Of course this is an extreme outrage, but it's absolutely nothing new about our armed forces. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Sorry to say this, but too damn many of our people in uniform should never have been allowed to rise to the positions that they hold. Not all of them for sure, but some are just worthless lying pieces of crap and that is a shame.
I served in the Navy and then the Air Force and experienced more than enough incompetent lying, self promoting, good for nothing officers and NCOs to change my mind about making a career of it. Yes I know that the military must by its nature be quite a bit different than civilian life. But there is no excuse for the lying and contempt that too many of those in charge have for their troops. It would be criminal in a civilian setting.
In all too many cases it's some self important commander who issues edicts on his troops just to satisfy some stupid military technicality. I saw good men get Article 15s , reduced in rank and loss of pay for being late returning to the base through no fault of their own. They were stuck on a grounded ferry for hours and could not get ashore to make it back to the base on time. We were always told that if something like this were to happen, just call the base and let them know what and where you were. They did that. Didn't matter to our base commander, he didn't want to have to explain their absence during an ORI to the higher-ups.
My advice to those guys was to not take it--write to your Congressman and Senators. They didn't think it would do any good. That was not my experience when they tried to pull a fast one on me. My Congress Person and Senators were more than happy to step in and give me a hand. I won't go into all the details, but my Congressman (woman) went directly to the Secretary of the Air Force and tossed my letter on his desk. She said this is not going to happen to this Airman. After reading my letter an order was issued to every commanding General in the line of command in the 2nd Air Force. It prevented me from being arbitrarily changed to a very different specialty than what I had trained for and not related in any way to the career field I had been guaranteed when I enlisted. There are a bunch of important details that I won't go into, but my point here is that people have to stick up for themselves and use the tools available to them.
This Lt. Colonel who is being crapped on needs to get loud and make some heads roll if he can find the right allies.
