It's incredible how uneducated our media is.
I just listened to Jeffrey Goldberg (author of the recent military hit-piece) give an interview where he stated, with absolute conviction, that historically it's been the case that the military leaders are the ones forced to dissuade the civilian/political leaders from going to war. Dare I say it, but this is Orwellian ****.
I am guessing you are well aware of this, but I think there is some important context about this whole Goldberg atlantic piece brouhaha:
In 2002, Goldberg's "The Great Terror" published in The New Yorker argued that the threat posed to America by Saddam Hussein was significant, discussing the possible connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda as well as the Iraqi nuclear program, averring that there was "some debate among arms-control experts about exactly when Saddam will have nuclear capabilities. But there is no disagreement that Iraq, if unchecked, will have them soon ... There is little doubt what Saddam might do with an atomic bomb or with his stocks of biological and chemical weapons."[22]
In a late 2002 debate in Slate on the question "Should the U.S. invade Iraq?", Goldberg argued in favor of an invasion on a moral basis, writing, "So: Saddam Hussein is uniquely evil, the only ruler in power today—and the first one since Hitler—to commit chemical genocide. Is that enough of a reason to remove him from power? I would say yes, if 'never again' is in fact actually to mean 'never again.'"[77]
Glenn Greenwald called Goldberg "one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq", claiming Goldberg had "compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller's both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact."[78] In 2008, in an article in Slate entitled "How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?", Goldberg explained the reasons behind his initial support of the Iraq War and wrote that he "didn't realize how incompetent the Bush administration could be."[79]
Also, can you think of what he could possibly be referencing with that comment? He just blurted it out as though it was common knowledge, maybe he's talking about Powell's tepid resistance to endorsing the Iraq invasion? The only real famous clash that I can think of between the military and the WH was the Cuban missile crisis, where it was actually the extreme opposite where the military wanted start nuking people.