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Title: [Politics/Religion] Thats going to leave a mark. Post by: MFAWG on December 03, 2010, 12:18:19 PM I've had a flag officer address me like this. It wasn't pleasant:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101202/ts_yblog_thelookout/mullen-fires-back-at-mccains-dont-ask-criticism Quote With all due respect, Mr. Chairman and Sen. McCain, it is true that, as chairman, I am not in charge of troops. But I have commanded three ships, a carrier battle group and two fleets. And I was most recently a service chief myself. For more than 40 years I have made decisions that affected and even risked the lives of young men and women. "You do not have to agree with me on this issue. But don't think for one moment that I haven't carefully considered the impact of the advice I give on those who will have to live with the decisions that that advice informs. I would not recommend repeal of this law if I did not believe in my soul that it was the right thing to do for our military, for our nation and for our collective honor." Title: Re: [Politics/Religion] Thats going to leave a mark. Post by: gleek on December 03, 2010, 09:34:03 PM You had a flag officer address you directly? Unless you had a couple of birds on your shoulders, wouldn't that have been breaking the chain of command? ;D
So McCain's been out the military for what? 3 decades? And while he was in the military, he spent most of his time chasing tail, crashing planes, getting tortured as a POW, and serving as a desk jockey. So he has pretty much zero "command experience" to begin with. (How many troops do you command as a pilot?) And he thinks he knows better than Mullen about commanding troops? Is McCain just trying to get Mullen on a technicality about "troops" (i.e. the Navy has "sailors" not "troops")? If not, the notion that Mullen doesn't have experience commanding "military personnel" is ludicrous. Title: Re: [Politics/Religion] Thats going to leave a mark. Post by: MFAWG on December 04, 2010, 07:23:58 AM If you watch the video, Gates gives him a pretty good beatdown too:
'Our military has always been controlled by civilians, and we don't ask the troops permission to do much of anything'. Title: Re: [Politics/Religion] Thats going to leave a mark. Post by: MFAWG on December 04, 2010, 09:07:04 AM Quote You had a flag officer address you directly? Unless you had a couple of birds on your shoulders, wouldn't that have been breaking the chain of command? As I said, it was COMPLETELY terrifying. When the General's phone quits working, he wants to know why, and who the dumb*fudge* that screwed the whole network up was. It actually wasn't at my end, but he definitely did not want to hear about it. |