Let's get ready to r-r-r-r-rumble!

Martin Sieff, in a column for UPI, says that

"...three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time.

Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate."

The Army and CIA have the inside story, and if they're ready to deliver it up to the Senate, they'll have a ready audience, with Sen. John Warner, Chair of the Armed Forces Committee already on record with his discontent.

"In my 25 years on this committee, I've received hundreds of calls, day and night, from … all levels, uniform and civilian, from the Department of Defense when they, in their judgment, felt it was necessary, and I daresay other members on this committee have experienced the same courtesy," Warner declared.

"I did not receive such a call in this case, and yet I think the situation was absolutely clear and required it - not only to me, but my distinguished ranking member and other members of this committee."

With help from other dissident Repbulicans, including Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and a united cadre of Democrats, the Senate Armed Forces Committee could be the setting for political disaster for the Bush administration. If the Committee becomes the forum for public testimony corroborating the unnamed sources behind the recent reporting in the New Yorker and Newsweek, it will be a lot harder to name the potential survivors than the probable victims of the criminal and incompetent policy directions that have emerged from DOD under Rumsfeld.

How likely is it that those in the know will come forward? More likely all the time, I think. Sieff reports that

"...intelligence and regular Army sources have told UPI that senior officers and officials in both communities are sickened and outraged by the revelations of mass torture and abuse, and also by the incompetence involved, in the Abu Ghraib prison revelations. These sources also said that officials all the way up to the highest level in both the Army and the Agency are determined not to be scapegoated, or allow very junior soldiers or officials to take the full blame for the excesses."

Administrations come and go, and military and intelligence professionals understand that. To think that they'll sit by and watch the reputations of the instutitions they've given their lives to sacrificed to the temporary advantage of a handful of individuals, no matter how high their temporary standing, is highly unlikely.

Without getting into an "if I told you, I'd have to kill you" level of detail, I'll just say that I spent much of my tour of Vietnam hanging around career MI types from MACV J-2 and the spooks down the hall. Whatever you may think you know from the movies about field phone generators and aborted helicopter rides, nothing drove those guys crazier than clumsy field interrogations by our erstwhile ARVN allies, or misguided instructions from those far from the field. I don't imagine that's changed much. That attitude, combined with the resentment that's been brewing in military circles for three decades after being hung with the blame for a 'defeat' in Vietnam in order to cover the political blunders of a series of pols and bureaucrats leads me to expect a backlash of enormous proportions before they take another tumble.

This is shaping up to be a wild ride. Fasten your seatbelt.