Sunday, August 25, 2013

The quiet purge.

Marine Corps: Captains, majors no longer guaranteed service through retirement

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I served in the 70s, 0-3s never were guaranteed a retirement check. It was a way of purging bad officers. Passed over twice and an 0-3 had the choice to revert to an 2-7, Gunny - or go.

Field grade officers were protected.

Commandant Wilson removed the protection staff ncos enjoyed, so supply sergeants could no longer hide out, out of shape and useless until 20.

Somethings never change - some things stay the same.

Anonymous said...

Don't let the article fool ya...this isn't about drumming out underperformers...it's about a government that is broke and trying to find ways to avoid the financial collapse that has been in the making for the last 30 years.

Anonymous said...

Is this a purge or is this simply a post-surge drawdown? As I read the original article, the O-3's and O-4's subject to this involuntary separation (in reality a reversion to a previous policy) had to be "non-promotable". NON-PROMOTABLE. Is letting them go necessarily such a bad thing??

On the other hand, if the officer in question is O-4 with less than 24 months to go till retirement, I say leave 'em be. NOBODY wants to give 18 years of their life in service and get screwed out of a pension at the last minute. Perhaps the Corps should consider 'pro-rated pensions'. If an officer who is non-promotable has 16 years in, why couldn't they give 'em a reduced pension of 75-80% appropriate to their grade?

And considering the state of the nation's economy, and the fact that it is NOT going to get better till we get on with a 2nd American revolution, that 75% of full pension still looks pretty decent, because 75% of 0 is ZERO.

And what of all the people who have done their patriotic duty to serve their country in other ways, such as lawmen, and not only got zilch but are TOTALLY disabled and don't even get a disability check!!

If the armed forces were truly conducting a purge, they would be reverse engineering LCDR Guy Cunningham's 29 Palms Survey to ID the oath keepers in the ranks & run them out, pronto.

Anonymous said...

The Navy has had the system described in this article for some time. With numbers being cut, some method for protecting the Academy grads and the minority quotas has to be in place. O-5 and O-6 is mostly reserved for Ring Knockers these days. A Black lesbian Naval Academy grad would have it made.

Squid

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