101st Division suffers after Obama
A number of folks sent us links to the Fox News story regarding THE “screaming Eagles” of the 101st Division written by Jennifer Griffin who visited the unit at their home in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
Many officers in the division say the problems in the aviation brigade were compounded by President Barack Obama imposing strict limits on the number of U.S. forces who could deploy to Afghanistan. To meet the troop “caps,” the Army was forced to leave helicopter mechanics at home, substituting civilian contractors to the tune of more than $100 million.
As a result, 1,000 Screaming Eagle mechanics were forced to stay home on its last deployment to Afghanistan, losing nearly a year of training in the process. Other aviation units also were forced to leave their soldiers behind, such as the aviation brigade from the 1st Infantry Division based at Fort Riley in Kansas.
“So this has a direct impact on Army readiness and it also costs us more money,” the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, said in congressional testimony last month. He said there is currently a 2:1 ratio of contractors to soldiers in Afghanistan.
I’m completely surprised. It’s never happened with a Democrat administration before. Well, except every time.
Category: Politics
“To meet the troop “caps,” the Army was forced to leave helicopter mechanics at home, substituting civilian contractors to the tune of more than $100 million.”
Just another piece of evidence that Obama is a fucking piece of shit.
Could the U.S. Taxpayers file a class action suit for costs against the Damn0crats that cost us by their posturing?
It is easily demonstrable from history that this type of Shiite behavior costs more in the long run – so they cannot plead ignorance even if they are ignorant as sin.
None of Obullshyts behavior was from ignorance, it was all planned years ago…and our congress was in on it, why in hell didn’t they vet the p.o.s.?, because they knew what he was and were in on the conspiracy to destroy America…demoncrats? hang them all!
The JEF and his “reverse Midas touch” does it again… dude could fuck up a wet dream.
I really hope The Donald is the second coming of Saint Reagan 2.0 + 100
Except that Reagan was the “King” of contracting to civilians…but other than that….Please. No more Reagan. I want someone who can find his ass with both hands.
You mean as compared to that icon of the left, Wilson, or LBJ?
History, it is fundamental.
I guess a former SCoaMF lieutenant is throwing the BS flag…
“Not everyone agrees that the U.S. military is suffering from a readiness crisis.”
“Robert Hale, a former DoD comptroller who served in the Obama administration, warned the military is exaggerating the readiness problem.”
“This is a time when the services, if you will, want to put their worst foot forward and make clear all the problems that are there,” Hale said in Washington last month. “So, I think we need to be a little skeptical.”
yeah, like having Clapper claim no one was wiretapping Trump…or the American people. Lying already cost him his job once, I guess he is the perfect spokesperson now – what can they do, fire him again?
They are putting their worst foot forward because they have a SecDef and a CINC that are trying to fix the bad shit. Unlike, during the last administration, when they were being cut to shreds while at the same time being blamed for not being able to maintain readiness.
This is what always confused me about the “Best Installation” award. If you have the best installation, you get millions in funding to make it even better. So, many installations hide the bad shit to make it seem like they are awesome.
If they did a “worst installation” award who’s winner got millions to fix things, every post would be showing how much it sucks and all the broken shit, like having excessive lead content in their water, barracks buildings with rats and cockroaches infesting them, and all the fixes that need to be done to make it functional.
Off topic, but the point you bring up reminds me a lot about No Child Left Behind. I always thought it was moronic to give the schools, who are already performing well, even more money so they can afford an equestrian jet-skiing program, while those, who badly need to patch a hole in the roof, are starved for resources and get shut down for under performing. On the other hand, if you flip the incentives, I’m sure a bunch of schools would make sure their students perform badly on the SOLs to secure more funding.
I’m sure the same would also apply to GIs, who would then be incentivized to suspend maintenance activities on everything to ensure a “win” for their commanders. An interesting conundrum.
I look at it as, who wants to give more money to something that already sucks. Are these the people that we can trust to make the right decisions on how to use the money? Probably not.
On the other hand, I spent more than a few years at Benning when they were racking up best installation awards, and they turned around and gave the money to Columbus. Who in turn supported the businesses which were fucking young joes.
I say there shouldn’t even be such a thing.
Readiness is a combination of training and maintaining. Training you can always do, but maintaining kind of sucks if you can’t get parts.
We have to find the balance.
I’ll be skeptical…of Robert Hale.
You can lay this problem right at the feet of Odimwit. But wait, call right now and we’ll double our offer and blame Trump.
Both parties were responsible for this shit. Bush was doing this same exact numbers game saddling the US military with tens of thousands of expensive and usually less effective contractors.
This is all part of the effort of privatizing military and government functions.
Started by Reagan, accelerated by Clinton, and continued under Bush and Obama.
This is not “Obama’s” fault, this is all of our fault. It is a non=partisan effort to fleece America. This is the result of American voters mindless ideological support for politicians that campaign on “free market” but really just want to transfer trillions in public assets and wealth to the private hands of their corporate and personal donors and award lucrative private contracts for work more efficiently, effectively, and inexpensively done by government workers. Particularly military.
None of the contracts are awarded or maintained by market principles they are just government created private monopolies and oligopolies that fleece America. Fucking treasonous vampires.
And I do not want to hear Ex-Ph2 idiotic, naive, and flat fucking ignorant “everything is fine, our government is perfect, this is the land of opportunity” response. She has no fucking clue how much this kind of kleptocratic bullshit is costing Americans now, and for generations while literally destroying our national strength from within.
Wow…I thought you were doing okay (comparatively) until that last paragraph. Maybe you interpret what she writes differently than I do…
Or maybe you really are a dumbass.
We had just as many contractors downrange in 03 as we did in 09. I love this site, but alternative facts keep appearing. Stop blaming the previous command for your butthurt.
There are two kinds of facts at this site, SSG: facts as you, I, and the rest of the world understand that term and larsfacts, which are points of view asserted as fact by one Commissar (a/k/a Commissar) without sourcing or corroboration.
On Planet Lars, ANYTHING said by either him or his ponytailed pothead freeze-dried pothead hippie Perfessers is automatically an irrefutable fact.
No, Curt, I believe your understanding of the Piuperdink’s snarking is correct. He is dumber that a pile of week-old stale pancakes.
False assumption on the ass’s part, but it clearly indicates that when you assume something about someone (about whom you know nothing), you make an ASS of U.
And in conclusion, it IS obama’s fault, because he had eight long years to clean up that mess and get us out of there. Instead, as we have all seen QUITE PLAINLY, he spent eight long years lying his useless ass off while he engaged in mission creep, as was routinely reported here, right here on This Ain’t Hell, on a recurring basis.
Oh, yeah: Commissar, you don’t even qualify as a Moron of the 1st Degree. You’re somewhere down around the 10th degree moron level, dumber than a box of broken hinges.
No Lurker. She has posted several times about how I am full of crap about how kleptocratic our government has become and how “fair” our political economy is to everyone.
Maybe she feels compelled to disagree with me about everything but the fact is she made that argument more than once in response to my posts. I regard her as one of the most uninformed people I have ever interacted with on any medium.
Oh Lars, please give us examples of how Ex-PH2 has said our political economy is “fair” to everyone?
Or is it like pretty much your opinion, like everything you babble about?
You will never truly understand just how little we miss you during your absences. Hearts have not grown fonder.
The times I visit are increasingly rare.
I guess my mental health is improving.
Doubtful.
Great! Keep working on it, so we don’t have to see your progtard REMF blather here.
And i’m sure none of this was started because of dumbass leftists ( but i repeat myself) whining about troops in combat, and military spending, etc, of a demonrat congress forcing Reagan to get creative in order to accomplish missions. Yes there are those on both sides trying to line their pockets, but only one party is trying to actively destroy this country!
Bullshit. They are both working for donor interests that are fleecing this country. Politics for profit. It is a cartel.
And the preferences of the American voter has a negligible impact on policy. If EITHER party was working for their constituents then that would not be true. So BOTH parties are actively destroying this country and already destroyed our representative democracy.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
OOOOOH, Princeton? They’re about as politically neutral as UC Berzerkely, the asylum that has turned you into an even bigger nuthatch even further disconnected from reality. Seriously, do yourself a favor and get out of that dump, spend some time in someplace other than that libtard la-la land!
Downsizing government is a textbook republican move. And the best way to downsize, is to shrink the workforce of the government. Problem is, the workload doesn’t just magically go away. So you hire contractors to fill the gaps. The overall budget doesn’t decrease, but at least you can pat yourself on the back for “shrinking” the government. Sure, contractors cost 2-3 times what a GS employee does, but it’s only temporary, right? Wrong. I have worked for an Army organization for seven years as a government employee now. Some of my contractor colleagues have been there longer than I have and were never converted, due to the limited number of GS slots we’re allotted. How much money do you think could have been saved if BAH, Deloitte, and IBM had been cut out as the middlemen years ago? Oh yeah, our workforce has a GS to contractor ratio of ~30:70. I’m sure we’re saving tons of money with so few government employees!
Well contractors don’t get locality pay, BAH/OHA, bonuses, sick days, reasonable health/life/dental insurance, snow days, automatic promotions, commute compensation, comp time, a pension, job security, and need to have x amount of years of experience and x education before even being hired…and they have to justify their existence on a weekly basis instead of surfing the web all day looking for a new house in Fairfax county, then occasionally getting out of their desk to bother other people trying to work while pretending they are managing. I’m going “gov” myself but I don’t think most people understand the fire contractors have to go through to simply earn a living and support their families. It’s the government that wanted contractors, after all. Perhaps the government should look at raising personnel caps because obviously the amount of people there to do the job hasn’t kept up with the actual workload.
Started under Bush Senior, accelerated by Clinton – fixed it for you.
While there were historical examples of privatizing going back further the actual political movement started in the late 1970s and began being implemented into policy by Reagan. That is a historical fact.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33777.pdf
Blahblahblahblahblah… You never have and never will be wrong about anything that bucket of goose shit you call your mind, sometimes I remotely pity you. When was the last time you got laid? I bet it’s been so long that your virginity has been officially restored.
Yep, started during the carter years, when he did all he could to dismantle the military, then Reagan started using contractors to fill the gap until he could actually build the military, but those lining their pockets, on both parties, and the demonrats who wanted to continue what carter had started, and to thwart Reagan at every turn, did what they could to prevent replacing those contractors with actual military.
You even read what you send? we are talking military privatization and you send a link saying Reagan was privatizing Conrail and set up a commission on privatization in 1987… That’s like saying Truman is who got us into Vietnam because he sent observers.
Once again Zampolit, you utterly fail to persuade, because you cannot control your childish tantrums.
You must have been an utter clusterfuck as a Civil Affairs person. I cant imagine you persuading the denizens of hell tha the weather was hot.
You would fuck it up somehow.
I met NCOs who served with him. The consensus from them was he was pretty much like now,he was often wrong but never in doubt.
He was viewed as a joke by the enlisted and a thorn in behinds of the higher ups. He rarely got along with people and always thought he was the smartest person in the room.
No big surprise there.
Unsubstantiated. No names, no dates, no units, no context.
Somehow you find it honorable to make unsubstantiated attacks about another veteran’s service, with no evidence, and while hiding behind an anonymous tag.
Arrogant stupidity flows from you like shit from a seagull.
Holy shit, your real name is Commissar?
Commissar, just because I don’t name names doesn’t mean its untrue.
They are still serving and asked me not to identify them so I’m honoring that request.
We’ve had this discussion before and you admitted that you had issues with people when you were in. You’re just in denial as to what extent.
BTW, not all your “Facebook Friends” really have your back despite what you may think.
Food for thought.
‘Ol Babbles McButthead strikes me as the kind of Officer whose peers would place first on the proverbial chopping block as soon as RIFs were announced like in the early nineties when I was on AD.
Swormy,
Zampolit seems to thrive on the thrashing he gets here. Might he be daring you to invite one or more of your acquaintances to post comment here?
And wouldn’t -that- thread generate click-floods for Jonn……
HEY Babbles McButthead, DID YOU HAVE TO show up again just as I and I’m sure many others here were enjoying your absence?
Perhaps you should stop trying to be a mindless partisan lapdog and think about what I posted.
You posted shit, larsfacts.
What are you doing about it Lars?
Typical of all blowhards, nothing.
Beat the street and run for office.
What did I post that was false? So only one party is doing this in your mind?
Is your partisanship more important to you than your patriotism?
There is a reason I do not like either party.
Why is it you feel the need to defend the GoP on this despite the absolute fact they are a major driver of privitization?
I despise both parties. I despise the GOP the least.
BTW, the lab called and said your Bain is ready, it’s way past time to replace that batch of goose shit you think of as your current one.
larsfacts.
Cocksucker.
Name something that was false.
Except for the Ex-Ph2 stuff. My opinion of her is based on her posts to me which are different than the posts she generally makes elsewhere. So she may be taking bullshit positions just to disagree with me giving me the impression she actually believes the stupid shit she says.
No, I don’t take bullshit positions just to disagree with you, you egocentric snarkpuppy. You post statements that clearly indicate you want a fight, ignoring the fact that no one is interested in your spatfest. WE all breathe a sigh of relief when you DON’T show up.
My so-called ‘stupid shit’ is backed up by research.
Yours is backed up by your discontent, your disconnection, and a complete disregard for the idea that we mere mortals might be smarter than you are and not have quite such a narrow view of the world.
For example, the UCBerserkeley riots were just that: riots, vandalism and arson for the sole purpose of destroying someone else’s property. Yet YOU, you imbecile, said it was a peaceful protest, which means you were NOT there, did not watch it on TV or online, and/or refuse to acknowledge the reality that it was violent, chaotic and destructive, ALL OF IT CAUSED BY BLACK BLOC PAID RIOTERS.
Your disconnect from the real world is more and more obvious every time you post a comment.
Aahhh, I KNEW I wasn’t the only one who enjoys it when Babbles McButthead is absent from here.
Almost forgot: I really don’t give a flying fart in space WHAT the Poodle’s opinion of me may or may not be.
I have a good life full of accomplishments.
He doesn’t.
“egocentric snarkpuppy”.
Lyrical. Poetic. It just sings! And fits so well.
He is still living in that parallel universe in his mind, just like all progtards.
Time to accept the truth. 0Bama hates this great country of ours and anything about it that made life for “him” difficult in his mind. His MO all along was to wreck the country, or at least cripple it, and then “resurrect it” in his own way so as to become the savior to the people who voted for him. He paced himself during the first four years, but then went on a mercurial pace bent on destruction. This issue is just one of his many parting “gifts” to us as a nation.
Completely concur.
Poor poor Lars, the commimoron.
He does not know that it was his ideological hero…Wilson…that started the era of “big MIC”.
Or that it was his alt-hero FDR who gave us “‘contractors for everything”!
No, according to our Commimoron, it is all the fault of those eeeeeeeeeeevil Reaganses and Busheses….those nasssssssssssty hobbittses!
The truth is that all militaries, everywhere, at all times have had to make trade offs and use contractors.
Where do you think the use of the term company for a unit in the military came from? That’s right. Way back in progressive utopia days, feudalistic ass hat tyrants HIRED military units.
But I guess it is Reagan’s fault that Armies in the 4th century BC had “companies”.
Try reading “The Ten Thousand” and WTFU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)
You can start here, Commimoron.
NO, this is the congress’ fault, where in hell were they when this maggot wanted to run for Prez? where were the demoncraps when the maggot wanted to run for senator? they are ALL in cahoots!
Contractors?
I guess the ‘philosophy’ of the previous (lack of) administration was “let’s all move to using mercs, becuase they’ve got their own junk and equipment and everything.”
Am I even vaguely close on that?
Contractors have been used for so long that Xenophon wrote Anabasis about how Cyrus the Younger hired 10,000 Greeks to overthrow Artaxerxes 2.
That was in the 401-399 BC time frame.
I’m sure it is all the fault of Reagan though.
I thought that nonsense actually ramped up with Jimmie ‘Peanuts’ Carter.
But if you’re a partisan lackey like Commissar the Buku Piuperdink Commissar, everything is the fault of conservatives, period, because conservatives aren’t as spendy-minded as libertards are.
Politics 101: 1.Get elected
2.Make decisions that benefit
big business (the elite)
3.Line pockets
This is how a politicians net worth is in the millions after a few years in office. I’m sure it’s all nice and legal like too.
Full disclosure, I am a government contractor, though not with the DoD. There are functions that HAVE to be contracted, i.e. food service, laundry, commercial communications, it’s a hefty list of services that the military doesn’t have or cannot provide on a large scale. Having said that, having to leave your own aviation maintenance section behind because of troop caps is the dumbest shit I’ve heard of since Custer decided he didn’t need those cumbersome Gatling guns.
“Having said that, having to leave your own aviation maintenance section behind because of troop caps is the dumbest shit I’ve heard of since Custer decided he didn’t need those cumbersome Gatling guns”. Yessir. Truer words haven’t been spoken lately.
You do understand that we cannot provide them because they gutted the US military’s ability to provide them, right?
Food service? Hell, every mess facility in the military except the air force has military running it when I joined. Laundry? Yep, done by US Military.
Communications? Yep, all military. And I have no problem with using contractors for communication capacity we cannot provide. What I am taking issues is with gutting our ability to provide it and then forcing us to use contractors at MORE cost to the government,
And they replaced it with contracting services that COST MORE and are generally less effective, particularly in a combat zone.
Lars-serious question (not an attack), don’t you think that contracting out things like chow and laundry in theater made more economic sense? TCNs did both in Iraq and Kuwait (92Gs supervised in the chow halls) for a fraction of what fully staffing both with Joes would cost, and it was a good deal for them because I know that they made more than hey could at home. There’s a lot of stuff that we shouldn’t be leaving to contractors, but I don’t think that those two things are the best examples.
BTW-the one time I was on a FOB without contract meals we ate T-rats for a year because that was all the cooks could make (except for special occasions) with a battalion’s normal manning for cooks. We had high morale because of our mission, but we made the haji shop rich buying kebabs and fries.
L. Taylor the blatherskite strikes again, spreading what he thinks is fact like a seagull on laxatives.
We suddenly have all these civilian contractors because some politicians brother-in-law figured a way to get in Uncle Sams pocket, he just needed his brother in law politician to screw the military and the tax payers….worked well too, didn’t it? The only thing I remember being a civilian when I went in in 1959, was the barbers at boot camp!!
Part of the reason for all the contractors is due to the proprietary nature of the advanced systems, which require trained company technicians to install and repair. I am on ships all the time, and the amount of contractors on board is staggering. Going on a carrier these days and seeing who is doing what really makes you shake your head.
“This is not [the Asshole’s] fault, this is all of our fault.” Fuck you, Commissar. No one consulted with me before establishing the deployment numbers. No one asked me which MOS’s should be reduced on that deployment. And most of all, I didn’t vote for that Asshole who finally departed the White House after eight years of f’n America up. You, however, did: twice. So, again, fuck you.
I second that!
Third!!
Yeah Lars, FUCK YOU.
Dumbass.
Dude this was done by Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
Did you vote for any of them?
I am not sure about Bush Sr. But a poster above claimed he was part of this privatization movement too. I served under Bush senior but do not remember any specific privatization actions under him. But there likely were.
But you are the kind of weasel trollish shitbag that uses OTHER PEOPLE’S real names in your posts while hiding behind anonymity.
So fuck you. Coward little fuck.
Commissar, you posted your own name many moons ago when commenting then got pissed when you got blow back.
It was then you came up with Commissar “moniker” and suddenly demanded everyone to stop using your real name.
Not our fault you failed to realize how the interwebs operate.
“But you are the kind of weasel trollish shitbag that uses OTHER PEOPLE’S real names in your posts while hiding behind anonymity.” Yeah. me and nearly everyone else but you, right? Talk about a dumb shit, using your real name. And speaking of anonymity, what sort of name is Commissar? Is that your first or last name, knucklehead? You screwed up Commissar of Berkeley. You used your real name until we embarrassed you. I recall your explanation. It’s not that you were ever ashamed of the shit you’ve written, but that you didn’t want your name associated with this website and us. It’s okay, Commissar of Berkeley, the only people who don’t know you’re an asshole are those who haven’t read your comments anywhere or met you. I can well understand why you now choose anonymity, Commissar.
Commissar…excellent name for a communist prick…..WHOEVER IT IS!
I seem to be in the minority, but “Zampolit” seems a better fit. That was the political maven for Communist zeal in a Soviet military unit. They were not highly regarded by the average Ivans in their efforts at pushing the Party line.
Zampolit,
I told you it was a major-league bad move to say “Don’t call me by name. It annoys me.”
The -smart- play would have been “stop calling me Commissar!”
Hollow force, just like the bad old days of the Peanut Farmer. Worse, actually, with personnel downrange. SCoaMF would fuck up a one car funeral.
Did we loan him to Cuba recently?
I think they gave him back.
Unfortunately.
It SUCKS that they did give him back.
It’s all a matter of figures lie and liars figure.
In order to accomplish a mission the military needs X number of trigger pullers, gunners, pilots, etc. The ones who directly kill the enemy.
They also need Y number of support types, generally for every X there are about 10 Y types supporting.
The military has Both X and Y types.
However if you are restricted in the total of number of troops you can legally deploy it makes sense to send as many X types as you can and you contract out as many as the Y jobs as you can.
Its a fucking shell game
Pardon if I’m making up for not getting to say this over the last eight years, but fuck Obama!!
You have to much better than that. Expressions of disdain for that disgraceful, despicable, dishonest, disgusting tyrannical bastard have not been hard to come by here since 2008. Most of us have moved on, happy that the national nightmare is over and looking forward to putting the c back in Amerika.
Yes, 2017, the end of an error.
[…] To Joint Session Of Landsraad The Political Hat: Quote The Bible, Go To Jail This Ain’t Hell: 101st Division Suffers After Obama War Is Boring: No Amount Of Money Will Fix The VA Weasel Zippers: International Women’s Day […]
Butbutbut…Halliburton!!!!!!! CHENEY!!!!!!!
SMH. EVERY day is a brand new day for the Left.
I am not defending Obama, I am pointing out that it is a SYSTEMIC problem involving ALL recent administrations.
And pointing that out is pointing out that every day has a history to it.
You partisan bullshit is the “every day is a brand new day” nonsense because you seem to think this is some “Obama” thing.
Can’t fix what you don’t now it program and dumb partisan fucks only see one side of the machine.
The moron who posted “Can’t fix what you don’t now it program and dumb partisan fucks only see one side of the machine” calls anyone else “dumb partisan fuck”? Too funny, Lars, way too funny.
Don’t get all mad and leave, just leave. Fuckhead.
Yep, and its obvious which side of the machine you are looking at dimwit!!!
Yeah. OK. If it makes you feel better. Never mind that you Socialist, oops…”partisan hacks”, went quiet when your precious Light Bringer got into office.
But it’s OK when you do it, right?
B. Hussein 0bama has got to be THE MOST inept, incompetent and corrupt POTUS in at least the past 120 years just like Babble McButthead aka L. Taylor aka Poodle dick has goose shit for brains.
was not defending Obama you fucking dipshit.
Well, I can sleep more soundly now, knowing Lars is all bent out of shape, cussing and carrying on, wondering how we can all be so very stupid not to see what he does and how he does.
Agreed. The world is no longer holding its breath over what he might have been up to.
The thing is Lars seems to always want to pick a fight from the get go.
There are others that post here with a more liberal point of view that offer opinions without coming off as antagonistic from the get go. The result is most of the time we agree to disagree without the theatrics.
Sometimes I think he’s addicted to the abuse, some sort of perverted way of feeling like a martyr to the liberal cause.
Maybe he comes here after he’s maxed out his monthly tab at “Helga’s House of Whips, Chains and Pain” in order to get a “fix”?
HEY, YOU blithering blatherskite, I was simply stating what was on my mind. YOU decided from your own paranoia and insecurity that it was a swipe at you, you insecure little intellectual poltroon!
“Babble McButthead aka L. Taylor aka Poodle dick”
So naming him and saying he has “goose shit for brains” is NOT a swipe aimed at him? Interesting.
I thought that was his name?
“was not defending Obama you fucking dipshit.”
We know buddy, you were merely practicing the triple reverse Dutch rudder with Bernie and Barack while blowing Michelle.
It’s ok bro, go pop a pill.
You know…whenever I see all of the recent messages are on one thread, I know that either a sockpuppet showed up on a “phony” thread or, if it isn’t about a phony, I know that Lars has made another appearance. Since this isn’t about a phony, I just want to take this opportunity to say hello to our very own Zampolit. Since I’m doing Russian…Hey Lars, Zvo tvoyu maht!
Whatever our Zampolit may have done to offend, his -mother- was certainly not a party to it. Check fire, sir, you are off target. Nekulturny, I would say.
She gave birth to Lars. Isn’t that enough?
Is that anything like “Yob t’voyu mat”? (smile)
Bunch’a slackers. All y’all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w4Xulsjo5I
*grin*
Lars is correct
This shits been going on a while. Hell its codified in our support regulations.
Bosnia is my first memory
Thr first units into Afghanistan after 9-11 (10th Mountain and 101st Airborne) had NO artillery support
All of our supporting artillery was sitting tubes up in motorpools in Fort Drum and Campbell while the grunts were fighting in Afghanistan
This was due to “troop caps”
The Air Force said they’d pick up the close support slack.
Didn’t work out so well for those on the ground
Lars might be off on a lot of shit
But as a combat arms guy who spent the last 4 years as a Brigade Combat Team S4 (Logistics Officer) and deployed that Brigade 3 times I can tell you on this issue he is 100% correct
I agree it’s been an ongoing issue for a long time.
In my opinion the entire “civvying-up” crap started as a cost saving measure/ readiness issue in the states.
The first place I saw it ( talking USMC) was in the mess halls.
Up until they starting hiring the buffarillas to ladle out chow and wipe tables every unit would have to have a couple Marines every month doing that shit.
That’s 30 days where the Marine missed out on training.
What Poodle-Dick McCockslayer doesn’t want to admit is that The anti-military Democrats, and Obama in particular uses contractors to keep the strength of the military low, while bilking taxpayers to do it.’
All the while they are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for “de-escalating” the conflicts while citing the decrease in troop numbers.
Obama failed by embracing the policy and not fixing it.
O-4E: Commissar himself is objectionable; therefore, whatever he spews from his keyboard is as well. What’s his point, that contractors are used by the military and have been since forever, that we haven’t gone full bore warring since WWII? No shit. We here see many things here, including the marxist/commie/progressive lens through which Commissar views and evaluates everything. He has nothing whatsoever to do with the core concerns of this site or this community. He shows up to make his political statements, calls us Nazis and fascists and racists, and then he cusses and goes away for a few days. No, even when he’s somewhat right, the SOB is dead wrong.
I just think (hell as a contracting officer I know) that people really have no idea how pervasive it is
Its not just a “practice” its codified in law and regulation
And to keep blaming “Obama and the dems” for it is childish and makes the commenter look as stupid as those on the left we make fun of.
And btw 2/17 don’t lecture me guy
I’ve been posting here as long as you
It’s not a lecture, muffin. And just how long have I been posting here? Not that it has anything whatsoever to do with whether or not one may lecture another, but how long?
You should be able to fugure that out smart guy
Yeah I don’t spend every minute of my day on here like some
But you act like you own the place sometimes
In other words, you don’t know. So, how were you able to state that you have been posting here as long as I? You don’t like my style. You’re not alone. But unlike Commissar, I don’t change my tag every six months, so if you don’t like what I write, just avoid my comments. Got anything else to whine about or are you done for now?
Get a room, you two, if you are gonna keep swapping spit.
I never understood why the USA would hire a contractor to drive a truck for $5000 a month tax free in a combat zone.
I myself have done two tours in the ME and while I HAVE seen plenty of Contractors doing vital tasks and working their asses off, I have seen a number of them that did as little as they could while being asswipes about it.
I think it fair to say that folks have seen the US military as a means of fleecing, since Washington was seeking supplies to sustain our fledgeling Army.
Any “clever idea” like hiring contract DFAC cooks so we could have more grunts, subsequently becomes more about gravy-trains than the Field Trains.
The Army had to have a Vetrinary Corps, to try to stop the rampant offloading of defective and diseased livestock on the Army.
Army Mules seems like a winner for hauling 19th century supplies, especially since, unlike horses, they do not self-reproduce. Oopsie….
New ideal uniforms! Of course, this is every time someone needs a vote form Congressman Textiles….
If the price of contracting with/for the Army was UCMJ coverage, and firing squads for fraud in wartime, we might make a dent in this crap.
The whole procurement system haas been busted for a century or more. Anyone remember the term “Daddy Warbucks”?
Fraud is treated as a minor property crime, instead of the major crime it is. Gentle treatment of it, let alone -tolerance-, is a societal cancer.
As a former military guy, current contractor, and soon-to-be-government employee, I think there is a lot of unwarranted hate against contractors. Let me clear up a few myths for those who got their advice from the resident barracks lawyer or have never worked as contractors/feds themselves: 1.) Contractors don’t make a lot of money considering their experience and education, which is typically much higher than your average service member. I pulled six figures while deployed to Afghanistan, but that was in a specialized field with a college degree and high level clearance. Most guys pulling armed security, driving trucks, fixing birds, cooking chow etc. made a whopping $60-80k for 14 hour work days…before taxes. If you work stateside as a contractor, which is often only possible if you have a degree, odds are you are going to make considerably less. I made more as a SSgt without a degree stateside than I do now as a senior analyst for 8 years of experience and a masters degree. The work hours and quality of life are better, but no, we don’t make “so much money.” 2.) There is a huge difference between loaded rate and actual pay. Yes it might cost $100 million to field a contract but the company (or subcontracting company) takes the lions share of that money to generate a profit while the contractor doing the work in the field takes home a meager salary. Often as much or less than a service member when all is said and done. 3.) Deployed contractors often do the job better than service members and have a better work ethic than federal employees. Service members, especially young E-3s who aren’t all that interested in their work, kind of sit around and wait to be told what to do by angry NCOs/SNCOs. Contractors have to report their tangible results every week, and they better have results, or they’ll get fired in a heartbeat. You can get fired for speaking out of turn (I have seen it). Federal employees know they can’t get fired, so they don’t have an incentive to have tangible… Read more »