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It's probably for the best that retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman withdrew as a nominee for secretary of defense.
You can't really blame President Clinton for nominating Inman. He had impeccable credentials, an imposing resume and several decades of high-level connections. Inman is the kind of person that the American establishment always looks after.
But Inman couldn't handle criticism from William Saffire, a former speechwriter for Spiro Agnew now practicing punditry at the New York Times.
How could a man who can be frightened by a newspaper columnist lead the most powerful military establishment known to history? Commander of a nuclear arsenal, a man who holds soldiers' lives in his hands, and he turns tail over a few allegations that he wasn't a great intelligence officer or a world-class businessman?
If Inman had stayed the course, then this might have happened in the War Room:
Sir, intelligence reports preliminary indications of
a possible critical situation in Haiti.
Inman looks up from the New York Times, where he's been
analyzing the crossword puzzle clues and has discovered
that if you take the modulus of the sum of the ASCII code
of each clue and the clue's number, the resulting sequence,
encoded into Linear B, spells INMAN IS A WIMP.
What sort of critical situation, General?
, Inman
finally asks.
A radio commentator there said that prostitution,
gambling and vice in general have increased since the
American troops arrived.
That is critical, most critical,
Inman agrees.
Do you think that traitor Bob Dole put them up to this?
Can we nail the transmitter, perhaps with a TOW
missile?
It's a little 10-watt pirate station, sir. They move
around all the time. If we hit its last known location, we
might cause heavy collateral damage and still not remove
the target.
The general hopes he has dissuaded Inman. The last time they sent a missile after a critic, it hit a hospital, and that's not why the general chose a military career long ago.
Inman mulls the options. Then prepare the withdrawal
orders. If we can't respond to attacks, we don't have an
effective force in the field, and we should pull
back.
Relieved, the general leaves just as a colonel gets
Inman's attention. Sir, NORAD -- the News Outlet Review
And Depiction command -- just flashed us to go on red
alert.
Inman perks up. Give me the situation report.
It's coming from the northeast quadrant. Our monitors
show a heavy barrage, launched at 07:21 hours Zulu. They're
throwing everything into it -- print assaults, radio talk
shows, TV roundtables. This could be the Big One,
sir.
Inman tenses. Got a content analysis, Colonel, or is
this just traffic flow?
Their spies apparently learned that our important
secret harquebus and mule procurement and testing project
was still underway in Texas, while you were closing bases
and projects in the Northeast on grounds of
economy.
Inman roars. And I bet those bastards are insinuating
that there's some connection between the program we kept
near Austin and my substantial investments in that part of
the Lone Star State.
That's part of their delivery, sir. They're also
charging . . .
Never mind, Colonel. Alert the Spin Control Battalion
and activate the Denial Deployment Force. We can get around
their defenses by dropping leaflets, so get the First
Support Wing into the air.
Yes sir,
the officer agrees, snapping a salute as
Inman watches the battle commence on the big screens in the
War Room.
Just a minute, Colonel. While you're out, could you
run up to the Hill and find out how we can change my title
from Secretary of Defense to 'Secretary of the
Defensive'?
May I ask why, sir?
Because this is total war, and we must use every
tactic at our command, including honesty.
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