Category: US Military

US Military To Deploy 3,000 Servicemembers To Aid With Ebola Fight In Africa

| September 16, 2014

It will be interesting to see who is going to get deployed to do this mission, but this shows the US government must be very concerned that the ebola outbreak could get much worse to deploy this many personnel to try and stop its spread:

Amid criticism that the U.S. has not done enough to block the spread of the Ebola virus across West Africa, President Barack Obama will announce a “significantly ramped up” campaign Tuesday that relies heavily on the U.S. military, senior administration officials said.

The Defense Department will work with local governments to plan and build 17 new Ebola treatment units, for a total of 1,700 new beds, while military medical staff will begin training a target of 500 health care providers per week in care and prevention of the lethal virus, an official said.

The scaled-up effort, along with current programs, will be run through a U.S. joint command center to be set up in Monrovia, Liberia, the country facing the most troubling transmission rate, officials said.

Pentagon officials expected the command center to eventually oversee about 3,000 military personnel on the ground handling logistics, engineering, distribution of supplies, and coordination with other government agencies and international organizations, one official said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

 

Critics Fail To Strip Military Commanders of their Prosecution Power Over Sex Crimes

| June 13, 2013

Commanders will be allowed to keep their authority:

In a dramatic hearing Wednesday focused on sexual assault in the military, the Senate Armed Services Committee knocked down an effort to strip military commanders of oversight in the prosecution of serious crimes by their subordinates.

The 17-9 committee vote to leave prosecutions within the chain of command cut across party lines, and represented a victory for the Pentagon. Leaders including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and each of the service chiefs have argued that military commanders are best able stem a tide of sexual assaults that Defense Department statistics indicate has been rising in recent years.

But a senator who voted to maintain the status quo, Maine independent Sen. Angus King, warned that legislators would have little choice but to reduce the authority of commanders in criminal cases if the Pentagon doesn’t quickly reverse the trend.

“In a sense, I see this as a last chance for the chain of command to get it right,” King said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read much more at the link, but I respectfully disagree with Senator King’s statement.  As I have already shown the statistics for military sexual assaults last year were inflated due to adding assaults from prior years to the 2012 statistics along with other reasons such as an increase in baseless claims.  The military has made a big effort in recent years to get people to report sexual assaults and her statement runs counter to this.  So instead of trying to count every report there is, the military for the 2013 statistics can show improvement by just recalculating their statistics.  They can do this by just including reports from 2013 and reports from prior years would be counted to the year’s that they happened.  This would show instant progress and not bring attention to reports people filed from prior years.

Something that has changed is this:

Levin’s amendment would set up an appeals system that would give service secretaries the final say on commanders’ prosecution decisions, and makes it a crime to retaliate against those who report sexual assault.

Gillibrand said the time to let the military solve its own sexual assault problem had passed.

“The chain of command has told us for decades that they would solve this problem, and they have failed,” she said.

Gillibrand argued that the amendment does not address the main problem — a climate of fear faced by sexual assault victims when considering whether to report a crime to a commander who may be biased in favor of a higher-ranking perpetrator.

I do not have a problem with Levin’s amendment though I would like to see how retaliate is defined.  For example if someone files a report that is considered baseless can they not be prosecuted for filing a false report?  As far Congresswoman Gillibrand’s complaint it runs counter to the facts that show commanders are overwhelming prosecuting servicemembers under their command for sexual assault even when the evidence does not support a prosecution.  There are servicemembers that had to be released from jail by the US Court of Appeals due to having their Constitutional rights to a fair trial trampled on by the witch hunt against anyone accused of sexual assault.  In the article even Congresswoman McCaskill had to cede this point.  Anyway this issue is not over, expect the special interests to try and bring it up again next year, but hopefully the Pentagon gets their act together on how they compile the statistics so they do not give the special interests ammunition to bash them with.

Congress Looks To Act On The Unemployment Rate of Young Veterans

| October 10, 2011

Here we go again with the unemployment rate of young veterans in the United States:

Democrats and Republicans rarely agree on anything in the nation’s capital, but there’s a growing bipartisan sense on Capitol Hill that the private sector will have to do much more to help Congress ease chronically high unemployment among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In August, President Barack Obama called on the nation’s businesses to hire or train 100,000 unemployed veterans by the end of 2013, a challenge that Microsoft answered with a pledge to train 10,000 of them.
Now, as part of his $447 billion jobs package, Obama wants Congress to approve a plan that would provide businesses a tax credit of $2,400 to $9,600 for each veteran they hire, depending on whether they’re disabled and how long they’ve been unemployed.
One million veterans already are unemployed and more than a million are expected to leave the military by 2016. Julius Clemente, a 33-year-old Iraq veteran from Kirkland, Wash., told a congressional panel Thursday that there will be “systematic chaos” if more of them can’t find jobs or get help going to college. [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I find it amazing when a veteran says they need help going to college. The Army has so many programs in place most notably the very generous GI Bill that help veterans do just that.
I have said this before, employers have to hire people that meet the skill set that they need and veterans need to make themselves competitive with other applicants before getting out of the military. That is why I have always advocated for Soldiers to take college classes while serving. The Army has gone to great length to make college classes available to its Soldiers. Even in Iraq and Afghanistan you can see Soldiers attending classes. So if someone exits the service without at least an Associates Degree, that is their own fault. Additionally if they don’t use their GI Bill benefits after they get out to get a degree in something employable than that is there own fault as well. I have seen this to often as well that someone gets a degree in liberal arts or underwater basketweaving and they can’t understand why they can’t find a job.
The second issue I see with Soldiers exiting the service is that they often go back to their home towns even though that may not be the best place for them to find a job. Many of the skill sets learned by Soldiers are more in demand in areas around military bases. Military bases hire many contractors with the vast majority of the contractors being prior service military. Depending on one’s education level and time in service a government position working for the military may even be possible. Then you add in the fact that many private defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon also have offices located around military bases that also hire many prior service military members. Soldiers going back to their hometown after completing military service cuts off these job opportunities for them. At the same time while in the military servicemembers need to network with people that can help them land one of these jobs. Who you know can be just as important as what you know.
In my opinion veterans should not feel entitled to a high paying job after they leave the service, they need to make themselves competitive applicants which military service should be something to enhance their resume over other applicants and not be the only thing on it.