Hegseth bringing the generals and admirals in for a meeting has a certain vibe to it.

I hope.

In the early/mid 1980's I worked for an electrical distributor, we did a lot of business with Iraq.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/09/16/at-war-iraq-courted-us-into-economic-embrace/b47ffece-d081-44a5-8163-c00b8a52eabd/


"From the early 1980s until the invasion of Kuwait Aug. 2, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein aggressively courted U.S. companies and government agencies, securing food, loans and technology to help survive a bloody war with Iran and to promote his dreams of Iraqi greatness.
It was a mutual seduction. The U.S. government, bitterly opposed to Iran and its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, first tilted toward Iraq to ensure that Iran did not win the war; later, it became equally interested in Iraqi oil and trade...

In the end, Iraq largely won out. Presidents Reagan and Bush repeatedly opposed Congress's proposed trade sanctions against Iraq -- the last time only two days before Kuwait was invaded. Between 1983 and 1989, annual trade between Iraq and the United States grew nearly sevenfold, from $571 million to $3.6 billion. Using loans from U.S.-based banks, many guaranteed by the federal government, Iraq during that period bought $5.2 billion in U.S. exports of food, technology and industrial goods. The United States in turn bought $5.5 billion in Iraqi petroleum over the same period...

.... Soon the relationship began to change. In March 1982, the State Department removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism, making Iraq eligible for a fuller range of trade and credits with the United States....

... Defense Department officials repeatedly objected to the sale of computer technology, according to internal government documents. In one case, the Pentagon said it was "inclined to deny completely this export because of the high likelihood of military end use." In a second case, defense officials said "this system has uses in the production of chemical weapons and we have no credible assurances that it will not be used in that way." The department called a third system "ideal" for designing and testing weapons, and rejected Iraq's contention that the computers were for bookkeeping as "not believable."

I did not know of this purge at the time, our goverment did though. We continued to do business with them and sold them items used against certain populations.

Maybe we should not have helped the British with the 1953 Iranian coup.

Full article

https://wapo.st/46IYJF0

"The defense secretary is expected to lecture about the “warrior ethos” for less than an hour, according to multiple people familiar with the event. But top generals are bracing for possible firings or demotions....

“It’s meant to be an eyeball-to-eyeball kind of conversation,” one person familiar with ongoing discussions said. “He wants to see the generals.”
The orders, first reported by The Post on Thursday, were delivered without any stated reason, sending staff, many of whom will be coming in from commands that are focused on the world’s global conflicts, scrambling to make travel arrangements. The directive comes in the wake of Hegseth’s firing of numerous senior military officers without cause, upending military norms and creating a culture of fear in the Pentagon, the people familiar with the matter said...

.... Hegseth appeared to address concerns about the meeting for the first time Friday morning, using his personal social media account. After a retired senior officer, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, tweeted that German generals were “called to a surprise assembly in Berlin” in 1935 and “required to swear a personal oath to the Führer,” the defense secretary responded with sarcasm.
“Cool story, General,” Hegseth wrote...

... There are about 800 one-star and above senior leaders in the military, roughly half of whom are in command positions, said one former defense auditing official. But each of those officers travel with aides and support staff, so there could be hundreds of senior military personnel flowing in over the next few days..."