been the Commander of our Military Forces in Korea. He had a huge ego, and he wanted to cross the border and attack China since Chinese Troops were aiding the North Vietnamese. He had previously assured the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President that the Chinese would not send troops into Korea, but he was then wrong. And when they had attacked, they had erased the territorial gains that MacArthur had previously gained. The Joint Chief’s of Staff, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State had decided upon a strategy which this time did not follow MacArthur’s strategic advice. The President approved the strategy, but MacArthur spoke and acted contrary. The President met with MacArthur and reiterated the strategy that the President approved. But MacArthur did not follow the orders of the Joint Chiefs. At the time, he and Eisenhower were America’s two most famous military leaders, and of the two MacArthur was senior and thought that he should be President. After he was fired, MacArthur addressed a Joint Session of Congress and gave his "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech which was his first active step towards the Presidency. It was a very sentimental speech with little content and nothing about why he had disobeyed orders. He was totally shocked when it was Eisenhower who was selected to run for President and not him.

Changes were made and experienced preparedness professionals hired at the top, but with the change of the next administration the agency regressed backwards with a horseshow manager and attorney politically appointed as the head of the agency. After the FIASCO of FEMA’s performance with Hurricane Katrina, the head was fired from relief duties and then resigned.

Mrs. Nixon put her foot down and the West Wing did not thereafter control and manage the affairs and staff of the First Lady.

John Foster Dulles was the Secretary of State and brother Allen Dulles was head of the CIA.

The Kaiser was very interested in the details of the German military activities and would often micro-manage by instructing individual officers about anything that struck him as important, Motke and the other Chiefs of Staff had the management of the Kaiser as one of his most critical tasks.