Post by James G on Mar 3, 2019 19:37:05 GMT
Seventy
Russian activities when it came to POWs taken & in their custody contrasted sharply with how they treated civilians from countries that they were at war with after they had been rounded up within Russia. These people were all evacuated, sent on flights aboard airliners to Turkey. A deal had been wrapped up there between Moscow and Ankara to do this. The haste with what it was done caught the everyone else flat-footed. The Kremlin was playing the propaganda game by its own rules and this was one of the earliest opening moves of that. People were let go whom the general consensus was that they would have been kept for hostage purposes. Sending them to Turkey was deliberate. The pre-war fallout between Turkey and its NATO allies was exploited in this fashion; Finland or the Ukraine could have been other routes to send those civilians on but using Turkey was done to rub salt into the wounds to show where Western diplomacy had failed remarkably when it came to Turkey.
In Washington, the issue with Turkey joined a long list of similar diplomatic failures which had occurred in recent days when it came to supposed allies of the United States. What was now being called ‘the Coalition’ – instead of NATO or the West – had been failed to be joined by a lot of other countries. There were several nations which offered warm words of support to America and the Coalition but decided not to go to war with Russia unless they were directly attacked themselves. There were a lot of factors here yet the main one identified by President Biden was the inability of his government to properly manage its own diplomatic relations at this time. Acting Secretary of State James Steinberg had stepped up from his deputy role to Clinton yet was unable to properly fill her shoes. Governments around the globe were looking at a ‘caretaker’ administration in Washington – Biden included – and choosing to stay out of this war on that basis. It wasn’t just Clinton whom Biden needed to replace with someone permanent. He needed a new secretary of defence, a new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, a new national security adviser… oh, and a new vice president as well.
The spirit of bi-partisanship in Washington was already waning. Through Saturday and Sunday, the first two days of the war following Obama’s assassination late on Friday, the nation and its politicians had pulled together in an extraordinary fashion. By the beginning of Monday, that was being shown for the moment of shock which it was. The blame game and finger-pointing were happening. How could the United States have been hit like it was? Who was responsible? Biden believed that if Obama and Clinton were still alive, and Gates wasn’t in that induced coma, all of them would have been hounded out of office in time. New of the defeats met overseas were drowning out those of victories won. Here at home, the aftereffects of the attacks made direct on American soil were still ringing fresh among many. The security failing was clearly immense. From Congress, there was at once talk of investigations and those were soon going to get off the ground. What Biden wanted was to replace the people he needed to replace so the country could effectively fight this war. He needed to do that with haste and he understood he could only do it with Congressional support. He’d spoken with many senators and representatives over the weekend and progress had been made. Yet things were now slowing down. Others were beginning moves to block some of his actions. They were playing politics. There was thought being put into this year’s mid-term elections and also 2012 too. This was Washington, these things were expected. Biden had anticipated problems yet hadn’t thought that they would occur so soon and also with pretty nasty venom too.
Biden turned to the Senate to choose people to serve in his administration to fill the boots of several of those victims of the Russian action in the sky above Washington. Long in the Senate himself, he looked for former and current members of that chamber. He wanted John Kerry for the role of vice president. There were others who possibly would have taken the post which Biden automatically departed when Obama was killed, but Kerry had at once been whom he had settled upon. The Senator from Massachusetts would be someone whom Biden believed that Congress would confirm without serious objections. As to a new Secretary of State, consideration was made of several people including the senators Evan Bayh and Chuck Hagel, even the career diplomat Richard Holbrooke, but Biden settled upon the former Governor of Virginia and current senator from that state in the form of Mark Warner. Warner would be more difficult in having his confirmation passed, Biden believed, but he saw it as doable. Retired senator Sam Nunn was Biden’s selection for the position of Secretary of Defence. Little controversy was expected here; another floated idea of a nominee was Wesley Clark yet he was a divisive figure whereas Nunn really wasn’t. Biden didn’t need Congress to confirm a new national security nor homeland security adviser but he did need them to have him replace the deceased Admiral Mullen as chairman of the joint chiefs not with the vice chair & current acting chair in the form of General Cartwright but instead General Casey, the army chief of staff.
Congress let Biden know that they would approve Nunn and Casey with haste. There was a war on after all and such stability at the top in these posts was sought by them. Kerry and Warner were going to be more difficult though; Biden had believed things would be easier than they were with these two. The whole confirmation process for both the new secretary of defence and the chairman of the joint chiefs was rammed through with cut-outs made everywhere but that wouldn’t be the case with the new vice president nor secretary of state. Biden took the victories he had won. He warned Congress that delaying these appointments would endanger the country yet there was disagreement there among those who said this needed to be done properly. These things weren’t on party lines either… things would have been so much simpler if they were! Biden brought in General Zinni – a retired US Marine – as his national security adviser though needed another day or two to find a suitable homeland security adviser. Holding the Cabinet-level role in that brief (separate from whom he would appoint below) was Janet Napolitano, someone alongside John McCain – a very bi-partisan idea shot down by Democratic party figures – who’d been suggested to Biden, and turned down flat by him, as other options to Kerry for the vice presidency. Napolitano was currently under friendly fire though. Congress was rounding on her because as secretary of homeland security, she had ‘allowed’ this to happen. Napolitano had already forced the Secret Service director to resign – they’d not just lost a president but overseen the ramming into Marine One of so many other top-level figures – and was working to see that there was proper coordination in the hunt for that Russian Spetsnaz team still on American soil, but many in Congress wanted rid of her regardless. Biden was trying to keep her though. She was inherited from the Obama Administration and there would be a later time and place to think about whether Napolitano should stay in her job. He wouldn’t stand by and let Congress hound her out, not at a time like this. The battles with Congress on this were only going to continue.
The American people were whom those in Congress said they spoke for in light of their recent events. Politicians justified what they were doing in seeking investigations, working to ensure that Biden appointed the right people and calling for Napolitano’s firing on the basis of this. The initial outrage shown by some instances of violence on the war’s first day – for all of the drama in Seattle, the consulate there was empty of Russian diplomats; they should have gone to the embassy in Washington – subsided somewhat in terms of a physical presence yet that moved to the media and, increasingly, online too. It was here where the American people had an outlet for their rage. The vitriol on these platforms was much more than had been seen in those improvised demonstrations. It was here where the earliest signs were shown of actual happiness that Obama had been killed. He had been the President of the United States and it was long held by many as an article of faith that when it came to the holder of that office, there was always respect there for the man in that position. Such a feeling was out of date. When it had changed was something to be argued about but it had. Initial nationwide unity was quickly shattered once the shock wore off some. Obama’s death was celebrated with the remarks that if he’d been capable, it wouldn’t have happened. Clinton was someone else whom the demise of was too greeted with smiles. Many people were offended by such things where they considered that any ‘decent’ American, any patriot, could put such partisan feelings aside. The world had moved on though. Biden made an appearance with Obama’s widow and his own wife as well where it was announced that a funeral for the deceased forty-fourth president would be occurring on the coming Friday. The details were to be worked out – the security implications were going to be quite something – but Obama would be buried with the respect deserved. This brought forth more of that nastiness leading to further shock from others at the views expressed by vocal radicals that a proper state funeral wasn’t deserved. He wasn’t a legitimate president, it was said, and he deserved all that he got too. Those same figures who made open or coded remarks on these lines were the same ones who demanded that the United States go full out in its war with Russia. Why wasn’t Moscow yet a radioactive ruin?
When Biden made that appearance with both the former and current first ladies, and then later too spoke with Bill Clinton at another but non-televised meeting about the funeral of his wife as well, he did so from ‘non-disclosed’ locations. Russia had just killed his predecessor, the most-protected man in the world. Biden was kept hidden and out of the public view apart from at events unannounced in terms of his appearance beforehand. He wasn’t sleeping in the White House despite being there at several times since his accession to office. Much of Downtown DC was on lockdown – a huge area – but even then he spent Sunday night at Trowbridge House, a small building facing Lafayette Park on its western side. This was one of three official government residences there – Blair House and the President’s Townhouse being the other two – all inside that security zone. He’d yet to travel in Marine One (there were many helicopters similar to the one downed) either. Inside that secure area, investigators still had control over many crime scenes. The Department of Homeland Security was in-charge overall with the Secret Service, the FBI and DC Metro Police all reporting to a DHS official hand-picked by Napolitano. There was the crash site where Marine One had landed yet also the physical sites from where the Russian killers had been. They’d had spotters on rooftops and also missilemen there plus on the streets. Everything about the assassination was being gone over. There was a dead security guard at the New Executive Office Building – a modern complex northwest of the White House – and two more civilian security people over at the Old Post Office. These bodies were those of people who had tried to stop what had happened yet the Russians had been elsewhere too and undetected at the time. They’d gotten into places where no one should have had access to: rooftops outwards in every direction from the White House were meant to be monitored to protect against assassination. Several hotels in the city had armed agents crash into now-empty rooms looking for those suspected to be the Russian hit team; another FBI team had gone into the Russian Embassy when State Department officials brought along legal documentation informing those there that they were being expelled from the country. Finding those people who had killed the president, plus all those who had aided them in doing so (be they Russians or even Americans), was a difficult task. The Pennsylvania lead – that dead family – went cold and there were other possible avenues of the investigation which first looked promising which were all eventually shot down. Hiding was what those Russians were doing, keeping out of the way for the time being.
The US Government wanted those Spetsnaz and wanted them bad. That was why they didn’t just have those FBI agents looking for any trace of them in Washington but also had Delta Force soldiers on the hunt elsewhere. Capturing them alive would be an intelligence boon; sending them to a warm place called Hell in a shootout would make others happy too.
Russian activities when it came to POWs taken & in their custody contrasted sharply with how they treated civilians from countries that they were at war with after they had been rounded up within Russia. These people were all evacuated, sent on flights aboard airliners to Turkey. A deal had been wrapped up there between Moscow and Ankara to do this. The haste with what it was done caught the everyone else flat-footed. The Kremlin was playing the propaganda game by its own rules and this was one of the earliest opening moves of that. People were let go whom the general consensus was that they would have been kept for hostage purposes. Sending them to Turkey was deliberate. The pre-war fallout between Turkey and its NATO allies was exploited in this fashion; Finland or the Ukraine could have been other routes to send those civilians on but using Turkey was done to rub salt into the wounds to show where Western diplomacy had failed remarkably when it came to Turkey.
In Washington, the issue with Turkey joined a long list of similar diplomatic failures which had occurred in recent days when it came to supposed allies of the United States. What was now being called ‘the Coalition’ – instead of NATO or the West – had been failed to be joined by a lot of other countries. There were several nations which offered warm words of support to America and the Coalition but decided not to go to war with Russia unless they were directly attacked themselves. There were a lot of factors here yet the main one identified by President Biden was the inability of his government to properly manage its own diplomatic relations at this time. Acting Secretary of State James Steinberg had stepped up from his deputy role to Clinton yet was unable to properly fill her shoes. Governments around the globe were looking at a ‘caretaker’ administration in Washington – Biden included – and choosing to stay out of this war on that basis. It wasn’t just Clinton whom Biden needed to replace with someone permanent. He needed a new secretary of defence, a new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, a new national security adviser… oh, and a new vice president as well.
The spirit of bi-partisanship in Washington was already waning. Through Saturday and Sunday, the first two days of the war following Obama’s assassination late on Friday, the nation and its politicians had pulled together in an extraordinary fashion. By the beginning of Monday, that was being shown for the moment of shock which it was. The blame game and finger-pointing were happening. How could the United States have been hit like it was? Who was responsible? Biden believed that if Obama and Clinton were still alive, and Gates wasn’t in that induced coma, all of them would have been hounded out of office in time. New of the defeats met overseas were drowning out those of victories won. Here at home, the aftereffects of the attacks made direct on American soil were still ringing fresh among many. The security failing was clearly immense. From Congress, there was at once talk of investigations and those were soon going to get off the ground. What Biden wanted was to replace the people he needed to replace so the country could effectively fight this war. He needed to do that with haste and he understood he could only do it with Congressional support. He’d spoken with many senators and representatives over the weekend and progress had been made. Yet things were now slowing down. Others were beginning moves to block some of his actions. They were playing politics. There was thought being put into this year’s mid-term elections and also 2012 too. This was Washington, these things were expected. Biden had anticipated problems yet hadn’t thought that they would occur so soon and also with pretty nasty venom too.
Biden turned to the Senate to choose people to serve in his administration to fill the boots of several of those victims of the Russian action in the sky above Washington. Long in the Senate himself, he looked for former and current members of that chamber. He wanted John Kerry for the role of vice president. There were others who possibly would have taken the post which Biden automatically departed when Obama was killed, but Kerry had at once been whom he had settled upon. The Senator from Massachusetts would be someone whom Biden believed that Congress would confirm without serious objections. As to a new Secretary of State, consideration was made of several people including the senators Evan Bayh and Chuck Hagel, even the career diplomat Richard Holbrooke, but Biden settled upon the former Governor of Virginia and current senator from that state in the form of Mark Warner. Warner would be more difficult in having his confirmation passed, Biden believed, but he saw it as doable. Retired senator Sam Nunn was Biden’s selection for the position of Secretary of Defence. Little controversy was expected here; another floated idea of a nominee was Wesley Clark yet he was a divisive figure whereas Nunn really wasn’t. Biden didn’t need Congress to confirm a new national security nor homeland security adviser but he did need them to have him replace the deceased Admiral Mullen as chairman of the joint chiefs not with the vice chair & current acting chair in the form of General Cartwright but instead General Casey, the army chief of staff.
Congress let Biden know that they would approve Nunn and Casey with haste. There was a war on after all and such stability at the top in these posts was sought by them. Kerry and Warner were going to be more difficult though; Biden had believed things would be easier than they were with these two. The whole confirmation process for both the new secretary of defence and the chairman of the joint chiefs was rammed through with cut-outs made everywhere but that wouldn’t be the case with the new vice president nor secretary of state. Biden took the victories he had won. He warned Congress that delaying these appointments would endanger the country yet there was disagreement there among those who said this needed to be done properly. These things weren’t on party lines either… things would have been so much simpler if they were! Biden brought in General Zinni – a retired US Marine – as his national security adviser though needed another day or two to find a suitable homeland security adviser. Holding the Cabinet-level role in that brief (separate from whom he would appoint below) was Janet Napolitano, someone alongside John McCain – a very bi-partisan idea shot down by Democratic party figures – who’d been suggested to Biden, and turned down flat by him, as other options to Kerry for the vice presidency. Napolitano was currently under friendly fire though. Congress was rounding on her because as secretary of homeland security, she had ‘allowed’ this to happen. Napolitano had already forced the Secret Service director to resign – they’d not just lost a president but overseen the ramming into Marine One of so many other top-level figures – and was working to see that there was proper coordination in the hunt for that Russian Spetsnaz team still on American soil, but many in Congress wanted rid of her regardless. Biden was trying to keep her though. She was inherited from the Obama Administration and there would be a later time and place to think about whether Napolitano should stay in her job. He wouldn’t stand by and let Congress hound her out, not at a time like this. The battles with Congress on this were only going to continue.
The American people were whom those in Congress said they spoke for in light of their recent events. Politicians justified what they were doing in seeking investigations, working to ensure that Biden appointed the right people and calling for Napolitano’s firing on the basis of this. The initial outrage shown by some instances of violence on the war’s first day – for all of the drama in Seattle, the consulate there was empty of Russian diplomats; they should have gone to the embassy in Washington – subsided somewhat in terms of a physical presence yet that moved to the media and, increasingly, online too. It was here where the American people had an outlet for their rage. The vitriol on these platforms was much more than had been seen in those improvised demonstrations. It was here where the earliest signs were shown of actual happiness that Obama had been killed. He had been the President of the United States and it was long held by many as an article of faith that when it came to the holder of that office, there was always respect there for the man in that position. Such a feeling was out of date. When it had changed was something to be argued about but it had. Initial nationwide unity was quickly shattered once the shock wore off some. Obama’s death was celebrated with the remarks that if he’d been capable, it wouldn’t have happened. Clinton was someone else whom the demise of was too greeted with smiles. Many people were offended by such things where they considered that any ‘decent’ American, any patriot, could put such partisan feelings aside. The world had moved on though. Biden made an appearance with Obama’s widow and his own wife as well where it was announced that a funeral for the deceased forty-fourth president would be occurring on the coming Friday. The details were to be worked out – the security implications were going to be quite something – but Obama would be buried with the respect deserved. This brought forth more of that nastiness leading to further shock from others at the views expressed by vocal radicals that a proper state funeral wasn’t deserved. He wasn’t a legitimate president, it was said, and he deserved all that he got too. Those same figures who made open or coded remarks on these lines were the same ones who demanded that the United States go full out in its war with Russia. Why wasn’t Moscow yet a radioactive ruin?
When Biden made that appearance with both the former and current first ladies, and then later too spoke with Bill Clinton at another but non-televised meeting about the funeral of his wife as well, he did so from ‘non-disclosed’ locations. Russia had just killed his predecessor, the most-protected man in the world. Biden was kept hidden and out of the public view apart from at events unannounced in terms of his appearance beforehand. He wasn’t sleeping in the White House despite being there at several times since his accession to office. Much of Downtown DC was on lockdown – a huge area – but even then he spent Sunday night at Trowbridge House, a small building facing Lafayette Park on its western side. This was one of three official government residences there – Blair House and the President’s Townhouse being the other two – all inside that security zone. He’d yet to travel in Marine One (there were many helicopters similar to the one downed) either. Inside that secure area, investigators still had control over many crime scenes. The Department of Homeland Security was in-charge overall with the Secret Service, the FBI and DC Metro Police all reporting to a DHS official hand-picked by Napolitano. There was the crash site where Marine One had landed yet also the physical sites from where the Russian killers had been. They’d had spotters on rooftops and also missilemen there plus on the streets. Everything about the assassination was being gone over. There was a dead security guard at the New Executive Office Building – a modern complex northwest of the White House – and two more civilian security people over at the Old Post Office. These bodies were those of people who had tried to stop what had happened yet the Russians had been elsewhere too and undetected at the time. They’d gotten into places where no one should have had access to: rooftops outwards in every direction from the White House were meant to be monitored to protect against assassination. Several hotels in the city had armed agents crash into now-empty rooms looking for those suspected to be the Russian hit team; another FBI team had gone into the Russian Embassy when State Department officials brought along legal documentation informing those there that they were being expelled from the country. Finding those people who had killed the president, plus all those who had aided them in doing so (be they Russians or even Americans), was a difficult task. The Pennsylvania lead – that dead family – went cold and there were other possible avenues of the investigation which first looked promising which were all eventually shot down. Hiding was what those Russians were doing, keeping out of the way for the time being.
The US Government wanted those Spetsnaz and wanted them bad. That was why they didn’t just have those FBI agents looking for any trace of them in Washington but also had Delta Force soldiers on the hunt elsewhere. Capturing them alive would be an intelligence boon; sending them to a warm place called Hell in a shootout would make others happy too.
