{"id":63917,"date":"2016-01-19T11:18:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=63917"},"modified":"2016-01-19T11:18:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:18:33","slug":"petraeus-stars-on-the-chopping-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=63917","title":{"rendered":"Petraeus&#8217; stars on the chopping block?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2016\/01\/18\/exclusive-pentagon-may-demote-david-petraeus.html\">Daily Beast<\/a>, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter may be considering a reduction in rank for General David Petraeus to Lieutenant General (three stars) because of his flirtation with malfeasance in regards to Paula Broadwell, his extra-curricular activity while he commanding troops in the war against terror and she was, ostensibly, writing his biography. Carter considering the reduction in rank is supposed to send a message to flag officers to rein in their bad behavior;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe secretary is considering going in a different direction\u201d from the Army, a defense official told The Daily Beast, because he wants to be consistent in his treatment of senior officers who engage in misconduct and to send a message that even men of Petraeus\u2019s fame and esteemed reputation are not immune to punishment.<\/p>\n<p>Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook told The Daily Beast that Carter had requested the information ex-Army Secretary John McHugh had when he made his recommendation on the matter, before reaching a final decision. McHugh had recommended taking no action against Petraeus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, if the goal is to send a message, I doubt it will work. If a four-star general doesn&#8217;t know that an extra-marital affair could get him in trouble, there is a failure of the system. In addition to dipping his pen in the company ink, he also lost control of classified information &#8211; there is no cure for stupid. But, yeah, take his rank, cut his pension, cut the pensions of all of those flag officers, while you&#8217;re at it, whether they did something bad or not. Might as well cut the pensions of retired Congress people, too.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>According to Pentagon figures, a four-star general with roughly the same years of experience as Petraeus was entitled to receive a yearly pension of nearly $220,000. A three-star officer would receive about $170,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yeah, it won&#8217;t balance the budget, but I doubt he&#8217;ll miss the money.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Kristoffer for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the Daily Beast, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter may be considering a reduction in rank &hellip; <a title=\"Petraeus&#8217; stars on the chopping block?\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=63917\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Petraeus&#8217; stars on the chopping block?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-pentagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63917","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=63917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}