Far East Cynic

In recent days the military journals have run stories of how Congress wants to strip commanders of their authorities to confirm or overturn the results of courts martial. This due to several high profile cases where folks did not agree with the final decision of the convening authority.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced legislation Thursday taking top commanders out of the process of deciding whether a sexual misconduct case goes to trial. For sexual offenses with authorized sentences of more than one year in confinement — akin to felonies in the civilian judicial system — that decision would rest instead with officers at ranks as low as colonel who are seasoned trial counsels with prosecutorial experience.

“‘What we need to do is change the system so victims know that they can receive justice,” Gillibrand said Thursday on CBS “This Morning.”

Let me state it clearly, to do this is a huge mistake. Commanders who have court martial authority HAVE to have the ability to decide how cases are to be prosecuted and the ability to affirm or reject the conclusions of the judicial proceedings.

There are fundamental differences between the civilian criminal justice system and the military justice system. Yet far too many people fail to understand those differences and the rationale for them.

It is important to remember that in a military proceeding there is no standing court -it has to be created. And because the commander is still trusted with the responsibility to maintain good order and discipline-he or she has to be quite careful not to create a stampede to make an example out of someone. That is a big difference between the military and civilian systems. The civilian court system is more removed from the proceedings after they occur. Not so in the military.

The specific case that prompted the desire for this change was one involving the 3rd Air Force commander overturning the conviction of a Lt Col accused of sexual assault. He had been convicted by court martial. LTG Franklin made the decision to overturn the decision, throwing out the sex assault conviction.

I don't know the details of the case-but I do know that the general, in making his decision,  did not make it lightly. He knew full well how particularly sensitive these types of cases are and how much visibility anything with the "sex" word attached to it gets right now. So I am convinced that he must have had access to some pretty good mitigating information to make the very serious decision that he made. We will never know that-but I am confident he would not have made the decision flippantly. Overturning a conviction happens very rarely.

And it should be his decision to make. If he made the wrong decision-then fine. Fire him and find a new 3 star. But don't take away the commander's ability to fully exercise his authority. That in the long run is a big mistake and is setting the stage for some innocent person to be wrongly convicted and railroaded for the rest of his life. Court Martial do make mistakes.

We claim that we want to enforce a culture of accountability. And then we turn around and deny commanding officers the tools they need to exercise their authority and lead their subordinates in fairness. That's not smart.

Speaking of things that are degrading to women, back in January,  Martin Van Creveld published a fine article in Small Wars Journal. In it he makes the point that got RDML Gaouette fired, namely that there is a double standard existing in today's military-and its one where one gender is in fact devalued-but its men that are being devalued, NOT women.

Last not least, as figures from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan show, relative to their number military women are 90 percent less likely to be killed than military men. In other militaries around the world, incidentally, women’s share among the casualties is much lower still. Uniformed women, in other words, are not pulling their weight. Whether this is because public opinion will not stand for large numbers of dead servicewomen or because the women themselves have found a thousand ways to avoid going where the bullets are is immaterial. Probably both factors play a role. Instead of fighting, women get all the cushy jobs. For anyone who serves in the military, or whose livelihood depends on public approval, the prevailing climate of political correctness makes it impossible to mention the problem even in a whisper. Obviously, though, it is bound to have some effects on the morale of male personnel.

Van Creveld makes a key point about the thought processes behind the feminization of today's readiness. If you view the military as just another large corporation (in fact the largest American corporation) than increasing numbers of women in the force is just a reflection of the trend in society. So too are the large numbers of men unemployed and losing opportunity due to the reduced total numbers and increased numbers in the work force. Which is fine if you support the "corporate" point of view. On the other hand, " If the reason for having armed forces is to guarantee national security, then [having large numbers of women] the answer is clearly no."

As I have pointed out repeatedly in this space, discussions about women in uniform rarely deal with the true issues at hand and instead tend to focus on ideas of "fairness" and "opportunity"-when in fact the execution of wars in defense of the country is not a fair premise, and in a proper world would not exist at all.

So, it might do you well to understand the Professor's key point about what the "transformation" of our military force has wrought. You asked for it, you got it. Welcome to the world mediocrity built.

Looking back, clearly what we see is two long-term processes running in parallel. The first is the decline of U.S. armed forces (as well as all other Western ones, but that is not our topic here). The second is their growing feminization. Critics will object that, even as they were being downsized, the forces went through one qualitative improvement after another. In particular, the so-called “Revolution in Military Affairs” is supposed to have increased their fighting power many times over. That, however, is an illusion. To realize this, all one has to do is look at Afghanistan. Over there, “illiterate” tribesmen—not, take note, tribeswomen—are right now about to force the U.S. to withdraw its troops after a decade of effort in which they achieved hardly anything.

Are the two processes linked? You bet they are. Consider a work by two female professors, Barbara F. Reskin and Patricia A. Roos, with the title Job Queues, Gender Queues. First published in 1990, it has since been quoted no fewer than 1,274 times. As they and countless other researchers, both male and female, have shown, over time the more women that join any organization, and the more important the role they play in that organization, the more its prestige declines in the eyes of both men and women. (emphasis mine) Loss of prestige leads to diminishing economic rewards; diminishing economic rewards lead to loss of prestige. As any number of historical examples has shown, the outcome is a vicious cycle. Can anybody put forward a reason why the U.S. military should be an exception to the rule?

Welcome to the brave new world. To hell with it!

Warning notice: I am leaving comments on. However if someone spirals down the same rat hole we went through last year-and refuses to discuss issues but instead engages in personal attacks, your comment will be deleted immediately.

This is why the Navy cannot have nice things.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered a close-up and comprehensive inspection of all military offices and workplaces worldwide to root out any “materials that create a degrading or offensive work environment.”

The extraordinary searches will be similar to those the Air Force conducted last year and prompted officers to scour troops’ desks and cubicles in search of photos, calendars, magazines, screen-savers, computer files and other items that might be considered degrading toward women.

The inspections will now target soldiers, sailors and Marines. They come amid heightened concern about sexual assault in the military and a new Defense Department report that suggests more than 70 troops every day experience some type of sexual assault.

To borrow a quote from comedian Rick Dukaman, " It's against the law to like beautiful women? Well, lock me up and take me to Russia".

It reminds me of the story a classmate told me once-about how some shrew fellow professional member of the team got upset with a "glamour shot" a guy kept of his wife on the desk in his office. Her complaint? It showed too much cleavage. Like that's a bad thing.

Besides it violates the Public Affairs Diktat Rule #1.

It is to weep………Guess I will have to take down my Lily Wong screensaver now.

Ever spend any time on a staff-or at Fleet Forces Command in the past 5 years? You know this scene quite well:

I have long maintained that the Navy has some serious problems that it refuses to address up front. Its biggest problem is not, despite the opinion of others, its coming need to replace its SSBN's. That's a problem-but its a distant one. The nearest problem for the US Navy is its continuing inability to address its OPTEMPO.  When a guy like Greenert can calmly say something like this, you know the Navy is well and truly fucked:

“Right now that’s just an estimate, but we think it’s just about right,” Greenert told Navy Times after his talk with sailors. “We’re expecting them to fall between eight and eight and a half [months] I project.”

I want that present my Sailors gave you in 2006 back.

Eight months should be the lone exception-not the rule, and the very fact that the USN seems compelled to do it is sign #1 that it is over committed and should do something about that.

Because what really happens is that 8 months normally becomes 9 months-at the drop of a hat. Gone are the days of six months portal to portal-and any extension required approval from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and had better have a good reason.

Does the Navy need to two carriers in the Gulf? No-and it finally came to that realization after the sequester hit. It should have been a decision made 4 years before. The Navy, in its quest to be "relevant" is eating itself. And it is going to find out just how much damage it has done to itself when the economy recovers and the companies start hiring and JO's and junior Sailors start leaving in droves.

Anything beyond six months sucks with a capital "S"-and should be avoided at all costs. There are ways to reduce OPTEMPO-and they need to be quickly considered. Here are a couple I can think of:

1) Divorce the service of the idea that the CV and the CVW always have to deploy together. Just as at the beginning of OIF there was no need for 5 carriers in the Gulf-maybe they needed 5 Air Wings ( something I truly doubt- especially as it became apparent what a long haul Iraq was going to be)- sometimes the wing can go forward without the carrier.

2) Look at rotating crews out at intervals. Go drastically at the "Navy's overhead"-its shore establishment to free up bodies to do more meaningful work at sea.

3) Finally, learn how to say no.

This cannot go on-and that it has gone on this long without a large number of people fired for their inept management-is beyond me.

I could go on and on about the ways 8 months could be avoided-but it is clear no one is listening. Welcome to 1972. Did we learn nothing in 40 years?

In Star Trek, there is a story line about the alternate universe. On where the Enterprise serves the Terran Empire-and not the Federation.

It would seem that the US Navy has crossed over into that universe.

In the alternate universe of Star Trek, treachery is the norm and people move up by assassinating their superiors.  Witness the proof that it happens in  the Navy in this universe as well.

First it was the CO of USS Enterprise ( ironic considering), now they are moving up the ladder:

Read it and weep!

Commentary here.

Can we finally do away with DACOWITS now?

Since everyone can do everything-why are they needed? Except of course, its not about equality at all.

Its about reshaping the service into an image it never should have.

But such is the way society is changing.

I consider myself pretty open minded-but on the issue of women serving in combat, in squadrons, on ships, in submarines,  in the military in general, I shall never change my mind.  These changes come at a cost to American society-and they in the end,  demean women. It is not about doing what's right-its about careerism, and wanting to slant the table so that the tables of 10,000 years get turned 180 degrees around.

Secretary Panetta, Professor Van Creveld would like to have a word with you:

This, so you can understand the implications of what you did today.

And for the hypocrites in the Navy who whine and cry about all the guys getting fired for "morals" violations-just wait. The world you supposedly wished for has come true.

And no Mr. Ruiz, I do not apologize for writing this post about this time last year. I was right then-and I am right now. I will go on believing what I believe as long as I live. 

This-This is the world you have created. Enjoy it. 

There is no free ride and no matter what the benefit-we pay a cost as a society as the role of women as the civilizers of American society is destroyed.

All I can say is that I am glad I got to serve with men, when it was a man's thing to do.

How the Seventh Fleet commander came up with the new liberty policy:

I have been keeping in touch with friends in Japan, listening to them tell all about the complete stupidity of VADM Swift:

While the specific recommendations that were developed as part of the summit are reviewed, additional, temporary measures will remain in place in addition to the U.S. Forces Japan curfew, an 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. liberty curfew for all U.S. service members in Japan. These Navy specific additional measures include: the consumption of alcohol is prohibited from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. for all 7th Fleet assigned personnel in order to ensure all Sailors will be better able to meet the curfew requirements in Japan and all Sailors with any alcohol-related incidents within the last 3 years be placed on Class “C” liberty risk status which administratively curtails their ability to take liberty off of a U.S. installation..

 

 

Suffice it to say there are a lot of upset people. And their should be. These rules are , for one thing,  completely unenforceable-which, as I was taught early on generally makes a rule a bad one. Swift is fooling himself if he thinks that it is going to reduce liberty incidents-and it certainly is not going to prevent the consumption of alcohol after 10 PM.

Lets look at the smart persons strategy to beat this little measure, shall we?

1) Move off base. Preferably far off base and away from other Americans. Just about all of the southern Kanto plain is within a 30 minute train ride of Yokosuka, or Atsugi. Better to have a long commute in order to have some privacy over one's private life.

2) Stock up early. On cash and on beer. Lay in a good supply from the exchange and use some of the cheap supermarkets and 7-11's to keep it topped off.

3) Get an answering machine with phone forwarding. Never, Never, Never answer your phone-let it go straight to voice mail and call back as needed.

4). Learn Japanese and start going farther afield. Plenty of great bars away from Roppongi. Most with "Stay or Rest" hotels nearby. Bring cash-and don't go back to the ship till after 6AM. Talk to your buddies in Korea who have been avoiding "courtesy patrols" for years. Japan offers ten times the options that Korea does.

5) Write your Congressman and tell him-in strongest possible terms that the 7th Fleet commander has lost his mind. Then next week write him again.

6)For those of you with a Japanese girlfriend-submit a request chit making your girlfriend's apartment an approved overnight location. If they turn you down-submit another one. This has the added bonus of pissing off the American female Sailors who hate the fact that so many of their male counterparts ignore them and go after nice looking Japanese tuna.

7)Remind any khaki in sight-that his children enjoy more privileges and a later curfew than he does.

8) Non Seventh Fleet Commands should refuse to be dictated to by Seventh Fleet. This has the two fold affect of showing the powers that be that the restrictions are unnecessary-and it creates friction with the prisoners assigned to Seventh Fleet units. That kind of pushback led to easing of these stupid restrictions before and will again.

9) Take lots of 5 day leaves to Thailand. If they insist you take a buddy, get a friend to go-and then stay at hotels on the opposite ends of Sukhumvit.

Seriously, it strikes me as just an arrogant course of action. This is not acceptable in a home port. No commander could legally get away with it in Guam, San Diego, Puerto Rico or even Norfolk. Yokosuka may be on Japanese soil-but it is first and foremost a homeport. Treating it as a liberty port is not only a basic violation of the Sailors rights and American law-its unsound policy.

Oh and as an extra added benefit-better train some more rape facilitators. Because you will have more sexual incidents in the barracks and the ship. When you want it bad, you get it bad.

Clearly VADM Swift is being poorly served by his advisors-more importantly is being clearly misled about what the Japanese really want and expect. What most folks fail to realize is that most of the "outrage" by the Japanese is feigned-to produce a reaction among fellow Japanese and not with Americans. Like noise complaints-the real agenda is about squeezing the Japanese government-especially when it comes to Okinawa. I am surprised that Swift and company cannot understand that.

What the Japanese do want of Americans-is to have serious criminal offenders, like the guys accused of the Okinawa rape ( who incidentally were NOT Seventh Fleet Sailors), turned over to the Japanese criminal justice system. And for the good of the people who don't get in trouble ; the 98% of Americans assigned there-they probably should be.

Willard got this wrong in 2003, They got it wrong in 2005 and again in 2008. They are still getting it wrong. If you want your Sailors to behave like adults treat them like adults-and stop meddling in their personal lives.

Look! I'm smarter than a three star……..

"The issue at Tailhook is not that we took a few liberties with our female party guests. We did."

Just have to do one more Petraeus post.

And its not to condemn him for slicing off what appears to be a fine hunk of tuna. I don't condemn him for that at all. Actually applaud him for getting laid. And laid well-by all appearances. If American sexual mores were not all screwed up-he'd be getting a pat on the back instead of a kick in the ass.

As my Canadian Counterpart points out:

But there's one important fact that I think everyone is overlooking in this tawdry tale. Paula Broadwell is pretty fucking hot, especially for a 40-year-old Army chick. I'd most assuredly hit it, and I think that's really the most important thing to remember here.

Except…………..

The real problem with Petreaus is not his sexual proclivities. I think I have made it clear that I think there are two sides to every story and until I know the other side I will reserve any judgment on that. However-and long time followers of this blog will know this-I am no fan of King David. The real crimes of General Petreaus happened long before he joined the CIA.

What I’d like to propose, I guess, is that none of these perspectives quite captures reality. That’s the thing about Petraeus. He isn’t some sort of paragon of virtue as people on the right want to claim, nor is he just business as usual in his abuse of power and position as some on the left seem to believe. There is something unique about him and what he’s done, and I just wish people would look at the situation essentially sui generis rather than as confirmation of one worldview or another.

Let me make one more note on the seksytime issue. There is a perception, I think, that general officers are  swinging dick, alpha-males, screwing, boozing, and brawling their way through life. And sure, there are some like that, but in my experience, general officers are about as far from that stereotype as possible. They are usually driven, hard-working, introspective, and bookish. Whether they went to the service academies or ROTC, they rarely had time to party even as undergrads. They often marry young, have kids young, and spend much of their time either deployed or struggling to pay attention to their families when they are home.  They are, in short, often nerds (in a good way), and they are not always well-equipped emotionally to deal with the kind of attention they begin to attract as they rise in rank, and particularly as they pin on stars. General Allen, for instance, has a reputation as a serious, bookish guy. Now maybe he’s a serial cheater, and Jill Kelley was just another actual or potential conquest, but more likely, in my estimation, is that he just didn’t quite know how to handle her attention. I dunno, but I think it worth keeping in mind that possibility.

A good point and it reinforces my current opinion of Navy flags too. The daring do-the guys who led from the front in the cockpit and the bar-those guys have been thrown on the scrap heap a long time ago. What's left is not so great.

But that's not what makes the story of Petreaus so sad. Not at all. What the real problem is with Petreaus started in 2004 if not sooner:

But the warning signs about Petraeus’ core dishonesty have been around for years. Here's a brief summary: We can start with the persistent questions critics have raised about his Bronze Star for Valor. Or that, in 2004, during the middle of a presidential election, Petraeus wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post supporting President Bush and saying that the Iraq policy was working. The policy wasn’t working, but Bush repaid the general’s political advocacy by giving him the top job in the war three years later.

There’s his war record in Iraq, starting when he headed up the Iraqi security force training program in 2004. He’s more or less skated on that, including all the weapons he lost, the insane corruption, and the fact that he essentially armed and trained what later became known as “Iraqi death squads.” On his final Iraq tour, during the so-called "surge," he pulled off what is perhaps the most impressive con job in recent American history. He convinced the entire Washington establishment that we won the war.

He did it by papering over what the surge actually was: We took the Shiites' side in a civil war, armed them to the teeth, and suckered the Sunnis into thinking we’d help them out too. It was a brutal enterprise — over 800 Americans died during the surge, while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives during a sectarian conflict that Petraeus’ policies fueled. Then he popped smoke and left the members of the Sunni Awakening to fend for themselves. A journalist friend told me a story of an Awakening member, exiled in Amman, whom Petraeus personally assured he would never abandon. The former insurgent had a picture of Petraeus on his wall, but was a little hurt that the general no longer returned his calls.

MoveOn may have been ill-advised to attack the general as "Betray Us" in Washington, but there was little doubt that many in the Awakening felt betrayed.

Petraeus was so convincing on Baghdad that he manipulated President Obama into trying the same thing in Kabul. In Afghanistan, he first underhandedly pushed the White House into escalating the war in September 2009 (calling up columnists to “box” the president in) and waged a full-on leak campaign to undermine the White House policy process. Petraeus famously warned his staff that the White House was “fucking” with the wrong guy.

The doomed Afghanistan surge would come back to bite him in the ass, however. A year after getting the war he wanted, P4 got stuck having to fight it himself. After Petraeus frenemy General Stanley McChrystal got fired for trashing the White House in a story I published in Rolling Stone, the warrior-scholar had to deploy yet again.

The Afghan war was a loser, always was, and always would be — Petraeus made horrible deals with guys like Abdul Razzik and the other Afghan gangsters and killed a bunch of people who didn’t need to be killed. And none of it mattered, or made a dent in his reputation. This was the tour where Broadwell joined him at headquarters, and it’s not so shocking that he’d need to find some solace, somewhere, to get that daily horror show out of his mind.

Basically, a 21'st century version of MacArthur. A General who also became a political force. He became the icon of the surge-a holics in 2007, leading the country into an even greater butcher's bill and accomplishing very little for the United States in the long run-except for prolonging our agony in Iraq by almost 5 years.

But Petraeus’ crash is more significant than the latest nonsense sex scandal. As President Obama says, our decade of war is coming to an end. The reputations of the men who were intimately involved in these years of foreign misadventure, where we tortured and supported torture, armed death squads, conducted nightly assassinations, killed innocents, and enabled corruption on an unbelievable scale, lie in tatters. McChrystal, Caldwell, and now Petraeus — the era of the celebrity general is over. Everyone is paying for their sins. (And before we should shed too many tears for the plight of King David and his men, remember, they’ll be taken care of with speaking fees and corporate board memberships, rewarded as instant millionaires by the same defense establishment they served so well.)

 Before Dave fell for Paula, we fell for Dave. He tried to convince us that heroes aren’t human. They are human, like us, and sometimes worse.

An end to the celebrity general? Who can talk an entire nation into a pointless conflict based on a concept that has been adequately discredited? That may be the best service David Petreaus performed for his country.  That we might be able to return to the more normal civil military relationship-along with a long overdue acknowledgement that wars without end are no way to run a foreign policy-the United States might actually start down a long road to recovery.

I hate the Aquaflage uniform. With a passion. I am so glad I did not have to wear it-having retired before they became mandatory. I do regret not getting to wear Service Dress Khakis however.

Now it would appear that the Navy may be coming to its senses.

Or may be not?

Now, there are high-level talks among senior officials to shelve the Type I Navy Working Uniform, replacing it fleet wide with the woodland pattern Type IIIs or a combination of the woodland NWU and the desert-pattern Type IIs.

“There are some in the Navy’s leadership who think it makes sense to eventually shift everyone into the Type III or possibly a mix of the Type II and Type III, sometime in the future,” confirmed a senior Navy official who is also a member of the uniform board. The official would speak to Navy Times only on condition of anonymity.

In speaking to deck-plate sailors, this official said they are asking for a better-fitting uniform, and many praise the NWU Type II and Type III, which are made of a thinner material.

“The fit of the Type III is so much better,” said Logistics Specialist 1st Class (EXW) Jennifer Almero in an interview with Navy Times. “It’s something in the sizing and how it’s cut that’s different.”

Almero is from the San Diego-based Mobile Expeditionary Support Unit, which falls under Navy Expeditionary Combat Command. Sailors under this command wear the NWU Type III as their full-time working uniform.

Logistics Specialist 1st Class (SW/AW) Mark Needham, also with the MESU, agreed that the Type III uniform fits better. He also said it stands up better than the Type I after repeated washings.

“Both uniforms are wonderful in that you can pull them out of the dryer and wear them,” Needham said, “But the Type III is a lighter uniform to begin with, and it doesn’t seem to be susceptible to fading as much as the blue camo does over the long haul. The bottom line is the Type IIIs just seem to be put together better.”

Ending the wear of blue NWUs would also save the Navy millions, the high-ranking official said.

Uh, I don't think you are getting the f*cking point here-there is no need for camouflage of any type to be worn by Sailors on ships at sea!

Simply swapping to another camouflage simply compounds the crime. What the hell is wrong with a nice snappy set of SWO coveralls? Hmmm? They seem to be the perfect uniform for shipboard duty ( after a flight suit of course!).

Why is it so damn hard to see? The coveralls are practical, tactical, and they look nautical. Plus its not so damn hard to tell who to salute or not? Plus it looks good with a ball cap which everyone likes-and it can be worn the same by men and women:

Are Navy flags really this stupid? Let the Seabees and other  small groups of Sailors wear the damn cammies if you insist-this would at least consistent with former fleet practice. But the majority of shipboard and soon to be shipboard Sailors should be wearing these blue coveralls. As a daily uniform.

I get it-and I bet the fleet gets it too. Why is it so hard to give them what they want?

Not that any Americans might have noticed this week, but the 2000th American died in the War in Afghanistan this week. I mean,  its hard to pay attention to the  tragic sacrifice of brave young men-when there are such meaningful issues like "what is real rape?" to argue about, after all.

The man's name was Specialist James A. Justice. He was from Grover NC and he was assigned to the 503rd Regiment, 173rd Airborne Combat Brigade. He was 21 years old. He died of injuries suffered during a small arms fire fight in Afghanistan.

Now I have made my opposition to America's endless war on terror pretty evident over the years. I am not proposing to re-hash that here. But I do want to ask just one simple question: "Why is no one in this election discussing the sacrifice this and 1999 other Americans made-and what it will it take to stop 1000 more Americans from losing their lives in the region North of the Khyber Pass?"

After all 98% of Americans will never know what it was like to experience the danger he did. The country does not ask it from them-and so they can live lives of blessed ignorance that there are a relatively small group of Americans being put at risk every day-for an Afghan government and an Afghan people that have yet to prove they are worthy of the sacrifice.

This a subject more important than silly arguments about abortion and rape. We dishonor these brave folks sacrifice if we don't understand why they were where they were-and what it will take to bring the rest of the US forces home. As soon as possible.

The country needs to be talking about the fact that 2000 Americans have died in this far away land. When will we?

Sitting in the lounge minding my time until I can make the jump back across the pond and away from American Political Commercials. They suck-especially Romney's.

Speaking of "suckage", I noted with satisfaction-GREAT SATISFACTION-the other day the following story in the Washington Post:

President Obama is set to approve the appointment of a one-star admiral to replace Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, who is leaving early as director of the Missile Defense Agency after a critical Pentagon inspector general report concluded he had intimidated subordinates and demoralized the key strategic defense agency.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has signed off on the expected White House appointment of Rear Adm. James D. Syring to be the next MDA director, according to defense and congressional officials. Paperwork for the appointment is said to be waiting White House approval.

Syring is currently a senior weapons acquisition official at the Navy who took part in developing the service’s next generation destroyer, known as DDG 1000.

O’Reilly, MDA director since 2008, is being let go before the completion of his four-year appointment in November, following the IG report that concluded he violated joint military ethics rules and Army regulations a head of the agency.

 

Could not be happening to a more deserving individual.

Now, truth in advertising-I am not just an impartial observer of this story. I am a victim of the carnage the man unleashed. If you followed the travails of my previous employer in the past year of posts you will know how brutally his contracting strategy screwed up the lives of literally thousands of people. Me? I am one of the lucky ones. Proving that God looks out for fools and drunks-I was , by the grace of God, able to secure my present employment. Which is indeed a blessing. 

I also had a chance to witness the man’s “leadership” style up close and personal during my time in Romania. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, I have to cite his visit to the country as the low point of my time working there. And as the IG report noted-I got to be a witness to his personally making his country and his agency look poorly in the eyes of a nation that wishes to be our ally. It’s a story to be told someday, but now is most definitely not the time.

But if you want some insight into the man-just download a copy of the IG report. I assure you its not fiction:

The IG's office interviewed O'Reilly and 37 other witnesses to his behavior before issuing the scathing report. The inspectors determined that although O'Reilly has had a distinguished, multi-decade career in the military and is known to be a hard worker who gets things done, his management of the MDA office has been nothing short of disastrous.

Here are some of the descriptions of his leadership given by subordinates and highlighted in the report:

— The worst manager I've worked for in 26 years of public service;

— As a leader, as a director, whatever, he's the worst; (Emphasis mine-because I firmly believe it. SS)

— In terms of leadership, bottom;

— Absolutely last, out of all the generals I've served under;

— Without a doubt . . . the worst leader I've worked for, the worst;

— He has probably been 100 degrees out from everything I've learned about leadership;

— How not to act;

— What doesn't kill you makes you stronger; and

— Not the command climate I would have set.

In one incident, O'Reilly screamed at an employee for 10-15 minutes in a hotel lobby because the employee booked a hotel with the word "resort" in its title. O'Reilly was afraid of news stories that would make MDA seem like it was living it up on trips. The employee reported that O'Reilly forced him/her to curse in admitting the mistake, even though that employee didn't want to use profanity.

"You [f-----] up, you tell me you [f----- up], admit you [f-----] up," O'Reilly screamed at the staffer, according to the witness. "This is [f-------] unacceptable. I want you to tell me you[f-----] up."

"I [f-----] up," the staffer finally said, after trying to explain him/herself in a more nuanced way.

Other witnesses said that O'Reilly often screamed and yelled during video conferences and staff meetings, which discouraged staff from speaking up at meetings for fear of being berated. One witness described O'Reilly's personality as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Other witness statements about O'Reilly's leadership described it as "condescending, sarcastic, abusive," "management by blowtorch and pliers," and one senior official compared the senior staff's predicament to "beaten wife syndrome."

A senior MDA official told the IG that "LTG O'Reilly would 'berate you, make you feel like you're the dirt beneath his feet,' then pay a compliment to rebuild the employee, and later repeat that cycle," the IG report stated. 

 

Which, as one employee noted is kind of like abused spouse syndrome.

I have three specific issues with the O’Reilly case:

1)  O’Reilly’s tactics were an open secret in Washington and in the services who are the ultimate consumers of the products the agency produces. They could have acted through independent channels much earlier-to put the man out to pasture. They didn’t-and so the carnage continued. The IG report came out long after the storm had blown its worst.

2)  In an age where people are cost conscious, O’Reilly’s decisions were costing the government money. As I documented last year during my own personal travails with the agency’s incredibly screwed up MIDAESS contracts,  the program did not save any money-but it did break up a lot of effective teams and drove salaries down ; for no real benefit. In terms of material costs-decisions he made actually added costs to programs. Again this was known to a lot of people-but no one of consequence was able to stop it.

3)  The worst part is that , there is no end of speculation one could make as to what could have been delivered had O’Reilly actually empowered his subordinates.  He worked under a “divide and conquer” strategy, which effectively drove all decisions up to the highest level possible. The agency has some of the smartest people working for it that I have ever met-but people also crave some freedom of action. As the IG noted, a lot of good talent was driven out of the door. ( Some of those were not long mourned for deserving reasons-but the turmoil it created was still there regardless). 

It would be better for all concerned if the Army made a visible statement by publicly dismissing O’Reilly; forcing him to retire as a two star-rather than just letting him go away quietly. That’s what Mullen did with Sestak-and it was exactly the right thing to do for the purpose of restoring confidence in “the process”. Here we live in a day when we fire O-5’s and O-6’s for far less-why not do something to restore faith in the acquisition process? 

Perhaps the rot in the acquisition world, however, is deeper than this one guy. My gut feelings and my firsthand knowledge, tell me yes.

One final point-and its worth noting. Look at any picture of O'Reilly and you will not see any indication of having been "on the line". The simple truth is, that he was a creature produced by the acquisition community. It reaffirms for me-that major program positions need to come from the "line". If you need acquisition experienced personnel-that is what your civilian workforce is for. All the services need to re-look its ways that it grows 'acquisition' officers.