Category: Military issues

  • Now, That’s REALLY Wanting to Avoid Deployment . . . .

    Not that many people in the military actually want to deploy. But when their number comes up most grumble a bit – then go.

    Hey, I can understand not wanting to deploy. No one likes the idea of potential unsanitary involuntary random body piercings, or being separated from friends and family for months at a time. But it’s part of the deal you made when you signed on the dotted line.

    However, a few actively try to avoid deployments when their number comes up. And some really pull out all the stops to avoid going.

    What stops, you ask? Well, like convincing their own spouse to shoot them.

    No, I’m not kidding.

    It seems a young USAF SSgt stationed at Barksdale AFB, LA, was accused of doing exactly that the other day. She is accused of having her husband (also in the USAF, and also a SSgt at Barksdale AFB) shoot her to avoid deployment to SWA. She was wounded in both legs – apparently not seriously, since she’s already out of the hospital.

    She originally told police that she was shot early Friday by an intruder who escaped before police arrived. On further investigation, local police arrested her husband for illegal use of a weapon – for shooting her.   Police also issued her a summons for criminal mischief for filing a false police report.

    No word on whether the USAF has preferred charges yet for malingering, conspiracy, or other crimes against either. But I’d guess that’s only a matter of time.  Tell your careers goodbye, Sergeants – and possibly all your VA benefits as well.

    I will never understand some people. Sheesh, how freaking stupid can someone be?

  • Healthcare waste

    Veritas Omnia Vincit ends us a link to a report that charges the health care system waste of $750 billion every year;

    More than 18 months in the making, the report identified six major areas of waste: unnecessary services ($210 billion annually); inefficient delivery of care ($130 billion); excess administrative costs ($190 billion); inflated prices ($105 billion); prevention failures ($55 billion), and fraud ($75 billion). Adjusting for some overlap among the categories, the panel settled on an estimate of $750 billion.

    So, while the Defense Department certainly wastes a lot of money, they at least provide the service they promise (dead bad guys). The Defense Department is facing $1.2T in cuts over the next 10 years, while the healthcare system wastes almost that much in a year.

  • Now I’m Really Confused

    This one has me scratching my head – bigtime.

    According to his military lawyer, accused Fort Hood mass-murderer Nidal Hasan offered twice to plead guilty.  The Army apparently rejected both offers.

    FORT HOOD, Texas — The Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 Fort Hood massacre twice offered to plead guilty and “accept full responsibility” for the crime earlier this year, his lead defense attorney said Thursday.

    After the government turned him down in January, Maj. Nidal Hasan offered to plead guilty again last month without a deal — and also tried to challenge Army rules that prohibit a judge from accepting a guilty plea to murder in a death penalty case, said Lt. Col. Kris Poppe.

    I can understand why the Army likely refused the first attempt at a plea; it almost certainly included conditions as part of the deal that the Army didn’t want.  And I can technically understand the second refusal, too.  After all, rules are rules.

    No, what confuses me is the rule itself.  Why in the hell can’t an Army judge accept a guilty plea in a case where the death penalty is on the table?

    If any of our military lawyers (or other readers) could clarify, I’d be greatly obliged.  Because that just doesn’t pass the common-sense test.

    Sometimes it really seems like Pogo was right after all.

     

     

  • The President on the military

    Like I’ve said repeatedly this election season, I can’t watch political speeches anymore, so Obama’s acceptance speech last night was no exception. Which left me to read the transcript this morning. This is what he said about the military, defense and veterans;

    And tonight, we pay tribute to the Americans who still serve in harm’s way. We are forever in debt to a generation whose sacrifice has made this country safer and more respected. We will never forget you. And so long as I’m Commander-in-Chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known.
    (APPLAUSE)
    When you take off the uniform, we will serve you as well as you’ve served us because no one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job, or a roof over their head, or the care that they need when they come home.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Around the world, we’ve strengthened old alliances and forged new coalitions to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. We’ve reasserted our power across the Pacific, and stood up to China on behalf of our workers. From Burma to Libya to South Sudan, we have advanced the rights and dignity of all human beings, men and women; Christians and Muslims and Jews.
    (APPLAUSE)
    But for all the progress we’ve made, challenges remain. Terrorist plots must be disrupted. Europe’s crisis must be contained.

    Our commitment to Israel’s security must not waver, and neither must our pursuit of peace.
    (APPLAUSE)
    The Iranian government must face a world that stays united against its nuclear ambitions. The historic change sweeping across the Arab World must be defined not by the iron fist of a dictator or the hate of extremists, but by the hopes and aspirations of ordinary people who are reaching for the same rights that we celebrate here today.
    (APPLAUSE)
    So now we face a choice. My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy, but from all that we’ve seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly.

    After all, you don’t call Russia our number one enemy, not Al Qaeda, Russia, unless you’re still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.

    My opponent — my opponent said it was “tragic” to end the war in Iraq, and he won’t tell us how he’ll end the war in Afghanistan. Well I have, and I will. And while my opponent would spend more money on military hardware that our Joint Chiefs don’t even want, I will use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work rebuilding roads and bridges and schools and runways.

    Because after two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it’s time to do some nation- building right here at home.

    Basically, it’s all smoke and mirrors. He honors the troops and veterans with his words, but he’s pricing veterans out of the programs that they earned and broke decades of promises that the government made to veterans. And I’m not sure how he intends to “sustain the strongest military the world has ever known” when he’s planning to slash the living crap out of the defense budget. Not to mention slashing manpower, weapons and R&D.

    Russia is a greater threat now than al Qaeda – because this administration have allowed them to determine what our policy towards are allies will be. That’s not Cold War mentality, that’s the situation this administration created. The “tragedy” of ending the war in Iraq too soon has become apparent this week as Iraq allies itself in Syria with Iran against the Syrian people.

    Obama’s attitude towards veterans illustrates why the economy hasn’t healed in the last four years. Employers need someone that they can believe, and Obama can’t be believed. He told veterans last year that he wouldn’t balance the national budget on the backs of veterans, however, veterans are the only people in the country facing any changes in their benefits. The benefits that they earned.

    Obama has made promises over the last four years that he might have intended to keep, but he hasn’t so how can anyone believe anything he said last night? How do you make decisions that effect your own future, or the future of your business when you’re getting faulty information from the country’s leaders.

    He says he wants to raise taxes on “the rich”, but under Bill Clinton, who promised a tax cut, we learned that even social security recipients are among the people Democrats call “the rich”. We learned last night that Democrats plan to slash defense even more than the $1.2T cuts looming over the Defense Department. I’m sure Russia is just one of the countries rubbing their hands together over the cuts.

  • That National Debt thingie

    The folks at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) sent us their latest video about how the National Debt, which recently reached $16T, is the greatest threat to our national security

    The 90-second web video, titled “16 Trillion”, focuses on repeated warnings from national leaders (including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin) about how mounting government debt endangers our national security. The video also urges Congress to focus on entitlement spending reform and pro-growth tax policies to spur the economy and reduce the national debt.

    “Veterans and active duty troops are deeply concerned about our stagnant economy and towering national debt, and rightly see them as drivers of our economic weakness,” said Pete Hegseth, CEO of CVA. “We understand that a strong economy is key to ensuring a robust defense, and that our government’s addiction to spending and debt is a sure path to weakness and vulnerability.”

    “The $16 trillion national debt mark should set off alarm bells in Washington—it’s time to stop playing political games and get to work reforming government spending,” Hegseth concluded.

    Raising taxes on the “rich” won’t solve the problem, only cuts tp the size and scope of the government and hacking away at entitlement programs will get the job done. But the folks in Washington who have buying votes with entitlement programs and scare tactics would much rather hack into the institutions that work and the things that have kept us a free nation lo these hundreds of years.

  • Panetta, defense cuts, and weekends in CA

    The Washington Post, in a link sent to us by Chief Tango, talks about Leon Panetta, the Defense Secretary, and the dilemma he finds himself in what with $1.2T in defense cuts looming on the horizon. Clearly, Panetta was sent to DoD as a hatchet man who merely salutes and executes, but the Washington Post sympathizes with him;

    By contrast, Panetta sometimes sounds more like a congressman representing the “Pentagon district” than the leader of the world’s largest military. He talks frequently about his parents, who immigrated from Italy. And he regularly rails against the possibility that the Pentagon will have to absorb $500 billion in automatic cuts if Congress cannot agree on how to trim $1.2 trillion in government spending. The cuts, triggered under an arcane process known as sequestration, would come on top of an already mandated $487 billion in reductions.

    “It’s mindless, and it will…do incredible damage to our national defense,” Panetta said last month in a speech in New York.

    Then, without blinking, the Post reports the thing that we’ve been harping on for months here since we found out;

    As he did during his days as a congressman, Panetta spends most weekends in California, commuting home on a military jet at a cost of more than $800,000 as of this spring, the latest figures available.

    Doesn’t anyone find it incongruous that he’s charged with reducing our defense posture while he spends taxpayer dollars to go home every weekend on the other side of the country – a perk that none of the people who work for him are allowed. He has tens of thousands of soldiers deployed to a foreign shit hole far from their families and homes who don’t get to see their families for months at a time, yet he gets to spend a million or so dollars to see his EVERY WEEKEND.

    The Post goes on to explain that our “new” enemy is China and that our focus, in regards to defense, should be on Asia. Last I knew, Iran was still rattling their sabre in the Near East. While I agree that China is a threat, but, it appears to me that Iran is a more immediate threat, what with their terrorist cells spread through out the world and their work on their nuclear program that no one seems to have the fortitude to confront directly.

    The wars we fought in the Middle East are not over until we’ve somehow restrained Iran. Embargoes don’t seem to be having the desired effect. I guess facing Asia will give the administration another “win” when China hasn’t taken over the world four years from now.

  • A New Mission for the Federal Reserves

    Well, it looks like the Federal Reserve components (USAR, USAFR, USNR, and USMCR) now have a new mission. A recent change in law explicitly authorizes state governors to request and receive extended support from Federal reserve forces in the event of a disaster. The previousl law/policy was that such support could only be given for a short period of time (72 hours) without Federal orders.  Federal law now allows up to 4 months of such support with the President’s/Pentagon’s approval.

    On the surface, this seems like it should be a good idea. However, as with many things the “devil is in the details”. And there are indeed many potential devils here.

    First, this adds yet another rock to the Reserve rucksack. They’re already stressed heavily by current operations.

    Second, Federal Reserve units will have to be prepared to respond more often and longer to state authorities. This potentially provides a confused chain-of-command.  While providing support, to whom does the unit commander turn for definitive direction – the State AG? The governor?   His/her normal Reserve chain-of-command?  All of the above?  Confused chains-of-command are not a good thing.

    Third, I can easily see cash-strapped state governments requesting Federal assistance in lieu of fully mobilizing state resources – e.g., before calling up all appropriate state National Guard units – to save money.  But disaster support is one of the primary reasons states have National Guard units in the first place.  And last time I checked, the Federal budget is in bad shape too.

    Finally, this also may make Federal Reserve units more subject to political pressure from state authorities. Because if a unit commander knows he might have to work for the State AG or governor for long enough to get an OER or letter input to same – well, let’s just say that commander might be a bit more willing to bend a few rules if asked.

    As I said: on the surface, this looks like a good idea. I’m hoping this is not a case where good intentions end up paving the road to hell. Because IMO that potential certainly exists here.

    Thoughts?

  • Doubling Down – Stupidly

    Looks like Bissonnette is planning on thumbing his nose at DoD.  And he and his lawyer are planning to use an . . . interesting and novel legal argument:

    According to the letter, the nondisclosure agreement signed by Bissonnette when he was a SEAL only applied to “specially identified Special Access Programs” and not missions such as the May 1, 2011 raid.

    That’s an argument that may come as a surprise to some legal experts, who considered the Pentagon’s case against Bissonnette a “slam dunk” given his failure to submit his book for pre-publication review.

    The letter referenced above was from Bissonnette’s lawyer to DoD.

    I’m thinking that Bissonnette needs to find another lawyer – fast.  Because this one appears to be leading him down the proverbial primrose path.   Another way to describe the legal theory his lawyer is using besides “interesting and novel” is “naive, foolish, and wrong” – or, alternatively, “hope you enjoy your stay at the crossbar hotel”.

    Classified information nondisclosure agreements are like burqas – they cover damn near everything.  They’re not limited to “specially identified Special Access Programs”.

    IMO, teh stoopid appears to be running amok here. Bissonnette needs to remember that when a sledgehammer hits a walnut, it’s generally not the sledgehammer that gets damaged.  And DoD knows how to swing a sledge.

    ———

    For those interested:  a decent but brief analysis of Bissonnette’s actual legal situation may be found here.  He’s on damned thin ice.