This is just totally bizarre and incredibly involves an O6 being involved in taking these pictures. The Soldiers involved in these pictures appear to all be stationed in Hawaii:
Multiple soldiers are under investigation for indiscreet activity while in uniform. Specifically, posting photos of themselves wearing dog-themed bondage masks while in uniform.
As reported by USA Today, the images — many of which first appeared on social media on Dec. 9 — depict “male soldiers in uniform, or parts of uniforms, wearing dog masks, leather and chains. Some of the photos depict poses of submission and sexual acts. Another photo shows a soldier in combat fatigues wearing the dog mask on an airfield.”
You can read more at the link, but if you want to see an O6 with a bondage mask on click the link. You can also read more about this craziness in the original article breaking this story in USA Today.
It looks like the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for all DOD service members may soon be coming to an end if this legislation passes and is signed by the President:
Master Sgt. Cherie Gregory, 66th Medical Squadron functional manager, prepares a vaccine during a point of distribution at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., Nov. 9, 2022. (Linda LaBonte Britt/U.S. Air Force)
The final version of the fiscal 2023 defense authorization bill is likely to rescind Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s August 2021 memo ordering COVID-19 vaccines for most troops, a source familiar with the matter said Monday.
Ending the requirement, under which service members who aren’t fully vaccinated are subject to discharge, has been a top priority of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other senior Republicans in both chambers. McCarthy raised the issue with President Joe Biden in a meeting last week and reiterated over the weekend that the mandate should be repealed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
It should be no surprise that Saudi Arabia is the country paying the most for U.S. military personnel to work for them:
Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Marine Gen. James Jones, speaks during a transfer of authority ceremony of NATO’s Response Force in Naples, Italy, in 2005. Saudi Arabia’s paid advisers have included Jones, now retired, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama. (Stars and Stripes)
Foreign governments have long advanced their interests in Washington by paying Americans as lobbyists, lawyers, political consultants, think tank analysts and public relations advisers. But the hiring of retired U.S. military personnel for their expertise and political clout has accelerated over the past decade as oil-rich gulf monarchies have splurged on defense spending and strengthened their security partnerships with the Pentagon.
Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department. But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.
To shed light on the matter, The Post sued the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps and the State Department in federal court under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After a two-year legal battle, The Post obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents, including case files for about 450 retired soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.
You can read more at the link, but the article did not mention any retired military officials working with South Korea or Japan. It appears to all be governments from the Middle East, Turkey, and Russia. The fact that Korea and Japan has USFK and USFJ probably means they don’t need to hire outside experts like these other countries are doing.
The U.S. is using a standing play from its North Korean provocation playbook by sailing in a U.S. aircraft carrier into the East Sea. This time they are doing it shortly after it already completed an exercise there:
An EA-18G Growler launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in the Pacific Ocean, Sept. 14, 2022. (Michael Jarmiolowski/U.S. Navy)
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan is redeploying to South Korea’s eastern coast less than a week after it concluded trilateral naval drills with South Korean and Japanese warships.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff in a press release Wednesday said the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group would be entering international waters in the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on the same day due to “highly unusual” timing of North Korea’s activities.
The Pentagon’s independent commission has released what the names of Army bases named after Confederate generals will now be:
New names recommended for nine Army posts that honor Confederate generals were made public Tuesday, May 24, 2022, by an independent commission assigned to make the selections. The bases are Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas. Officials have said they would not recommend a name change for Camp Beauregard in Louisiana, which was also named for a Confederate general, because it is owned by that state’s National Guard. (Library of Congress)
The Army will now have bases named after women and African Americans if Congress and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approve the recommendations offered Tuesday by an independent commission assigned to make the selections.
Congress mandated last year that an appointed Naming Commission come up with potential new names for nine Army installations that now honor Confederate generals from the Civil War.
The nine bases are all in former Confederate states and were named during the 1910s and 1940s amid the South’s Jim Crow era.
— Fort Polk, La., to Fort Johnson after Sgt. William Henry Johnson
— Fort Benning, Ga., to Fort Moore for Lt. Gen. Hal and Julia Moore
— Fort Gordon, Ga., to Fort Eisenhower for former President Dwight Eisenhower
— Fort A.P. Hill, Va., to Fort Walker after Dr. Mary Walker
— Fort Hood, Texas, to Fort Cavazos after Gen. Richard Cavazos
— Fort Pickett, Va., to Fort Barfoot for Tech. Sgt. Van T. Barfoot
— Fort Rucker, Ala., to Fort Novosel after Chief Warrant Officer 4 Michael J. Novosel, Sr
— Fort Lee, Va., to Fort Gregg-Adams after Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams
It will definitely take some time to get used to these new names, but after a decade most people will likely forget what the old names were. My favorites on this list are probably Fort Moore and Fort Eisenhower. Both are definitely worthy of a base named after them. Fort Johnson is another good one because any other military hero is better than having a base named after Polk who was an extremely poor leader during the Civil War.
As I have long said, when DOD instituted the Blended Retirement System a few years ago, it was the first step to eventually doing away with the fixed military retirement system. This latest report will be used to further justify moving military retirement totally to a Thrift Savings Plan model:
Recruits with Charlie Company, 1st Recruit Training Battalion, receive their service rifles at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego on Nov. 15. (Lance Cpl. Cristian G. Torres/Marine Corps)
Military leaders will need to make some difficult choices on pay and benefits in coming years if they want to maintain funding needed to keep up force readiness and end strength, a panel of defense experts said on Tuesday.
“We need to focus [military] benefits on those currently serving, but the problem is most of the benefits now have shifted to those no longer serving,” said Arnold Punaro, former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“There are 2.4 million retirees [receiving benefits] compared to 1.3 million active -duty troops getting them … The deferred piece of military spending has to be dealt with.”
Purnaro’s comments came at a roundtable event on military challenges organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Other panelists echoed his concerns about personnel costs continuing to rise within the Defense Department even as the services’ end strengths have declined. Earlier this fall, CSIS released a report noting that the number of active-duty troops fell by more than 64 percent from 1952 to 2016, but total DOD personnel spending rose by 110 percent over the same period.
Does anyone think it is a coincidence that with the drawdowns in Iraq an Afghanistan that the CSIS is advocating for cutting troop benefits to pay for more equipment from the defense contractors that lavishly donate to CSIS?:
“While today’s U.S. military is near its smallest size since the end of World War II in terms of active duty end strength, personnel costs are at a historic high,” wrote Seamus Daniels, associate director for Defense Budget Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The video made by a Marine Lieutenant Colonel criticizing U.S. military generals over their failures in Afghanistan went viral over the weekend. Lt. Col. Scheller has now resigned his commission. I wonder if he has political ambitions?:
Lt. Col. Stu Scheller was dismissed Friday from command of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C., over the original video. In the new one, he claims he is not currently under investigation and that he likely would be allowed to ride out his remaining three years until retirement if he chose to stay silent.
“I don’t think that’s the path I’m on,” he says in the video, shot inside an “abandoned school bus” in eastern North Carolina. “I’m resigning my commission as a United States Marine, effective now … [and] I am forfeiting my retirement, all entitlements. I don’t want a single dollar.”
He suggests that senior military generals would need the roughly $2 million he’d expect to receive in retirement and his other benefits more than he would once he’s through with them.
It sounds like this guy should be doing something else other than working for the Pentagon:
Franz Gayl, a civilian who works at the Pentagon, is facing a counterintelligence investigation after writing pieces attacking U.S. foreign policy for a Chinese state tabloid. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
The headline hardly stood out on the website of the hyper-nationalistic Chinese newspaper.
“Why US will lose a war with China over Taiwan island,” announced the April 27 op-ed in the Global Times, which also referred to Taiwan’s democratically elected leaders as “renegade secessionists” and called U.S. Congress interest “corrupt.”
What was unusual about the article was its author.
Franz Gayl isn’t just an American. He is a celebrated whistleblower — whose conduct was praised by then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. — and a retired Marine major working at the Pentagon.
The anti-religion group MRFF has found another cause to attack the military with:
A religious freedom and diversity group is demanding that a naval air station in Japan remove a Bible from a POW-MIA table on base.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter Friday to Naval Air Facility Atsugi’s commander, Capt. John Montagnet, after receiving 15 complaints about the table from personnel at the installation, group founder Michael Weinstein told Stars and Stripes in a phone call Monday. (…..)
Over the past five years, the MRFF’s petitions resulted in the removal of Bibles from POW-MIA tables at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; four Veterans’ Administration offices in Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio; and an allergy clinic at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
You can read more at the link, but if someone wants their religion represented on the table I am sure no one would have a problem with another book added to the table. I wonder if this group’s ultimate goal is to go after military chaplains and try to get them removed?
Anyway if any is wondering why the MRFF’s founder Michael Weinstein is so adamant about attacking the military all you have to do is follow the money.
