{"id":58572,"date":"2015-03-05T13:15:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-05T18:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=58572"},"modified":"2015-03-05T13:15:55","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T18:15:55","slug":"army-secretary-on-major-golsteyns-silver-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=58572","title":{"rendered":"Army Secretary on Major Golsteyn’s Silver Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Secretary of the Army, John McHugh has released a statement on his decision to take Major Mathew L. Golsteyn’s Silver Star from him, but it really doesn’t clarify anything. Some background from Stars & Stripes<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn received the Silver Star in 2011 for valor in Afghanistan on Feb. 20, 2010, and was later approved for an upgrade to the even more prestigious Distinguished Service Cross.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Golsteyn was later investigated for an undisclosed violation of the military’s rules of engagement in combat \u2014 a violation related to the killing of a known enemy bombmaker, according to officials familiar with the case. The investigation closed in 2014 without Golsteyn’s being charged with a crime, but Army Secretary John McHugh made the rare decision to strip him of both awards anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McHugh, responding to a letter from Representative Duncan Hunter, wrote;<\/p>\n

“Every step in the process of investigating Major Golsteyn’s actions, and reviewing and subsequently revoking his valor awards has been thorough, objective and justified,” McHugh wrote in the February 26 letter, obtained by The Washington Post. “The Army’s investigation demonstrated that Major Golsteyn’s service during or at the time of the distinguished act, achievement or meritorious service was not honorable, which led to the revocation of the Distinguished Service Cross.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, so they investigated, couldn’t find anything to charge Golsteyn with, so they decided to pull his awards and now they’re considering his removal from the service, all because “I said so”.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Hunter isn’t accepting McHugh’s explanation, he responded to McHugh’s letter;<\/p>\n

“The Administrative actions currently underway are a direct result of the Army’s inability to justify a criminal charge based on the evidence.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t, as a habit, get involved in these legal discussions because the Army usually has more information than me, but in this case, the Army seems to be withholding information from the public in order to justify their decision in this particular case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Secretary of the Army, John McHugh has released a statement on his decision to take … Army Secretary on Major Golsteyn’s Silver Star<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58572","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=58572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}