This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Military issues

  • Army and Marines clash over MARPAT

    The Army Times reports that the Army wants to change their duty uniforms again, so they’re looking at different patterns, three of them, including the Marines’ MARPAT design. So suddenly, the Marines, who by the way, borrowed the Army’s BDUs a few decades back are getting territorial about it with their Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent pissing everywhere to mark his “proprietary” design;

    The Corps owns the rights to MARPAT and wants to retain it for its own use, Kent said late last year. Marine officials said they have no beef with anyone researching and testing MARPAT, but they want Marines distinguished from other service members on the battlefield.

    “The main concern for the Marine Corps when it comes to other services testing our patterns is that they don’t exactly mimic them,” said Kent, who is scheduled to retire June 9. “The MARPAT design is proprietary, and it’s important those designs are reserved for Marines. We just need to make sure each of our designs is unique to each service.”

    That’s just petty. The best thing about being out of the Army, is that I get to tell sergeant majors (it’s not “sergeants major” by the way – some uber-pseudo-intellectual dink at the Sergeant Major Academy made that shit up) what I really think of them. SGM Kent; the DoD is cutting your troops medical care while they’re on active duty and they’re going to screw you out of yours when you retire next month…don’t you think it’s important for you to pick your battles?

    Arguing over fashion decisions doesn’t serve your Marines well. If you were really that concerned about the uniforms, you would have spoke up during the BDU era about Marines rolling up their sleeves backwards so they all had white arm bands on both arms.

    To quote COB6 who sent us the link; ” So aside from a couple of sniper rifles and useless landing craft, you can turn in every piece of equipment in the Marine Corps that was designed, tested and fielded by the US Army! Thank you for your service douche-bag, now retire.”

    Operator Dan adds: Funny, I never saw Sgt Major Kent speak out about Iraqi soldiers and police officers wearing MARPAT:

    In fact according to the Marine Corps Times:

    Marine officials don’t seem overly concerned about the situation. The MarPat design is patented by the Corps and has not been licensed for use by anyone except Marines, said Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokeswoman for Marine Corps Systems Command.

    I would be more concerned about shady IPs wearing MARPAT than soldiers. But then again, this is the same Sgt Major who spent much of the last year spending a great deal of time fretting over a silly Facebook group started by former Marines called F’N Boot.

  • Speaking of double standards….

    Yesterday, Secretary of Defense told a Marine Sergeant that he couldn’t opt out of his military service because he disagreed with the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy;

    A Marine sergeant asked Gates, on a farewell tour, about the policy during a question and answer session at a base in southwestern Helmand province.

    “Sir, we joined the Marine Corps because the Marine Corps has a set of standards and values that is better than that of the civilian sector. And we have gone and changed those values and repealed the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” the sergeant told Gates during the question and answer session, according to Reuters.

    “We have not given the Marines a chance to decide whether they wish to continue serving under that. Is there going to be an option for those Marines that no longer wish to serve due to the fact their moral values have not changed?” he asked, according to the article.

    “No,” Gates responded. “You’ll have to complete your … enlistment just like everybody else.”

    “The reality is that you don’t all agree with each other on your politics, you don’t agree with each other on your religion, you don’t agree with each other on a lot of things,” he added, according to the release. “But you still serve together. And you work together. And you look out for each other. And that’s all that matters.”

    Late last week Stars & Stripes reported that a gay Airman outed himself as a gay so he could get out of his military obligation;

    “In this instance, the airman first class made a statement that he was a homosexual,” Air Force spokesman Maj. Joel Harper said Friday. “After making the statement but prior to the commander initiating separation action, the airman wrote the secretary of the Air Force asking to be separated.
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    “After the separation action was initiated, the individual was informed of the current status of the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and he reaffirmed to the [Air Force secretary] that he desired his separation action be expeditiously processed.”

    Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Stanley Clifford also signed off on the dismissal.

    “Each of these officials evaluated the case carefully, and concluded that separation was appropriate,” Harper said.

    So, I guess there are standards for release from the service before a service member has finished their term of service as long as their reason is politically correct.

  • Doing The Right Thing

    Via The Sniper:

    VA trauma center treats most grievously wounded troops

    The centers have become a key element in caring for the wounded as the war in Afghanistan enters its second decade and the injured from Iraq continue to need care. They are the result of important medical insights gleaned from the long wars in the Middle East — that modern battlefield injuries, particularly those from bomb blasts, require a team approach from physicians and therapists.

    Sometimes The System works, this appears to be one of those times.

  • Mullen tosses servicemembers under the bus

    Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen just tossed us all under the bus. In a link from Adirondack Patriot, Mullens warned that “everything is on the table” including pay and health benefits for active duty and retired servicemembers;

    Mullen went further, saying savings should be found in pay and benefits costs before cuts to programs and personnel.

    “We need to avoid just making the relatively easy decision [to] just cash in force structure,” Mullen said. “We have to go through everything else — and ‘force structure’ are platforms and people — before we get to that point, because that’s why we’re here.”

    The military has been tasked with finding a $half-trillion in savings over the next 12 years – not like the EPA or the Commerce Department or Health and Human Services…or any other federal agency which have only cut back minimally on increases in spending. Certainly not in cutting back on their current or retired employees’ benefits.

    I always thought I could count on the military leadership to stand up for the troops they command. I guess that’s not an option in this climate – Mullen seems almost eager to toss us all aside to please his political masters.

    Are there reasonable cuts that can be made? Sure. My favorite example is the pharmacy at Walter Reed. A year ago, you walked up to a machine and took a number to get in line for service.

    Now they employ a series of three women that you have to stand in line to see and the last woman tears your ticket from that machine for you. Do they ask you questions about your prescriptions? Nope. You show them your ID and they tap away at a computer – they each have one, and you have to show each of them your ID and they each tap at their computer.

    I figure each computer costs about $3000 and they probably pay each of those women more than $30k/year to do what we used to do without them. How many jobs are there like those in the military? That’s where I’d start if I was at all serious about saving money.

  • Gates finally finds his ‘nads

    According to Frank Gaffney at Big Peace, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has finally found his testicles to stand up to the draconian cuts that the Obama Administration has in store for the Pentagon;

    Secretary Gates has particularly warned against a “hollowing out” of the military, a not-so-implicit criticism of the $400 billion Mr. Obama has announced that he intends to cut from Pentagon accounts. This reduction would come on top of the roughly $178 billion already being excised by the Gates team.

    In so doing, Mr. Gates recalls the mistake made twice during my decades in this town – first by Presidents Ford and Carter, then by Presidents Bush ‘41 and Clinton: Yielding to the ever-present-temptation to meet contemporary budgetary exigencies by cutting the nation’s investment in its armed forces, leaving them without the modern equipment, realistic training, adequately sized forces, up-to-date facilities and development of the future technologies needed to deter and, if deterrence fails, to prevail in tomorrow’s wars.

    Being a liberal means never learning from your mistakes mostly because they can blame conservatives saddled with fixing their mistakes with a complicit media.

    Gaffney closes out his piece with;

    Mr. Gates’ warnings about the Obama agenda are indeed welcome. One can only wish he had done less to enable it to date, and pray that he does not make matters worse still before leaving office four weeks from now.

    Yeah, that’s my main complaint about Gates. He knows that once he green lighted defense cuts, the Left would take that as permission to slash and burn DoD like the Clintons did for eight years to fund their jackassery. There certainly is waste that can be cut from defense but it requires a scalpel, not a hatchet and machete.

    And I don’t see anyone calling for $400 billion cuts to EPA or the Commerce Department. Or even $400 billion in cuts to whole rest of the government. Any other agency slowing down on their recruiting efforts or their R&D plans? Why is Defense saddled with balancing the entire budget…well, until the next time we’re inevitably attacked.

    Thanks to Flopping Aces for pointing me in the direction to Gaffney.

  • Fragging suspect walks

    I saw one of the widows who were complaining about this verdict yesterday on one of the blogs which linked to us. But apparently Esposito Martinez admitted to the fragging of two officers in Tikrit, iraq.. The judge rejected the deal he’d made with prosecutors in favor of a jury trial in which Esposito Martinez was acquitted and walked.

    I hope the judge sleeps well at night.

    Thanks to Jerry920 and Old Trooper for the link. I’m writing from the passenger seat of my wife’s car today, so excuse me for being brief.

  • Rumor Doctor: Fort Irwin’s front gate

    I think it was 1983 when I went to Fort Irwin with 2d Armored Division’s 1/41st infantry as the first rotation of a Bradley unit through the National Training Center’s grueling and realistic combat simulation two week deployment. Just the trip there was grueling enough. We flew into some air base in San Bernadino and then took buses for more than three hours to Barstow, CA, jsut outside of Fort Irwin – we were relieved when we finally drove through the main gate. Little did we know that it was still a half hour more to the main post.

    The Rumor Doctor,Jeff Schogol, our newly-minted tip ninja, investigates whether the main gate was so far from the main post in an attempt by the Army to screw soldiers out of travel pay which has been a rumor that I’ve heard since that trip.

    Those who’ve been there may have heard that the base front gate was moved closer to the nearest city so that soldiers would not be eligible for a special pay to compensate them for being in the middle of nowhere.

    Read the rest.

  • I Have a Purple Heart

    I was an Army brat the first few years of my life. I have vague memories (or memories of memories?) of several Army posts; in Georgia, in Arizona, and another place or two. Then my dad was deployed to some place called Korea in 1950.

    Three additional memories are a bit more vivid – the day we were notified he was Missing in Action and, sometime later, that his remains had been recovered, and finally, his funeral. I wasn’t allowed to go.

    I have a Purple Heart.

    He is buried in our home town, and there’s a small memorial in the city park there with his name inscribed. I visit both as often as I can. Even though I was only five or six at the time and will be 65 in about a month I still miss him. I have pictures and memories, and…

    I have a Purple Heart.

    For many others, like myself, Memorial Day has a face.

    I’m heading up to Gettysburg shortly so a line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address comes to mind easily:  “that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion”

    So don’t wish me a happy Memorial Day because…

    I have a Purple Heart.