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Author: TriSec    Date: 06/26/2018 10:03:12

Good Morning.

We can start right on the border this morning. Attitude is everything, and here is what Oregon National Guardsman thinks about migrants at the border.



An Oregon Army National Guard soldier will be disciplined after he wrote on a Facebook fundraiser for immigrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border that "they're lucky we aren't executing them.”

Now, he will face punishment from his command, according to Guard officials.

Screenshots of the comments were captured and first reported by the Oregonian Thursday.

The Guardsman was reportedly Pfc. Gerod Martin, a military police officer serving in the National Guard since December 2013, Maj. Stephen Bomar, a spokesman for the Oregon Military Department, told the Oregonian.

“We started looking at it and were trying to decide if someone had hacked his account,” Bomar told local news station KATU. However, Martin later admitted to posting the comment himself.

The Oregon National Guard was made aware of the post when social media users saw Martin was dressed in a military uniform in his profile pictures and reported him to the organization.

“If you have a social media account that is affiliated with the military in any way shape or form, like it has a patch or says Army or Air Force ... then you fall under the rules of the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” Bomar said. “This was a clear violation in uniform to say anything like that, or anything political because we enforce the policies of our politicians.”


But of course, note that it's a violation of POLICY....they're not stating that there was anything wrong with that point of view. If only one person actually says it, how many more think it?



Despite how disturbing that could potentially be - we're heading right out to the airfield today. There's a crisis brewing in military aviation that is barely being reported.

According to the lead story, 133 airmen have been killed in aviation accidents over the last five years. Over that same timespan, 198 service members have been killed in combat, so the number is not insignificant.



In the last three weeks, six military aviation crashes have killed 16 pilots or crew — a tragic development that has cast a spotlight on a growing crisis: Accident rates have soared over the last five years for most of the military’s manned warplanes.

Through a six-month investigation, the Military Times found that accidents involving all of the military’s manned fighter, bomber, helicopter and cargo warplanes rose nearly 40 percent from fiscal years 2013 to 2017. It’s doubled for some aircraft, like the Navy and Marine Corps’ F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets. At least 133 service members were killed in those fiscal year 2013-2017 mishaps, according to data obtained by Military Times.

The rise is tied, in part, to the massive congressional budget cuts of 2013. Since then, it’s been intensified by non-stop deployments of warplanes and their crews, an exodus of maintenance personnel and deep cuts to pilots’ flight-training hours.

“We are reaping the benefits — or the tragedies — that we got into back in sequestration,” said retired Air Force Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, referring to the 2013 cuts.

The sharp increase in mishap rates is “actually a lagging indicator. By the time you’re having accidents, and the accident rates are increasing, then you’ve already gone down a path,” said Carlisle, who led Air Combat Command until 2017.

“If we stay on the current track ... there is the potential to lose lives.”


Just this morning, there are three stories "above the fold" at my prime military source. Individually, not much....but together, it's indicative of the problem.


KC-10 emergency under investigation


Plane in Holloman crash part of attack experiment


Navy pilot dies in crash at White Sands



And we'll wrap up today with a Medal of Honor report.
I am literally hearing this behind me this morning on the teevee machine. While I in no way, shape, or form, intend to disparage the honour of the soldier involved...I regret that it sounds to me like more distraction and continuing to use the military as props or diversion. There's probably something out there we should be paying attention to today.


Army Lt. Col. Lloyd Ramsey wrote home in 1945 to tell his father to make no mistake about the unassuming little guy with the country twang from Kentucky who might be calling.

"He's a real soldier," Ramsey said of Garlin Murl Conner, one of his lieutenants in the 3rd Infantry Division.

"He probably will call you and, if he does, he may not sound like a soldier, will sound like any good old country boy, but to my way of seeing, he's one of the outstanding soldiers of this war, if not the outstanding," Ramsey said.

Conner, a native of what was then called Aaron, Kentucky, had been on the front lines from 1942-1945 as the 3rd ID went from Africa to Sicily and Italy, then to France and on across the Rhine.

He sustained seven combat wounds and was credited with three Purple Hearts, according to Army accounts. He earned four Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, the French Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).

Conner is believed to be the second most-decorated soldier of World War II after Audie Murphy, another 3rd ID soldier who would become a Hollywood cowboy star, although Conner did not receive the Medal of Honor.

Today, 73 years after his "above and beyond" actions against attacking German tanks on Jan. 24, 1945, in a snow-covered French forest, President Donald Trump will formally make the posthumous presentation of the Medal of Honor to Conner, who died at age 79 in 1998.

Eighty-nine-year-old Pauline Lyda Wells Conner, or "Miss Pauline" as she is known in the Kentucky hill country, will accept the award for her late husband.









 
 

23 comments (Latest Comment: 06/26/2018 22:52:23 by Raine)
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