5 U.S. generals in trouble rock military culture
November 14, 2012 at 9:13 am in Grand Forks Herald
When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pointedly warned young troops last spring to mind their ways, he may have been lecturing the wrong audience. The culture of military misconduct starts at the top. Continue Reading
Never trust a woman scorned.. Look at the worms she opened up. She can say whatever she wants, but this smells of someone getting even.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I agree with your assessment but it was his choice to sleep with her. It didn’t just happen.
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No doubt. Don’t disagree with that at all.
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Sounds like a cat fight over the Generals attention.
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an enlisted man will be court marshalled loss of rank and tossed out of the military with no pension no job and usually a federal conviction to follow him for life. (not specifically speaking about adultery)
An Officer, those paid to set the example, get caught doing the exact same thing the enlisted guy did will usually get a LOR and be forced to resign with their huge pensions, no reduction in rank and no convictions to follow them to their next high paying venture.
I love the US military and I owe a lot to it but i wont sugarcoat what every other enlisted person already knows.
Dont get in trouble unless you have brass on your shoulder, the military is no different than the country when it comes to crimes and punishment.
Just look to Hollywood to see that all people are NOT equal in this nation.
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It depends on the rank.. I had a CO who was caught having an affair. She was a ‘scorned’ woman and a private under his command. She did get discharged, but as he was ex-enlisted he was busted from an O3 to E3, then from an E3 to E1 and then sent to Ft. Leavenworth.. There were other charges (7 counts total). However there were higher ups that you know they were also dipping in the pond and nothing was said..
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Check out Gen Carter Ham, Wards replacement as Commander of AFRICOM who was fired for wanting to send help to the embassy folks in Benghazi. He goes out with his head high for wanting to do the right thing not like this mentioned crop of GO’s who not only have a giant personal blemish, but have spit on the honor of the Officer Corps!
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A published classic about this type topic: Crisis in Command-Mismanagement in the Army by Richard A. Gabriel and Paul L. Savage. Excellent read!
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And to think they were worried about gays in the military being perverts.
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Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t send e-mails.
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They have a saying in the military: What happens TDY (temporary duty assignment) stays TDY. Mrs. Broadwell must not have known she was only a temporary thing.
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I dunno, something sure smells fishy.
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It’s Bush’s fault. I thought I’d beat the left to the punch.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I believe he is in trouble for leaking classified information not for adultry. He had a huge conflict of intrest when he chose to start a relationship with the reporter writing his biography.
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The fear of blackmail and having some foreign power hold that information over your head also came up.
Bill survived zippergate because he was elected, and overturning the will of the American people is not something that is done easily (in Central America they call them coupes).
The head of the CIA is appointed so he is by definition expendable.
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What never ceases to amaze me is the intellectual caliber of the people involved in these scandals. Slick Willy was a Rhodes Scholar, and even Republicans say one of the smartest Presidents in modern history.
General P was groomed for greatness since birth. For crying out loud his wife was the daughter of the Superintendent of West Point while he was there. Talk about receiving every advantage known to man.
He is also acknowledged as a near genius when it comes to leadership and strategy.
The gal he dallied with was West Point and Harvard. In no way could she ever be called a “hanger – on;” she was well above average in her own right.
It just goes to show that 1) intelligent and smart are two entirely different things. 2) humans are human. Contrary to what all the great Enlightenment thinkers believed, you cannot educate a person to goodness.
Even though my Liberal Arts education taught otherwise, I think human nature is more hard wired than software. We really are reprobate. It is our education and free choice that keeps us from going totally off the rails.
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Well, you know what they say: God gave men two powerful organs, their brains and their reproductive capacity. Unfortunately, he only gave them enough blood to operate one at a time.
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Funny!
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She must have had a leg up on him.
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“What never ceases to amaze me is the intellectual caliber of the people involved in these scandals.”
Intellectual caliber can be a double-edged sword. In Clinton’s case, it wasn’t coincidental that he was tagged with nicknames like “Slick Wilie” or “Teflon Bill”. The same intellectual caliber that you would think SHOULD prevent him from getting into sticky situations in the first place, (because he’s so smart he ought to “know better”), was instead consistently relied upon to get him OUT of sticky situations. This isn’t a commentary on his successes/failures/legacy/whatever….it’s simply a fact.
At some point during the impeachment proceedings he was asked a question while the camera was zoomed right in on his face….the entire screen was nothing but a head shot. When the question was asked, his expression changed, his eyes darkened, and it was extremely obvious he was upset. What he was upset ABOUT, was that right there, right then, there was NO WAY to skillfully maneuver out of the situation. He was screwed if he answered…..and he was screwed if he didn’t. He actually said, “I know what you’re trying to do”, because the question was asked so that trying to wiggle around a real answer would have meant he had to lie under oath. He wasn’t upset about the question topic or content, he was upset because no amount of artful dodging or attorney-speak would help. The question was hanging out there, waiting for an answer….while the camera was zoomed in.
In any other situation, his intellectual caliber would have afforded him an “out” by doing some quick thinking/re-framing of the question/re-defining definitions of words/etc., and lots of folks would have bought it. His ability to do things like that is what gave us memorable quotes like, “It depends on what your definition of *is* is”.
I’m less surprised all the time when folks of high “intellectual caliber” trip up like this. It certainly seems as if they’re counting on their smarts to keep them a step ahead of everyone else and NOT get caught, or….they’re counting on their smarts to wiggle out of real consequences if they DO get caught.
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This is just a smokescreen for Obama’s culpability in the death of four Americans in Benghazi.
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Whatever gets you through the day man…
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Why do you think Obama has done nothing but lie since he was first elected, although there isn’t any particular “intellectual calibre” involved on his part?
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Your posts *kind if* make it seem as if you’re bitter about the outcome of the recent election. Am I interpreting this correctly?
As for telling lies, I don’t think it would be real difficult to counter any such example you could offer up from Obama with a real WHOPPER from his predecessor. And this is coming from someone that voted for his predecessor….
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Oh so you’re blaming George Bush for Obama’s litany of lies. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised. I’m not bitter, I’m just horrified for the country.
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Re-read my post. How did you come up with me “blaming Bush”? I just think if lying is bothersome to you, Obama’s predecessor told some whoppers of his own. Or….is that irrelevant?
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If you’re not blaming Bush and making excuses for Obama’s lies you wouldn’t have brought him up.
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Okay, so now I’ve moved from “blaming Bush”….to “making excuses for Obama”.
I guess once you did re-read my post and realized your “blaming Bush” accusation held no water, you moved onto something else….so now I’m “making excuses”.
I’m not making excuses. I just find it hilarious that anyone accusing Obama of lying finds someone else’s lies conveniently irrelevant. We can play a game if you want. You could post an “Obama lie” and we could discuss the outcome or ramifications. Then I could counter with a whopper from his predecessor and we could discuss the ramifications of that.
Are you in?
Think carefully. Because uncomfortable topics like the bill of goods we were sold to get us on board with heading back to Iraq will *probably* come up….
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George Bush isn’t the topic here but Obama is very relevant as he is the commander in chief. Which Obama lie would you like to start with? How about blaming the terror attack in Benghazi on a movie that nobody saw, ior a period of two weeks? How about Obama knowing all about Petreus’s affair long before the election and bringing it out when the heat on Benghazi gets a little too close to home so he could use it as a smoke screen to cover his fingerprints on refusing to defend our diplomats in Benghazi. Obama very likely watched in real time while our people there were killed and did nothing. That is your messiah and disaster that you elected.
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Obama is my messiah? Good grief.
You brought up some of the lies Obama told….according to you.
I brought up a lie his predecessor told….according to me.
Assuming we’re both correct about what we were told, (i.e. that we WERE lied to), would you like to do as I suggested earlier and now discuss the ramifications of those lies?
As for Bush “not being the topic here”, my response would be to ask you a simple question: Were you watching the debates in ’08? If you were, you heard McCain and Obama say essentially the same thing when they were asked what their biggest concern was. What was it?
And then what occurred in this country that essentially put the biggest concern mentioned in the debates on the back burner? And why did it occur?
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Another lie from Obama is “it’s time to move forward” but he can’t, because every one of his failures he blames on the past.
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What’s that old saying again? “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop”. Apparently, generally speaking of course, their hands weren’t idle. But man, where do they get all this time?
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This scandal is just a symptom of the rot permeating the Obama administration.
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I’m pretty sure that the General is a product of the Bush administration. I guess we’d have to say that’e where the rot started. Your comment is obserd!
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The generals career didn’t start in the Bush administration either but it is ending in the Obama administration. I haven’t read anything that says Petraus’s affair started during the Bush administration so it would have to be in the rot of the Obama feifdom.
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The sad thing is we have lost some really talented and experienced leaders based on them having extramarital affairs. I think that it’s more common than we think and is also happens on a regular basis among the general popultation (who will cast the first stone?).
To me it shouldn’t be a basis for someone having to leave thier job. Even Generals are frought with human weakness when it comes to relationships. I think the FBI and CIA should have deliberated on making this public a little more than they did. Everyone loves a scandle these days but it’s too bad when it costs us quality leadership.
So far there hasn’t been much to show that our security was in danger. We should stop eating our own unless laws have been broken. Then it’s a different situation but on this one it’s hard to find a smoking gun to show that the head of the CIA caused a security breach of any significance.
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