Seven Days In ?

By Ron Beasley

I didn't see the movie but I did read the book - Seven Days In May.

The plot centers on the fictitious U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March). As the story begins, Lyman faces a wave of public dissatisfaction with his decision to sign a treaty with the Soviet Union, an agreement that will supposedly result in both nations simultaneously destroying their nuclear weapons under mutual international inspection. This is extremely unpopular with both the President's opposition and the military, who believe the Soviets cannot be trusted.

As the debate over the treaty rages on, an alert and well-positioned Pentagon insider, United States Marine Corps Colonel Martin "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) becomes aware of a conspiracy among the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) led by his own superior officer, the charismatic head of the JCS, Air Force General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster). As he digs deeper, he uncovers the conspiracy's shocking goal: Scott and his cohorts, Colonel Broderick (John Larkin), Colonel Murdock (Richard Anderson), Gen. Hardesty (Tyler McVey), along with allies in the United States Congress led by Sen. Frederick Prentice (Whit Bissell) and influential members of the news media led by Harold McPherson (Hugh Marlowe), are plotting to stage a coup d'etat to remove President Lyman and his cabinet seven days hence.

The plot itself, called ECOMCON (for "Emergency Communications Control"), entails the seizure of the nation's telephone, radio and television network infrastructure by a secret United States Army combat unit created and controlled by Scott's conspiracy and based in Texas near Fort Bliss. Once this is done, General Scott and his conspirators will control the nation's communications assets; then, from their headquarters within a vast underground nuclear shelter called "Mount Thunder" (based on the actual continuity of government facility maintained by the U.S. at Mount Weather in Berryville, Virginia), they will use the power of the media and the military to prevent the implementation of the treaty.

The novel was published in 1962 and the author Fletcher Knebel got the idea for the book after interviewing highwingnut Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis Lemay.

Fast forward 45 years and we have this:

Update:

The following was apparently too hot even for Newsmax and has been removed.

Newsmax columnist: Military coup "to resolve the 'Obama problem' " is not "unrealistic"

From John L. Perry's September 29 Newsmax column:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

[...]

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a "family intervention," with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

Yes there are people crazy enough to think this is realistic.  The good news is that few of them are in the Pentagon.  Highwingnut Frank Gaffney I'm sure would agree:

Right-Wing Panel Agrees Obama Is The �First Muslim American President�

At the How to Take Back America conference last weekend, attended by several Republican lawmakers, former Reagan official and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney, right-wing historian Bill Federer, and Christian activist Walid Shoebat hosted a panel on �How to understand Islam.� An attendee of the panel asked the three speakers if they would consider President Obama a Christian or a Muslim, given his �roots.� While Gaffney gave a now familiar response linking Obama to the Muslim Brotherhood, Federer and Shoebat provided new theories, which elicited praise from the crowd: