Category: US Military

Market Watch has recently published one of the most atrocious articles yet that is promoting the cutting of military retirement by someone named Anne Tergesen who according to her bio has never served a day in the military, but has suddenly become an expert on military retirement.  Let’s deconstruct her article:

In recent years, countries including the U.K., Poland, Ireland and Sweden have raised the age of eligibility for military pensions.

The U.S., on the other hand, is sticking with the status quo—and at a time of strained budgets, that’s a potentially costly problem.

How is this even relevant?  Is Ireland responsible for maintaining global security and their soldiers facing repeated deployments?  If the servicemembers in these nations are not asked to do the same amount work, deployments, strain on the body, etc. of a US servicemember this is a irrelevant comparison.  The country that comes the closest to the US military that she points out is the UK military which we will discuss later.

The military retirement system permits members of the armed forces who serve full time for at least 20 years to retire as early as age 37 with a defined-benefit pension. On Jan. 29, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission released a report that recommends no changes to the benefit eligibility requirements for the military’s pension plan, though it did recommend some significant changes in its structure.

Notice how these civilian writers looking to cut military retirement always throw in the phrase that servicemembers can retire as early as 37.  They make it sound like all these 37 year olds are chilling at the beach with scantily clad waitresses/waiters serving them mai tais.  What they never mention is how much a military retiree is making.  The vast majority of retirees are in the E6 – E7 range.  An E6 at 20 years is making $3,724 a month before taxes and other deductions.  Yes military pay has deductions for things such health care and family dental plans.  So people retiring at these ranks at 20 years are not the millionaires getting ready to chill out on the beach that Tergesen is alluding her readers to believe.  In fact using the military retirement calculator an E6 retiring in 2015 at 20 years of service with a high 3 would make $1,640 after taxes.  Yes retirement pay is taxed and also this number does not include deductions for health care.  Yes health care is not free for military retirees unlike what most people think.  For those that retire higher in rank they will have a larger monthly benefit.  Due to the up and out system few people are able to stay in long enough and achieve the higher ranks where the military retirement is quite good.  Most people retire with enough extra money coming in every month to pay the mortgage while they find a job to make money to live on.  So military retirees are not all out on the beach at age 37 getting back rubs and drinking mai tais.

Let’s continue with Tergesen’s article:

John Turner and Bruce Klein, economists at the Pension Policy Center in Washington, D.C., subsequently released their own report, arguing that the military needs to “modernize” its pension system. Their principal recommendation: To raise the eligibility age for benefits.

Note that when you hear the word modernize that is a code word for cuts not beneficial to servicemembers.

Here is the latest on the former Honorary Consul for the Republic of Korea:

WASHINGTON — Judging from her emails, Jill Kelley was star-struck by the big-name military commanders rotating between the war zones in the Middle East and her home town of Tampa, Florida. And they were equally smitten with her.

“Everyone thinks you’re a RockStar!” Kelley gushed in a 2012 email to Marine Gen. James Mattis, then commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East. “We agreed how amazing it must be that you’re single-handedly re-writing history,” she added, recalling how she had sung the general’s praises to several foreign ambassadors at the Republican National Convention that August in Tampa.

After another social event, she wrote a similar mash note to Mattis’s deputy, Vice Adm. Robert Harward. “What a Leader you were to these heads of State,” she enthused. “You ROCK!!!”

Replied Harward: “YOU ROCK MORE!”

In late 2012, Kelley’s talent as a Tampa hostess and her knack for charming men in uniform indirectly triggered one of the most embarrassing national security scandals of the past decade. Among other casualties, the fallout led to the forced resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus – a former four-star Army general – and the early retirement of Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Kelley’s chumminess with Petraeus and the military brass had attracted the notice of the spymaster’s biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell. She bad-mouthed Kelley in anonymous emails to military officials and others, according to federal investigators and a lawsuit filed by Kelley. The FBI got involved. Petraeus quit in disgrace. Allen retired.

The case still has not been entirely resolved. The Justice Department is deciding whether to charge Petraeus with leaking classified material to his lover. He has denied doing so.

Long after the scandal broke, it remains unclear what exactly prompted Broadwell to view Kelley as a rival. Kelley has said the two never met and that she never had an affair with Petraeus, Allen or anyone else.

Nor has anyone fully explained why Allen, while busy overseeing the war in Afghanistan, exchanged a blizzard of correspondence with Kelley – between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of emails, according to some senior defense officials. Other officials have said that figure includes many duplicate notes and exaggerates the extent of their communications, adding that there were only about 300 total emails.

The Defense Department inspector general investigated and concluded in 2013 that Allen had not committed any wrongdoing. But it has kept its report and all of Allen’s emails under lock and key.

Now, a glimpse into Kelley’s relationship with military commanders has emerged from another, previously undisclosed batch of emails: her correspondence with Mattis, a legendary Marine, and Harward, a Navy SEAL, from when they served as the top two officers at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa. The Washington Post requested the emails in November 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act. More than two years later, after numerous unexplained delays, the Pentagon released 238 pages of heavily censored documents.

The unredacted portions of the emails – from Mattis’s and Harward’s government email accounts – contain no evidence of improper behavior. But taken together, the records depict two wartime commanders who were easy marks for the flattery of an exuberant socialite. “I wish that we could clone a couple thousand of you, but the land is likely not ready for that big an impact,” Mattis told Kelley in a Jan. 31, 2012, email.

Mattis and Harward, who have since retired from the military, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Kelley, 39, who still lives in Tampa, referred questions to her attorney, Alan Raul of Washington. He released a statement that read, in part: “The latest set of emails made public by the government simply confirms that Jill Kelley is and was a talented, civic-minded woman doing productive work as Honorary Ambassador to Central Command in Tampa and as Honorary Consul for the Republic of Korea.”

Reading this article I see nothing really scandalous with this emails.  For those wondering how Kelley became the Honorary Consul to South Korea here is how it happened:

In January 2012, for example, the South Korean Embassy in Washington informed Kelley that she had been selected to become an honorary consul. Even though she knew little about the country, she accepted the title with gusto.

“YES!!!! Honorary Consul General. I’m soooooo excited about the humbling honor,” she wrote to Mattis on Jan. 31 to inform him of her appointment. “It’s ironic that I get the request from the state of Korea – which is NOT my expertise. However as a lover of International Politics/Foreign Affairs, I do find the Korean Statehood quite interesting . . . (I’m a lover of conflict problem solving, and have a keen sense of seeking opportunities in chaos.).”

While Kelley’s appointments as ambassador and consul general were honorary positions, the emails indicate she was eager to become a diplomatic player.

I would have to believe that she was picked by South Korea simply because of her connections to top US military leaders in CENTCOM.  Maybe the South Korean intelligence figured she was some good to collect information from simply from letting her talk because she obviously liked talking.

The real scandal out of all of this is why are all these top generals in CENTCOM hanging around with some like this?

Here is another example of a military retiree turned government civilian getting hammered by DOD for a mistake they made:

Christopher Garcia couldn’t figure out why we was being called into the civilian human resources department in Okinawa.

It had been two years since he retired as a Marine gunnery sergeant and took a job as the lead defense travel administrator in the III Marine Expeditionary Force’s disbursing office. The transition had gone so well, his office had been recognized for excellence.

But, it turns out, things were too good to be true.

Despite being promised a housing allowance when he was offered the job, the HR office was now telling him that the interpretation of the rules had changed and he no longer qualified.

Then, he essentially was handed a bill for more than $100,000.

“Regrettably, the previous determination of your eligibility for [living quarters allowance] was erroneous,” CHRO Director Deborah Summers wrote in a letter handed to Garcia on Jan. 20. “Because you have been erroneously receiving LQA payments, you are required to repay the LQA you have received.”

Garcia was in shock.

Not only was he on the hook for two years’ rent and utilities, but his housing allowance payments would stop immediately. He said it would be nearly impossible to afford his house now, and his family — with five children living at home — had just celebrated Christmas.

“When I see what this is doing to my family … It’s the betrayal of a loyal individual,” Garcia said. “I don’t have the disposable income to just throw down another $8,000 on a move.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully this gentlemen can get that debt waived because I can only imagine how much more difficult life would be for this family having to pay that huge debt back every month on top of trying to find a new place to live that they can afford.

It is amazing how these people became millionaires by gaming a stupid program that should have never been put in place to begin with:

WASHINGTON — The Army paid a Texas couple nearly $4 million for supplying it with names of recruits who may have enlisted without their help, part of a bonus program blasted by a leading senator as a “mind-blowing” waste of taxpayer money, according to interviews and documents.
The Army’s Referral Bonus Program — hatched in 2006 during the darkest days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and buried in 2009 — paid as much as $2,000 per recruit. It mirrored a National Guard program so plagued with kickbacks that more than 800 soldiers have fallen under criminal investigations in the last few years, according to Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the financial and contracting oversight subcommittee.
Military investigators branded the scheme “sleazy but legal,” McCaskill wrote in a letter to top Pentagon officials.
Rene Agosto, a former Army sergeant currently working as a civilian in Texas for the Air Force, developed a website called OfficialArmy.com to collect names of potential recruits. The site, designed to look like the government-run Army online portal, attracted potential recruits and encouraged them to fill out a form with personal information. Agosto and his wife Vanessa submitted those names — as many as 12 at a time — to Army recruiters and collected $3,845,000, according to the Army and McCaskill. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link, but even though Senator McCaskill is completely right about this, there is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black in regards to a member of Congress complaining about wasteful spending like this.

Like I have always said, it is only a matter of time before someone in the Pentagon tries to move retirees into Obamacare:

The Defense Department could slash its enormous health care budget by requiring Tricare beneficiaries not on active duty to get health care coverage through Affordable Care Act exchanges, according to several current and former congressional budget experts.

In the past several budget cycles, the Pentagon has sought to reduce its $52 billion health budget by asking Congress to approve cost-savings measures that include increased Tricare fees for retirees, fees for Tricare For Life beneficiaries and cost-shares for active-duty families.
Some proposals, such as reducing prescription costs by promoting use of military and mail-order pharmacies, have been implemented, but for the most part, Congress has resisted changes to the status quo for those who use the military health system and its private health care network.
But, the budget analysts said, the Defense Department could realize tremendous savings if it tapped into the resources offered by the general, civilian health care system and coverage available through federal or state exchanges. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link.

This was bound to happen considering how many complaints servicemembers have had about this contractor:

The U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General has opened an investigation of the nearly $1 billion contract to ship servicemembers’ cars overseas.

Investigators will target the Globally Privately Owned Vehicle Contract, or GPC III, under whose auspices International Auto Logistics was chosen by the U.S. Transportation Command, which is based at Illinois’ Scott Air Force Base.

The investigation began when Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Thad Cochran, R-Miss., contacted the Defense Contract Management Agency in October to request an audit of the shipping program.

The senators’ request for the audit came after a swelling tide of complaints over the summer from International Auto Logistics customers in Illinois and the rest of the nation. The customers were upset about vehicles shipped home after military tours overseas that were either missing, arriving months later than promised or mysteriously damaged.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but what is most concerning about this contract are the Unification Church and North Korean connections to IAL:

Formed in August 2012 with the sole purpose of pursuing this contract, IAL submitted a bid two months later. IAL’s parent company is International Auto Processing, also in Brunswick, whose chairman is Park Sang-Kwon. Anything but a native Georgian, Park is a global financial figure who was chairman of Pyeonghwa Motors, a joint venture between North and South Korea — a rarity indeed. Billed as “The Bridge between South and North Korea,” the partnership was formed in 1999 between Pyonghwa Motors of South Korea, owned by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, and Ryonbong General Corp. of North Korea.

Though the company’s headquarters was in Seoul, Park enjoyed a close relationship with the North Korean regime. At a time when travel between the Koreas is difficult, Park has visited North Korea 200 times. In late 2012, he was even awarded an honorary citizenship in North Korea, only the second person ever to receive such a commendation. “This means that North Korea has acknowledged the trust they had put in me,” Park told Agence France Presse at the time. “They were also encouraging me to start new projects in the North, more freely and aggressively.”

Throughout its history, Pyeonghwa Motors struggled. In 2012, the joint venture ended when Park and the Unification Church relinquished their interest in the failing enterprise to the North Koreans. One report suggested the company was given to the North Korean regime for the right to conduct future business in the country. At the same time, Park submitted an application to the Ministry of Unification in South Korea to undertake new businesses in the North. It was now — as Park was dealing with this business failure — that his International Auto Processing formed IAL, which ended up with a $300-million defense contract.  [The Hill]

So it is pretty clear that Park set up IAL just to win the Pentagon contract after his failed business venture in North Korea.  So who did Park call on to help him win the contract?  I am sure most ROK Heads could have guessed this:

According to court papers, IAL lists Boyle Transportation, of Billerica, Mass., as a major subcontractor. Boyle’s board of advisers includes three retired generals: Gen. William Tuttle Jr., the former commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, which overseas SDDC; Maj. Gen. Charlie Fletcher, Transcom’s former director of operations and plans, and Maj. Gen. Dan Mongeon, former director of operations for the Defense Logistics Agency.

SDDC is an Army command that’s part of the U.S. Transportation Command, also based at Scott. SDDC supervises the movement of military property. It directly oversees the IAL contract. [Military.com]

You can read much more at the link.

Here is the latest military budget fight happening in Congress:

A dispute between House and Senate armed services committees over whether to slow growth in military housing allowances and raise off-base pharmacy co-payments has put at risk passage of a defense authorization bill.
“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” said one armed service committee staffer, describing the impasse between House-Senate negotiators striving to reach a defense policy bill compromise two months into the new fiscal year. (Stars and Stripes)

This passage here just confirms what I have always believed that Congress rather have equipment built with no one to man it than protect personnel from cuts:

Buyer cautioned that he wasn’t speaking for the commission. But as a former lawmaker with years of experience on armed services, as a career reserve officer and as someone who has studied compensation issues for the past 18 months, Buyer said he believes the “baseline argument” that current pays and benefits are unsustainable “is false.”

“I learned immediately as a freshman congressman on the House Armed Services Committee [in 1993] about the power of the defense industrial base in Washington D.C.” Its “appetite on programmatic” defense spending “is so strong” that personnel budgets feel “tremendous pressure” and those backing other programs “will do everything they can to either cut personnel numbers or benefits to gain access to money to pay for programs.”

You can read more at the link.

There is plenty of things that can be improved with the VA disability system, but I do not think there will be much consensus to do so until the much larger SSI disability problems are addressed:

The room fell silent for seven minutes as Illinois Rep. Tammy Duckworth upbraided a government contractor.
“Shame on you,” the congresswoman scolded Braulio Castillo at an oversight hearing in Washington, D.C., last year, accusing the business owner of gaming the veterans disability system.
Castillo had filed a claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs after learning that a disability rating would give his technology company preferential standing for federal contracts.
His disability: A foot injury suffered playing football at the U.S. Military Preparatory Academy in 1984.
Though the injury didn’t prevent him from going on to play quarterback at the University of San Diego, the VA rated him 30% disabled — good for $450 a month, tax-free.
Duckworth, an Army veteran who lost both legs in Iraq in 2004 when her helicopter was shot down, noted that her severely damaged right arm was rated only 20%.
“You, who never picked up a weapon in defense of this great nation, very cynically took advantage of the system,” she said. “You broke the faith with this nation.”
Duckworth directed her ire at Castillo, but the real culprit was the broad eligibility criteria of the disability system itself. The contractor had played by the rules for benefits and, as many Washington lawmakers know, those benefits cover ailments from sports injuries to bullet wounds, resulting in disability payouts that totaled $58 billion this fiscal year — up from $49 billion last year.
Routinely criticized in government reviews as out of touch with modern concepts of disability, the system has strayed far from its official purpose of compensating veterans for their lost earning capacity.( LA Times)

You can read more at the link.

This retirement reform proposal is better than others I have seen,but people should not be fooled into thinking this is in any way a good deal:

A proposal that would transform the military retirement system by promising smaller monthly checks but also giving troops a lump sum “transition pay” immediately upon retirement could turn out to be very popular among most service members, according to a new study.

The study published Wednesday by the RAND Corp. think tank looked in detail for the first time at how today’s 1.4 million active-duty troops might respond to a sweeping overhaul of the traditional military retirement system.
The results suggest that many troops, given a choice, would prefer to take an end-of-career payout, probably amounting to about 2½ years of their annual basic pay, in exchange for smaller monthly checks during their so-called “working-age retirement” years before age 65. (Army Times)

You can read more at the link but I would advise every troop against doing this but I could see some taking this option to pay bills or pay off a mortgage before retirement. What I like most about this bad deal is that it is voluntary and troops are not forced to take it.

Here is the latest sexual assault / harassment story making headlines:

Katie Rapp was surprised when she was told to go to a Perkins restaurant outside Cincinnati to discuss the investigation into her claims of sexual harassment.

Rapp, a member of the Ohio National Guard, sat in a corner booth trying to fend off a panic attack as she described her experience in Afghanistan. A Beyoncé song blasted in the background.

“Everything I went through in [the] country was hard. It really sucked,” Rapp told BuzzFeed News. “But my investigation was the hardest four hours of my life.”

It’s been over two years since Rapp was sent home from Afghanistan and 19 months since her investigation interview in March 2013. In about 30 days she will learn if she will get her wish to receive an honorable medical discharge from the military, or be required to stay until her contract ends in 2018. She had been distracting herself from thinking about the case by attending classes in biochemistry at the University of Cincinnati, but has since taken some time off due to the medical board evaluation process.

Rapp’s case was assigned to Lt. Col. Lisa Gammon. The National Guard and Gammon would not comment on how many previous military sexual assault cases Gammon had investigated, but, according to her LinkedIn profile, she had been working with the Ohio National Guard since 2008.

Rapp had already become disillusioned with the National Guard by the time she met with Gammon. Rapp claims that she was repeatedly sexually harassed by men on her unit, both while deployed in Afghanistan and also during basic training in South Carolina. She said that after reporting the incidents, her captain transferred her to a different platoon, rather than punishing her alleged harassers. She was sent to a mandatory psychological evaluation, diagnosed with an “adjustment disorder,” and sent home.

“I learned that nobody believes you unless you can prove it,” said Rapp. So she decided to record her interview with Gammon, just in case the meeting didn’t go well.

In her words, “It was four straight hours of victim-blaming.” (Buzzfeed)

You can read the rest at the link.

It will be interesting to see if she gets the discharge she wants due to claiming to have PTSD for sexual harassment. Instead of discharging her they should first conduct a more professional investigation then what was reported in this article.

Considering the cover ups of such cases uncovered in the Alaska National Guard this makes me wonder if the Guard has got the memo that all sexual harassment and assault cases will be thoroughly investigated?