Mark Esper defends removing USS Theodore Roosevelt commander who sounded alarm over coronavirus
By Devan Cole, CNN 1 hr ago
© Issei Kato/AFP/Getty Images US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper arrives for a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Abe's official residence in Tokyo on August 7, 2019.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Sunday defended the recent removal of the commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, who warned that action was needed to save the lives of his crew from an outbreak of coronavirussaying the move is an example of how "we hold leaders accountable for their actions."
"I think acting Secretary (Thomas) Modly made a very tough decision -- a decision that I support. It was based on his view that he had lost faith and confidence in the captain based on his actions," Esper told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "It's just another example (of) how we hold leaders accountable for their actions."
Capt. Brett Crozier was relieved of his command last week by acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, for what Modly called "poor judgment," going outside the chain of command and too widely disseminating the memo over an unsecured system.
Asked by Tapper if a current investigation into Crozier's actions should have been launched prior to his removal, Esper said such a decision was "not unheard of" in the Navy.
"All the services at times relieve commanders without the benefit of an investigation up front because they have lost confidence in them. It's certainly not unique to the Navy. The Navy has a culture of swiftly and decisively removing captains if they lose confidence in them," Esper said.
CNN previously reported that as of Saturday, 155 sailors from the Roosevelt have tested positive for the virus, according to the Navy.
#18: Cynicom To: Lod (#16)
Been there did that.
Very simple, what you see is not always TRUE.
OIC of each unit tells his senior enlisted man what they are to do, and they are to comply or the senior enlisted will have his ass in the grinder.
Military is life unto itself. Been thru two of such melodramas, scripted and choreographed beginning to end.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-05 21:03:19 Reply Private Reply
#19: BTP Holdings To: NeoconsNailed (#14)
I did not see there was any Jewishness in his family. ;)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar...#Early_life_and_education
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-04-05 21:03:57 Reply Private Reply
#20: Fred Mertz To: Cynicom (#15)
You're full of shit. I'm calling you on it.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-05 21:20:14 Reply Private Reply
#21: Cynicom To: Fred Mertz (#20)
The first part may well be correct.
The second part illustrates false bravado, fostered by ingrained ignorance or both. Takes a lot of ignorance to assume 4000 men are of a like mind at the same time. Such ignorance is not acceptable.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-05 22:30:07 Reply Private Reply
#22: Lod To: Cynicom (#18)
Weren't the rules, regulations, and requirements much more stringent when you were indentured?
Lod posted on 2020-04-05 22:44:32 Reply Private Reply
#23: NeoconsNailed To: BTP Holdings (#19)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-05 23:50:52 Reply Private Reply
#24: Cynicom To: Lod (#22)
Rules may differ but the military mindset never changes.
My only neighbor came home from Viet Nam a physical wreck. The military and VA cast him aside. After a stroke two weeks ago, the VA sent him to a convalescent home. Yesterday he was brought home and he has the virus.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-06 01:15:23 Reply Private Reply
#25: StraitGate To: BTP Holdings, Cynicom (#0)
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/navy-secretary-apologizes-calling- carrier-captain-too-stupid-230-sailors-now-infected
The Daily Caller reports having the speech:
https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/06/transcript-speech-thomas-modly-navy- brett-crozier-uss-theodore-roosevelt/
If the Daily Caller's transcript of Modly's speech is accurate, then he didn't actually call Crozier stupid; he said Crozier was "too naive or too stupid to be CO" -- OR (alternatively) -- "he did this on purpose”.
StraitGate posted on 2020-04-08 01:10:40 Reply Private Reply
#26: Fred Mertz To: Cynicom (#21)
It is exactly correct Old Man.
So the Captain ordered them all to clap for him and pat him on the back? Get real.
Take your dementia pills.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 01:53:28 Reply Private Reply
#27: Cynicom To: Fred Mertz, All (#26)
Please try to keep discourse on a non personal basis.
The one video I saw was in ships fighter hangar. Those people are NOT a part of the ships permanent crew. They are TDY usually for three or six months to a carrier. Otherwise they are landlubbers.
It is incredulous that anyone would buy into a scripted fair tale that is totally military pap for the gullible.
My two forays into such window dressings were real laffers.
NCOs, what ever I do, you do and I will be watching you. Some junior officer wetting himself in fear the "men" were not enthusiast enough.
Difficult to believe anyone would buy into such idiocy.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-08 08:23:21 Reply Private Reply
#28: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#9)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-08 08:50:27 Reply Private Reply
#29: Fred Mertz To: NeoconsNailed (#28)
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 11:08:04 Reply Private Reply
#30: NeoconsNailed To: Fred Mertz (#29)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-08 11:45:37 Reply Private Reply
#31: Fred Mertz To: NeoconsNailed (#30)
Just axe him.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 11:51:29 Reply Private Reply
#32: NeoconsNailed To: Fred Mertz (#31)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-08 12:00:41 Reply Private Reply
#33: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#32)
I do have young friend that is SQ. commander of F/A18 Navy fighter jet SQ. Few months ago he did his first three month deployment on aircraft carrier in Middle East. For 18 years he has been on his quest for Star rank. Now after his first and last deployment and 18 years,all he wants is twenty years, retirement and out. His brother is Air Force doctor, I told him make sure his brother leaves active duty with some kind of disability that would prohibit flying duty.
I was only PNC rank in the Air Force, Fred not a clue about that.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-08 16:14:31 Reply Private Reply
#34: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#28)
Good question...From experience, we were told to turn out at a certain time in class A uniform. We were seeing someone off etc etc. Ten thousand men and women standing in the hot sun, to wave goodbye to someone we did not know nor care about. Meat wagons were in a line behind the ranks. As people keeled over the medics dragged them out and hauled them away.
That was my second and last one.
Imagine ten thousand people, one day wasted at tax payer expense, that has always been the bane of the military and will never change.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-08 17:29:19 Reply Private Reply
#35: Fred Mertz To: Cynicom (#34)
You continue to crack me up.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 17:33:26 Reply Private Reply
#36: BTP Holdings To: Cynicom, Fred Mertz (#34)
Whether it is 10,000 or 1,000 it is still a waste of both time and taxpayers money. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-04-08 17:42:32 Reply Private Reply
#37: Fred Mertz To: BTP Holdings (#36)
I'll wait for a better time. By then I'll be at 80 psi. ;^)
Edit: I notice my personal telephone calls have increased quite a bit. I can't talk to the walls so I speak with family and friends.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 17:53:02 Reply Private Reply
#38: FormerLurker To: Cynicom (#33)
What exactly is a PNC rank Cyni?
FormerLurker posted on 2020-04-08 18:01:11 Reply Private Reply
#39: FormerLurker To: Cynicom (#15)
Where in Washington is the NSA? I always thought the NSA was at Fort Meade, Maryland.
FormerLurker posted on 2020-04-08 18:06:34 Reply Private Reply
#40: Fred Mertz To: FormerLurker (#39)
I had a work colleague take command of some sort of signal battalion.
We drove to some hole in a mountain to attend the ceremony. Actually, the ceremony was outdoors but the operations were under ground.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 18:12:59 Reply Private Reply
#41: FormerLurker To: Fred Mertz (#40)
NORAD Cheyenne Mountain?
FormerLurker posted on 2020-04-08 18:36:23 Reply Private Reply
#42: Fred Mertz To: FormerLurker (#41)
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 20:01:10 Reply Private Reply
#43: Esso To: FormerLurker, Cynicom, 4um (#38)
Private, No-Class.
Esso posted on 2020-04-08 20:22:07 Reply Private Reply
#44: FormerLurker To: Esso (#43)
LOL!!!
FormerLurker posted on 2020-04-08 20:36:54 Reply Private Reply
#45: Esso To: FormerLurker, Cynicom, 4um (#44)
I wasn't joking, that's what Cyni always calls it.
Esso posted on 2020-04-08 20:40:11 Reply Private Reply
#46: FormerLurker To: Esso (#45)
FormerLurker posted on 2020-04-08 21:11:09 Reply Private Reply
#47: Cynicom To: Esso (#45)
STANDARD ORDER WAS WE HAD TO BE IN UNIFORM WITH RANK TO RECEIVE DISCHARGE ON LAST DAY. I HAD TO BORROW A UNIFORM FROM FLIGHT ENGINEER WITH PROPER STRIPES.
I wore army fatigue pants with saddle pockets, jacket said USMC, fatigue hat with hole in top, frayed bill. Sold my winter uniforms to a lifer for beer money two years earlier.
I suspect we have here some wannabe generals that were low ranking lifers that wore knee pads and their pants on backwards.
Anyone has to be a low grade moron to believe 4000 enlisted people waved their hankies and cried to see some idiot leave. .
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-08 21:37:27 Reply Private Reply
#48: Fred Mertz To: Cynicom (#47)
Made for a nice tribute to the man in front of the cameras.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 22:16:14 Reply Private Reply
#49: StraitGate To: All (#25)
(My post #25 here)
StraitGate posted on 2020-04-08 22:36:07 Reply Private Reply
#50: Fred Mertz To: StraitGate (#49)
I'll give you my Subject: This fuckhead will be gone quickly
I don't think I should have ended it with an adverb, but I was ticked off.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-08 22:53:48 Reply Private Reply
#51: Lod To: Fred Mertz (#50)
Lod posted on 2020-04-08 23:01:02 Reply Private Reply
#52: Cynicom To: Fred Mertz (#48)
The Captain wrote a five page letter, transmitted it to 28 people, using non military circuits. His superior is sitting next door on the ship.
I doubt very much we will find the Admiral anywhere, in any video, waving bye bye to the junior officer that just stuck a knife in his back.
The Captain will be shunned like he has the plague, not the virus. He broke every military protocol ever written. Twice, on live TV, Trump said, "He should not have written the letter".
The plane hangar is operated and run by land lubbers, non ship crew. The air wing men could care less who the Captain is and what he does.
The Admiral in charge and aboard, was bypassed by a subordinate.
Not allowed,
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-09 02:13:39 Reply Private Reply
#53: NeoconsNailed To: Lod, Fred Mertz (#51)
Something "up with which we shall not put", said Winnie Churchill.
But I've never heard you shouldn't end with an adverb?
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 03:50:19 Reply Private Reply
#54: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#47)
What were you protesting, Cyni?
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 03:52:26 Reply Private Reply
#55: StraitGate To: NeoconsNailed, Lod, Fred Mertz (#53)
What are you supposed to end a sentence with?
What are you supposed to end a sentence with ordinarily?
StraitGate posted on 2020-04-09 04:05:06 Reply Private Reply
#56: NeoconsNailed To: StraitGate, All (#55)
A. Because they can't walk, hardly. K-k-k-k-k....
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 04:14:48 Reply Private Reply
#57: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed (#54)
At that time, as usual, it was kids from the lowest rungs of society that were drafted, did the bleeding and dying.
Now it is the same social group that is "hired" to do the bleeding and dying.
Two weeks after graduation, the Korean war broke out. Living on the wrong side of the tracks, we knew instantly who was going away and who would stay home.
In the military there is a built in class system, using force if one transgresses. If one was aware of their surroundings, they could at the least irritate the system, never winning of course. Did my time, risked my life many times, comrades lost, never to return.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-09 08:36:16 Reply Private Reply
#58: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#57)
And how long has -- or had -- it been that way?
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 09:03:11 Reply Private Reply
#59: BTP Holdings To: Cynicom (#57)
I knew a Jew boy when I worked for the State of Illinois on Highways. He was in Korea and he smoked Lucky Strikes.
When we got a new Lead, Lead worker he said, "This guy is a Captain Queeg."
He was dead on about that one.
One time the new Lead, Lead said to me, "I'm going to run this yard just like the Army."
I said to him, "Does that mean I can roll a frag under your desk?" ROTFLOL
The new Lead, Lead was in WW II. He was in fourth wave at Omaha Beach. So he is likely dead a long time now. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-04-09 09:06:37 Reply Private Reply
#60: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed, BTP Holdings, Lod, All (#58)
Forever, still alive and well.
As a history geo/politics buff, below is something I have kept posted in front of me for years.
At advent of Civil War, it was legal for a rich man to hire a poor man for $300 to take their place in the army. The law was so onerous that it was outlawed after the Civil War. Below is partial list of "Great Americans" that took advantage of that law.
"""J. P. Morgan had escaped military service in the Civil War by paying $300 to a substitute. So did John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour, Jay Gould, and James Mellon. Mellon's father had written to him that "a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable."""
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-09 09:36:55 Reply Private Reply
#61: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom, BTP Holdings, Lod, All (#60)
Now how about that! How noble of them to end the payoffs -- but how despicable for any part of the US to ever have had a draft.
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 15:57:45 Reply Private Reply
#62: Cynicom To: NeoconsNailed, All (#61)
About a hundred years ago, Ayn Rand said this...
"""The majority of humans born are but human lice, with but barely a right to life."""
She was widely acclaimed by American intelligentsia as indeed a beacon of light for the world. Von Mises applauded her view of mankind.
Social structure operates on that very foundation, the military being exactly the same, except they can shoot you. Eisenhower did such.
Cynicom posted on 2020-04-09 16:31:04 Reply Private Reply
#63: BTP Holdings To: Cynicom (#62)
In China the Sikhs would beat on the peasants with bamboo poles to keep them moving and that was years ago.
Now with Wuhan virus so many are dying or near death that some of the older patients have been written off and are thrown into the crematoriums while still alive.
Witnesses say you can hear their screams.
In India, before Trump visited the Taj Mahal, a wall was built to hide the slums from their view. :-/
BTP Holdings posted on 2020-04-09 17:15:16 Reply Private Reply
#64: NeoconsNailed To: Cynicom (#62)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 17:18:54 Reply Private Reply
#65: NeoconsNailed To: BTP Holdings (#63)
NeoconsNailed posted on 2020-04-09 17:22:05 Reply Private Reply
#66: FormerLurker To: Cynicom (#47)
STANDARD ORDER WAS WE HAD TO BE IN UNIFORM WITH RANK TO RECEIVE DISCHARGE ON LAST DAY. I HAD TO BORROW A UNIFORM FROM FLIGHT ENGINEER WITH PROPER STRIPES.
I wore army fatigue pants with saddle pockets, jacket said USMC, fatigue hat with hole in top, frayed bill. Sold my winter uniforms to a lifer for beer money two years earlier.
For one, you said you were in the Air Force. The Air Force didn't draft people back in the days of the Korean War. In fact they never had a draft.
For two, Air Force flight engineers would not have Army fatigues. If you were not in uniform, including not having winter uniforms of your own and not wearing the proper insignia including rank, you'd be spending a lot of time in the stockade, or brig as we call it in the Marines and the Navy.
You also would have been striped of whatever stripes you might have had. BTW, stripes on Marine uniforms are altogether different than what you'd see on an Air Force or Army uniform.
I suspect we have here some wannabe generals that were low ranking lifers that wore knee pads and their pants on backwards.
I suspect you would have wished for some kneepads with all the time you spent locked up.
From what you describe you sound like what we would call in the Marines a shitbird.
FormerLurker posted on 2020-04-09 20:16:12 Reply Private Reply
#67: Fred Mertz To: Cynicom (#52)
I received an email today with that Subject and supporting article.
I hope your head doesn't explode.
Fred Mertz posted on 2020-04-16 22:23:43 Reply Private Reply