{"id":35122,"date":"2013-04-15T19:44:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T23:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=35122"},"modified":"2013-04-15T19:47:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T23:47:24","slug":"distinguished-warfare-medal-goes-out-with-the-good-idea-fairy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=35122","title":{"rendered":"Distinguished Warfare Medal goes out with the Good Idea Fairy"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re still interested what with today’s events being what they are, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel decided that he’s going to swap the Distinguished Warfare Medal (that drone pilot thingie) for a device. According to a link to the Washington Post<\/a> sent to us by Chief Tango;<\/p>\n

After ordering a review of a policy that was one of his predecessor\u2019s last official moves, Hagel said Monday that he concluded no such medal was needed. Instead, he said, a \u201cdevice\u201d will be affixed to existing medals to recognize those who fly and operate drones, whom he described as \u201ccritical to our military\u2019s mission of safeguarding the nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devices are used by the Pentagon to add a specific form of additional recognition when troops are lauded for exceptional performance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t like Hagel much, but he did make the right decision in this case. Of course, I think we were set up in the first place. If Panetta had only made the medal lower in precedence than a Bronze Star Medal, you know a medal that you actually be in the same area as the enemy, there probably wouldn’t have been much of a stink made by veterans and VSOs across the country. <\/p>\n

I think the medal was just a distraction. And it worked – our Tricare out-of-pocket costs have increased, thousands of retirees have been booted out of Tricare Prime, benefits to active duty troops have been slashed, ships are sitting idle in CONUS ports, pilots have had their training hours cut, veterans are waiting for medical treatment all with hardly a peep while we were all wringing our hands over bits of metal and ribbon.<\/p>\n

But, hey, we won one, right? you can read more about the Medal at our buddy War on Terror News<\/a>‘ place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re still interested what with today’s events being what they are, Secretary of Defense Chuck … Distinguished Warfare Medal goes out with the Good Idea Fairy<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}