Growing Concerns
Sen. Chris Murphy said “we are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests.”
“I provide advice to the President,” Hyten said. “He’ll tell me what to do, and if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen? I’m gonna say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’ Guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?’ And we’ll come up with options of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is.”
Blair wrote “the protocol for ordering the use of nuclear weapons endows every president with civilization-ending power.” The President “has unchecked authority to order a preventive nuclear strike against any nation he wants with a single verbal direction to the Pentagon war room,” the article read.
Blair said “no one ever thought that a commander of Strategic Command would ever be thinking of defying a President. The whole system was set up to be extremely streamlined. When I was a nuclear launch officer I practiced fighting nuclear wars probably 100 times in a simulator and exercises in the field scores of times, and the launch order always came directly from the Pentagon.”
