Rent Party:
It's always been an aristocracy. It's modeled after one..

Agreed. I want to see the officer accession process changed. Before I went to college I really had a lot more respect for officers with their PoliSci and Art History degrees. Then I went to college and realized that they had essentially been placed in positions of authority on the premise that having the time of your life for four years somehow imparts a particular trustworthiness. It's bullshiat. It's an idea that has descended from a time when the aristocracy were educated and they wanted to pipeline their children into leadership instead of having them toil in the dirt with the underlings.

There needs to be a pipeline. Every swinging dick (or tit) needs to serve as an enlisted man first, then when it is time for them to move above E5 there should be a system by which they can choose to either become an officer or continue on as a SNCO. None of this "college boys to the front" bullshiat. I know a lot of good officers, and no doubt they could still be good officers if the system were different, but the old system is just dumb and out-moded.

The kind of behavior being unveiled here is the shiat that irked the f*ck out of me in the military.

Junior enlisted people were smacked down for the dumbest shiat, and 'kept in line' with all of these abusive, time-wasting mind games. Meanwhile we had officers only a few years older than most of us up-stairs in the staterooms having group sex, drinking, gambling, etc. They were "talked to" then put back to work.

The officer corps is turning into an "I got mine" aristocracy, and the senior enlisted ranks are swelling with careerists very concerned with keeping their asses out of a sling until retirement.

Broadwell needs to be courts martialed. If you want to maintain the integrity of the military we can't keep treating the powerless like chattel, then treat senior officials like relatable characters in melodrama where everyone gets a happily ever after.

TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: She do anything illegal yet?

She's married and an Army reservist, and she had an affair with another married member of the military. 2x violations of Article 134 of the UCMJ.

ZipSplat: Rent Party:
It's always been an aristocracy. It's modeled after one..

There needs to be a pipeline. Every swinging dick (or tit) needs to serve as an enlisted man first, then when it is time for them to move above E5 there should be a system by which they can choose to either become an officer or continue on as a SNCO. None of this "college boys to the front" bullshiat. I know a lot of good officers, and no doubt they could still be good officers if the system were different, but the old system is just dumb and out-moded.

I'd agree with this entirely, with the exception of perhaps Academy grads. And even then, they need to placed under the direct authority of some career E-8 or E-9 for a year when they graduate, just to keep them real.

The best officers I ever served on were all prior-enlisted.

So, I'm at work, lunch, and I go to the lunch room and they are all talking and one of them (I'm one of the older ones here, most of them are 20 something) asks me, "Hey, Vudu! You were in the Military. You had a security clearance. What have you learned from all of this Patreaus stuff?" And I sat down and said "don't eat too much Pie" and they all got quiet. And I said " I learned from all this, not to eat too much pie."
And they finally go, no, the military thing. And I go: Don't' eat too much pie. When you eat too much pie, you end up looking like Dolly Patreaus, and when you end up looking like Dolly Patreaus, your general husband will cheat on you. When your general husband cheats on you, he and her get caught. When they get caught, you end up the lumpy wife who got fat and drove her husband off on TV and everyone points and laughs at you. When everyone points and laughs at you, you want to eat more pie. It's a vicious cycle. So don't' eat so much pie. " The ladies didn't appreciate it, since someone had brought in pies, and they were all stuffing their pie holes.
I guess they will be baitching about what I said at curves tonight.

angryjd: ZipSplat: TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: She do anything illegal yet?

She's married and an Army reservist, and she had an affair with another married member of the military. 2x violations of Article 134 of the UCMJ.

That may be a violation of the UCMJ but I don't think that can threaten her SF-86. Also, you can argue that no info was compromised because the affair had clearances on both ends. I think it would be a hard case to remove her clearance.

What the...

An SF-86 is a form. Nobody calls a clearance an "SF-86". That's just the easiest thing to untangle in that clusterf*ck of words, I'll let the rest be for my own sake.

BlueFalconPunch: ZipSplat: Rent Party:
It's always been an aristocracy. It's modeled after one..

Agreed. I want to see the officer accession process changed. Before I went to college I really had a lot more respect for officers with their PoliSci and Art History degrees. Then I went to college and realized that they had essentially been placed in positions of authority on the premise that having the time of your life for four years somehow imparts a particular trustworthiness. It's bullshiat. It's an idea that has descended from a time when the aristocracy were educated and they wanted to pipeline their children into leadership instead of having them toil in the dirt with the underlings.

There needs to be a pipeline. Every swinging dick (or tit) needs to serve as an enlisted man first, then when it is time for them to move above E5 there should be a system by which they can choose to either become an officer or continue on as a SNCO. None of this "college boys to the front" bullshiat. I know a lot of good officers, and no doubt they could still be good officers if the system were different, but the old system is just dumb and out-moded.

As an officer, I'm forced to agree with a lot of whats been said. Going to a 4yr school and getting yelled at a lot at occasional intervals during is not a good formula for producing officers. And some of the best mentoring I got as an Lt was from the prior-E guys I knew. (Out of the 3 or 4 dozen I knew, only 1 stuck out to me as being a real loser.)

There needs to be a bifurcation at E-5 similar to the choice SNCOs face when they get to E-8. "Do you wish to continue to work in your field, or do you want to move into management/leadership."

Rent Party mentioned academy grads as an exception above, I disagree. I think the academies need to be turned into universities of the military. Right now they service largely the rich and well-connected. Of all the academy grads I've known, most got there because their parents were Colonels or Generals, or their civilian family members were well-connected to power. They're essentially taxpayer funded elite private schools. That's wrong as hell, even though the men themselves were all very respectable.

But meanwhile, I think we would do well to educate our own at an actual military college in the things they will be needing instead of re-purposing people who have trained in whatever miscellaneous field in school that might have some tangible bleed-over value some day.

ESPECIALLY right now, when we have so many people with so much combat experience being commanded by virginal 23 year olds.

ZipSplat: The officer corps is turning into an "I got mine" aristocracy, and the senior enlisted ranks are swelling with careerists very concerned with keeping their asses out of a sling until retirement.

Without a draft, we're also establishing a military class in this country -- the ones who do all the heavy lifting around the world for the 1%ers who benefit from the globalism.

vudukungfu: And I go: Don't' eat too much pie.

That sir, is why you had the clearance.

Can South Korea get around to yanking Jill Kelley's "Honorary Consul" status? No Tampa socialite needs diplomatic plates. At least McDill AFB has yanked her base priveleges.

Seems like she would conveniently forget the 'honorary' part of her titles, and use her 'consul' and 'ambassador' cred to pull rank on any little people who dared cross her lawn uninvited.

Just because you technically have one, it doesn't mean that information is in danger just because of that. I'm willing to bet she couldn't get in the door anywhere that she needed a clearance from the day that all this broke.

Also, excuse me while I giggle like a 5th grader:
FTFA: "Clearly when she was embedded with Petraeus..." Embedded indeed.