gigemtxag2025 said:
12th Man said:
gigemtxag2025 said:
12th Man said:
gigemtxag2025 said:
12th Man said:
gigemtxag2025 said:
Ellis Wyatt said:
gigemtxag2025 said:
When has a Secretary of Defense publicly killed an active AR 15-6 before it ran its course?
Bahahahahahaha!
How would we ever know? The military existed a long time before the internet and camera phones.
Then nobody can claim this has happened "throughout military history" either. And the fact that Hegseth did it publicly on X is exactly what makes it different from a quiet phone call.
I can and do absolutely claim that higher-ups have weighed-in and waived due process and/or punishment. Ever heard of the USS William D. Porter?
Oozing sanctimony -such as yours- is concerning.
Great example of why this is different. Roosevelt pardoned a sailor after the investigation ran its course and determined it was an accident. Didn't kill the investigation before it finished, which is the whole point. Waiting on your example of a Secretary of Defense killing an active AR 15-6.
Your cluebird is holding somewhere removed from the outer marker: the William D. Porter episode isn't about what happened to the torpedo chief's sentence, it's about what happened to the crew: the heaviest of American heavies weighed in BEFORE the Board of Inquiry and returned the ship & her crew to duty.
That happened >80 years ago. How far back does one need to go to disabuse you of the notion that influence from on-high started with Secretary Hegseth's exoneration?
Have you ever read Robin Olds' autobiography? You should. In it he tells a great story about an aerial refueling while returning to base after a mission downtown. He had maybe two minutes worth of gas left when his turn at the boom came up. Just as he positioned his Phantom, the boom retracted and the KC-135's aircraft commander popped up on the net & said, "Sorry- we're bingo and [the rules say when we reach bingo] we have to rtb," Olds pleaded, Olds cajoled, but the officious, book-driven AC refused to refuel Olds' jet because rules; right until Olds radioed, "Okay, then, look, I still have one Sidewinder left, and when I flame out, I'm firing it. At you. Get your chutes ready, boys!"
Plonk, down came the boom, and Olds didn't have to eject over Laos after all.
The moral of the story? The perfumed princes who blindly follow rules have no place in the real world, and their allegiance to the book not only makes them unpopular, it makes them counterproductive and dangerous. Connect the dots however you want, but you're as wrong as a Caffeine-free Diet Mountain Dew about this.
FDR did not intervene before the Board of Inquiry. The process played out, the findings were made, and then the President pardoned what was determined to be an accident, which is the opposite of what Hegseth did. Your statement is not accurate.
As for the Olds story: nobody would argue against a pilot making a life-or-death call in combat, but this is a routine peacetime administrative review of a flight deviation that Hegseth killed for political reasons. Using a survival story from Vietnam to justify that is a stretch. Still waiting on an example.
You're wrong about how FDR handled the Porter incident. And I gave you an instance where the President -an even higher official than a Cabinet Secretary- weighed in, but you keep blathering on about needing an example from our military history of the powerful weighing in. Dude, I can only point you to it; I can't understand it for you.
In my direct experience, people with your the-Book-uber-alles modus operandi suck the joy out of the wardroom, give good officers a bad name, attach importance to the unimportant, significance to the insignificant, and are as useless as balls on a ham sandwich once the screw gets tightened 1/8th of a turn. I'm somehow certain this point will elude you, joining the lesson Robin Olds taught as well, Alas.
The Board of Inquiry happened before FDR intervened, which is documented. If you have a source that says otherwise, I can look at it. No need for the personal shots, I haven't done the same to you.
I've been chastised, so I need to be careful.
You want examples of a SecDef influencing military justice. Okay, here are three additional to Secretary Hegseth's actions:
1.In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld intervened in the ONGOING disciplinary actions against those involved in the Abu Graib prisoner-abuse scandal.
2. Following the murder of Chris Stevens in Benghazi in 2012, Leon Panetta directly and personally intervened in ONGOING disciplinary proceedings against officers considered liable for security lapses before the attack. Like Secretary Hegseth, he wasn't wrong, either.
3. Secretary Ash Carter intervened in ONGOING 2016 disciplinary proceedings against several Marines who were accused of sharing dirty images of other marines online.
Now, I told you higher-ups have weighed in on disciplinary matters as long as we've had a military hierarchy, didn't I? Now you have three more examples, so 4/9 SecDefs since 2000 have steered the wheels of military justice. That's just the past 26 years- didn't even look at the nineteen 20th century SecDefs or all the SecWars prior to formation of the DoD.
Hegseth was right to call BS on this. Your displeasure that multiple Army Aviators were spared from the disciplinary process (the process is, in & of itself, punishment) is t, misplaced and wrong.
