Tag: US military

That is what this NPR article is claiming:

Wright says that one of the most interesting parts of the meeting came when he asked Davis about L. Ron Hubbard’s medical records. Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had maintained that he was blind and a ‘hopeless cripple’ at the end of World War II — and that he had healed himself through measures that later became the basis of Dianetics, the 1950 book that became the basis for Scientology.

“I had found evidence that Hubbard was never actually injured during the war. … And so we pressed [Tommy Davis] for evidence that there had been such injuries and [Hubbard] had been the war hero that he described,” says Wright. “Eventually, Davis sent us what is called a notice of separation — essentially discharge papers from World War II — along with some photographs of all of these medals that [Hubbard] had won. … At the same time, we finally gained access to Hubbard’s entire World War II records [through a request to the military archives] and there was no evidence that he had ever been wounded in battle or distinguished himself in any way during the war. We also found another notice of separation which was strikingly different than the one that the church had provided.”

Furthermore, says Wright, the notice of separation that the church provided was signed by a man who never existed. And two of the medals that Hubbard supposedly had won weren’t commissioned until after Hubbard left active service.

“There were a number of different discrepancies on there that make it clear that [the Scientology document] wasn’t an actual record,” says Wright. “In the 900-odd pages of Hubbard’s war records, there were numerous letters from other researchers from over the years. One of them had inquired about [the name on Hubbard’s notice of separation]. And the archivist at the time said they had thoroughly researched the rolls of Navy officers at the time and there was no such person.”

Wright says he’s not sure what impact — if any — his article will have on the Church of Scientology.

“It’s hard to measure, because we’re dealing with a religion,” he says, “and people are drawn to it because of faith. And if it were simply a matter of reason, then one could put this [document about Hubbard’s service] down in front of you and say, ‘Here is conclusive proof that the founder of Scientology lied about his military record and lied about his injuries and lied about the fundamental principles out of which he created the Church of Scientology. But that may not matter to people who are involved in it, who may feel they are gaining something from their experience — either because they feel like the truths of Scientology enhance their lives or because the community of Scientologists that they live among is something like their family. So they intentionally shield themselves from knowing these types of things.”   [NPR via This Ain’t Hell]

You can read more at the link, but L. Ron Hubbard reminds me a lot of Kim Il-sung who aided by his Soviet handlers used fictitious events to include lying about his military accomplishments during the Japanese occupation of Korea to start the cult of Kim that put him in power.  The cult he constructed has been powerful enough to keep two generations of his family in power as well.  Fortunately Scientology doesn’t control a country with a million man army and nukes.  Could you imagine how strange a place a Scientology led country would be?  It may even make the strangeness of North Korea seem tame in comparison.

It is interesting that for fixed military pensions it is okay to turn these into 401k’s, but the minute someone mentions turning Social Security in a 401k suddenly the claims of throwing grandma at the mercy of the Wall Street casino comes into play.  So how come it is okay to throw servicembers retirement at the mercy of the Wall Street casino while it is not for grandma?  The answer is a lot more grandmas vote compared to servicemembers:

President Barack Obama announced Monday he will back sweeping overhauls to the military retirement and health care systems as a way to ensure the costly benefits survive into the future.

Obama said he will provide Congress a list of proposals by the end of April that will be based on the recommendations of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, a panel created by lawmakers to find solutions to ballooning personnel expenses.

The panel has advised the military to eliminate its 20-year pensions in favor of a 401(k)-style retirement system, and replace Tricare health coverage with a wide variety of private insurance plans. Those and a list of 15 changes to military compensation — including a consolidation of commissaries and exchanges — could save almost $5 billion next year and up to $10.4 billion per year by 2020, the panel claims.

“I believe the recommendations are an important step forward in protecting the long-term viability of the all-volunteer force, improving quality-of-life for service members and their families, and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of the military compensation and retirement systems,” Obama wrote in the letter to Congress.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but just think how much money Wall Street is going to make off of “service fees” for all these new 401k’s.  Those guys always win.

The Stars & Stripes has this sad story of a sailor trying to find this daughter who disappeared with her mother in Japan 40 years ago:

It’s been 45 years since James Walker went to war in Vietnam, leaving behind his daughter and her mother in Japan.

The young sailor thought they’d be reunited once he got back from deployment on the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany. When the letters he wrote to his young family were returned marked “wrong address” Walker realized something was wrong. Almost four decades later, he’s still searching for them.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but hopefully Mr. Walker is able to find his lost daughter.

This sounds more like the spouse thinking she wears the rank of the servicemember their married to:

My wife and I own a couple of smoothie/food shops. As small-business entrepreneurs, we take a lot of pride in providing 55 jobs while making payroll every week, all self-financed as saved- and scrimped-for investment capital. As owners, we choose to offer a 10 percent discount to first-responders and active-duty/reserve military and guardsmen. Which is where I get to my rub.

Recently, I had a military spouse grow irate with my cashier because we didn’t offer a discount to military family members. Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has happened. I guess I could stop offering any discount at all to the military, but would rather not. In this particular case, my cashier was on the receiving end of a very long tirade about how obviously unappreciative ownership must be of the sacrifices of the military family. The woman ended by stating “it would be in the owner’s best interest” to offer discounts to families as well. I wish I was there to find out exactly what she meant beyond her vague threat.

Her response, I believe, had nothing to do with my veteran-owned business being unappreciative of military families (we know firsthand about the hardships endured on the home front), and everything to do with the growing sense in our active and retired military community that as a group its members should be catered to because of their service. This is terribly misplaced and hurts civil-military relations, as well as sullies our service to this great nation.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link,but no business should be expected to give military discounts like this woman wanted.

So how much will military retirees lose if the current retirement system is replaced with what is basically a 401k?  Well the Military Officer’s Association of America has done the analysis and it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars:

For example, critics of the current system say it’s unfair the 83 percent of entrants who leave before 20 years of service receive no retirement benefits. The commission’s hybrid retirement package with a vesting 401(k) and government match would be attractive to those who are uncertain of or do not intend to make the military a career.

However, we’ve got serious concerns whether this proposal will draw people to 20 years of service and our analysis shows these changes come at the price of reducing the overall pension value to those that stay beyond 20 years of service — and it only gets worse the longer you stay in service. Our conservative estimates show an E-7 retiring with 20 years of service under the new proposal could lose $262,000 in lifetime retirement value. However, if the same E-7 stays for 30 years and is promoted to E-9, the lifetime loss in retirement rises to $740,000. That’s assuming a 5-percent government match and a 5-percent rate of return in the Thrift Savings Plan.  [MOAA]

You can read more at the link and remember this analysis is assuming growth in the servicemember’s retirement investment when they retire.  What happens to those who retire during a financial crisis like we saw in 2008 and have their 401k hammered?  Also this loss in retirement money would also come on top of other proposed cuts to health care and commissary benefits.

If these same cuts were recommended to for Social Security and Medicare there would be an absolute up roar.

Why the Asia-Pacific region matters to the United States: http://t.co/oQnWdtesv3

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) February 13, 2015

This article about military retirements hits on one of the main reasons for the current system that I have highlighted in the past, military retirement is basically receiving the second half of your pay in the military:

To an outsider, military pensions sound ridiculous; you can put in 20 years starting in your late teens or early 20s and “retire” at the time when most people are hitting their peak earning years. Obviously, that’s a very expensive benefit for the government to provide. Should we ratchet up the retirement age? Some economists think we should.

People supporting the status quo will probably argue that the military is more physically demanding than most jobs, and therefore you have to expect people to retire earlier. But the pension is available to everyone in the military, not just infantrymen. Moreover, it is disproportionately used by officers, not enlisted men, and by the time they have 20 years in, officers are spending a lot less time hauling heavy things and running around in the mud.

But there’s another problem with rejiggering the Army’s pension schedule, and that’s the way it interacts with the “up or out” system that the military uses for officers’ careers. Basically, officers who don’t get selected for promotion get fired.

The military is not the only institution that uses this method. It’s also popular with consultancies, law firms and investment banks. That system is archaic and barbaric, and whatever it gains you in reduced payroll costs, it loses you in accumulated human capital, and it also earns you a backstabbing corporate culture.

Of course, no one asked me, and I expect that those sorts of firms will continue to use up-or-out pyramids for the foreseeable future. But what do all these firms have in common with each other, and not with the military?

They pay really well. The senior people who survived the tournament get paid even better, of course. But even the entry-level jobs pay better than most of the alternatives.

The opposite is true in the military. It pays badly in the beginning and it pays badly at the end, relative to what those folks could have been making if they’d been steadily moving up through the ranks in a normal industry.  [Bloomberg]

You can read more at the link, but the article goes on to discuss other issues such as constant moves and spouses being unable to start careers which is very different from civilian counterparts.  The article than says that if the government wants to do away with the defined benefit pension than it needs to be prepared to pay more up front or watch the quality of military careerists decline.

This posting can pretty much encompass all combat arms and even some of the support branches. So how many have you slept in?

Top 7 Best Places for an Infantryman to Sleep

7. On a cot less than a foot away from the grunt next to you

6. On the floor of an Air Force terminal before deployment

5. The back of a cramped C-130 transport plane

4. The bottom of a foxhole

3. Inside a ridiculously-noisy helicopter

2. The tried-and-true Humvee

1. In the dirt (We Are Mighty)

You can read the whole thing at the link, but I have slept at each of these locations. Something the author left out was sleeping in a Bradley. Nothing worse than trying to sleep in a Bradley turret. Best place to sleep if it cold is on top of the Bradley engine after turning it off. My favorite place was simply on the ramp. Bradley drivers had the best place to sleep though in their location.  By combat arms standards the driver’s compartment was like having your apartment in the field. Here is an actual picture of how my unit in Kuwait was sleeping before moving into Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom 1; not exactly the Hilton:

Anyone have some good military sleep locations they want to share?

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?