The Dismissal of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker - A special report by Cong. Morris K. Udall

[Octafish]

17. Sounds just like Gen. Ripper...Trying to force Armageddon's hand to ''Win''

"But the movie also traded on several of the period’s familiar images, ideas and figures. The deranged Ripper, who launches the nuclear war because he’s worried that fluoridated water is a Communist con-spiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids, bears resemblance to General Edwin Walker who recently had been forced to resign from the military for spouting similarly paranoid craziness." -- David Cochran
SOURCE: http://thesouthern.com/news/opinion/cochran-serious-message-with-comic-twist/article_280c1b80-8d5e-11e3-84c3-0019bb2963f4.html

Thing is, the fictional General Ripper was nothing compared to what some real-life flag officers were thinking:

From The Cult of the Presidency by Gene Healy, Cato Institute (of all places):

If there's anything to praise about JFK's leadership during the crisis, it's that he resisted efforts to get him to escalate the conflict still further. Thomas Power, head of the Strategic Air Command, and Curtis Lemay (sic), the Air Force chief of staff, both tried to push the Cuban Missile Crisis into a full-scale war with the Soviets. Both men, like much of the military establishment at the time, were enamored with the concept of preventive war, in which the United States would kill off its superpower rivals before they grew too strong. When Lemay had served as head of SAC from 1948 to 1957, he hoped to provoke an incident that would allow him to deliver his "Sunday Punch," 750 nuclear bombs in a few hours, leading to an estimated 60 million Russian dead. Without authorization, in 1954 Lemay ordered B-45 overflights of the Soviet Union, commenting to his aides, "Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started." General Power, Lemay's successor at SAC, and a man that even Lemay considered "a sadist,” chastised a colleague at a 1960 briefing on nuclear strategy, yelling, "Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards....Look: at the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!" The colleague replied, "Well, you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman."

At the height of the Missile Crisis, Power allowed the prescheduled test launch of an Atlas ICBM, in an apparent attempt to spook the Soviets into action. Lemay in turn repeatedly challenged Kennedy's courage, urging the president to approve air strikes on the missile installations. That action would likely have led to the nuclear exchange Lemay had long lusted after. As we later learned, during the crisis, the Soviets had 20 operational, nuclear-armed medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, as well as nine tactical nuclear weapons that Russian field commanders had been authorized t use in the event of an attack. In his book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, historian Richard Rhodes writes, "If John Kennedy had followed Lemay's advice, history would have forgotten the Nazis and their terrible Holocaust. Ours would have been the historic omnicide."

That presidents advised by such men had in their hands the means to kill millions should be unsettling to people of normal human sensibilities. That presidents showed restraint while in possession of such power gives us cause for thanks, but it is, at best, an uneasy source of comfort.

SOURCE: https://books.google.com/books?id=PFHD_fp-S80C&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=%E2%80%9CAt+the+end+of+the+war,+if+there+are+two+Americans+and+one+Russian,+we+win!%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=GYfL8oQ8I7&sig=_elPVv37oBT0MC5iqYvXyT73WWY&hl=en&ei=ggV_SvDMHIe4NuGo-PYC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CAt%20the%20end%20of%20the%20war%2C%20if%20there%20are%20two%20Americans%20and%20one%20Russian%2C%20we%20win!%E2%80%9D&f=false

Thanks for remembering what's at stake, paleotn. Some people still think we can kill our way to peace.