I was reading today about Boris Yeltsin's death and how he was able to help stop a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 when a bunch of high-ranking military officers took control of government buildings in Moscow, at which point Yeltsin jumped up on one of the tanks to stop them, effectively halting their actions because he was a high-ranking government official.
We don't have a government and/or parliamentary structure like various governments that have been overthrown in a coup, but it got me to thinking, is it theoretically possible to stage a coup and overthrow the government? Would it take a bunch of military officers taking control of buildings in D.C.? Or would it be more complicated than that? I know for instance that by law Congress can only meet at the U.S. Capitol except under extraordinary circumstances, but if, for example, Flight 93 had hit the Capitol or White House on 9/11, what would this have done to government if, say, Congress had nowhere to meet?
2007-04-23
18:25:17
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12 answers
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asked by
Michael S
2
in
Politics