Chief Edward Gallagher to Retire as First Class
Edward Gallagher’s bid for clemency resulted in his sentence being upheld. He was demoted in rank, required to forfeit $2,697 a month for two months, and was spared confinement. He appeared to receive credit for the time he already spent in confinement.
Timothy Parlatore, who represents Edward Gallagher, believes that this is going to be final… Unless a tweet from President Trump changes Gallagher’s luck for the better.
From Fox News:
A decorated Navy SEAL will lose as much as $200,000 of his retirement fund because he was demoted after a conviction of posing with a dead war captive in 2017, the U.S chief of naval operations ruled Tuesday, upholding a military jury’s sentence.
Nineteen-year veteran Edward Gallagher — who was previously awarded two Bronze Stars — will have his rank reduced from chief petty officer to 1st class petty officer. Adm. Mike Gilday denied a request for clemency from Gallagher’s attorneys, his office said Tuesday.
A military jury acquitted Gallagher this summer of murder in the death of the wounded captive, attempted murder in the shootings of unarmed Iraqi civilians and other charges related to his deployment to Mosul, Iraq. He was convicted of the single count of posing with the casualty.
You could read more at this Fox News link:
Category: Navy
“He appeared to receive credit for the time he already spent in confinement.”
Damned descent of them.
Dodged a bullet, Eddie. Run with it and remember as one Early Retired First Class to another, living well is the best revenge.
Will defer to your superior knowledge of the workings of more current actions of Big Navy ‘Ed. One can never predict how a Judge or Jury will act. As I’ve commented before, I personally think that this was a “get even/witch hunt”. Granted he should have known better or acted differently re the whole episode, but…still. You are very correct in that he dodged a bullet. Coulda been worse, but it also coulda been better. YMMV
What is the opinion/chances that President Trump may weigh in and change this outcome thru Presidential Action?
It is entirely predictable. The charge he was “convicted” of was never of court martial level severity. Big Navy stepped on their dicks with golf spikes on while trying to fuck this guy over, so they are being vindictive as they can be as revenge against his having the temerity to stand up for himself. As Commander in Chief, can Trump fuck Big Navy over and overturn the ruling?
Definitely could have been worse – much worse.
It won’t stop other people from doing the same stupid thing unless they are told up front they’ll get hammered for it.
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(Forrest Gump voice) That’s all I have to say about the Admiral’s decision.
Concur.
Upvoted.
I no longer have faith that senior leadership has the best interests of our Warfighters at-heart.
High time to fix Congress, get them to fix the Fuctagon lest these things get out of hand.
They never have. Only about their next star or political ambitions.
Whenever some idiot wants to ban applause as “too triggering” and replace it with some goofball “jazz hands” gesture, I think of offering “soldier hands”
Two fingers up.
We now know that the Navy SpecOps community had all sorts of ethical problems during this time. As a CPO, Eddie Gallagher was part of the problem and should have been part of the solution- those are facts.
He did not serve honorably as a Chief, and should not be allowed to retire as one. Pretty simple.
He will lose about $375 a month for the rest of his life if this stands.
Neither did the prosecution team, who abused their authority and violated his legal rights with impunity.
So says the man who wasn’t there.
Whether or not I was there, I know what constitutes a war crime. Gallagher admitted to a few.
His actions set NSW back and arguably the entire SOF community, which harms national security.
As a Chief he was expected to ensure the troops assigned to him obey lawful orders, which inckudes the ROE and the UCMJ.
You vying to be our new resident proglodyte?
No, its just that I don’t really care whether or not I gain the approval of people on the internet that I’ve never met.
In reality I enjoy a good debate, and I call BS when I see it. Eddie Gallagher violated all sorts of rules, SOPs, laws, and common sense. He may have been a good door kicker and life taker, but we can train privates to do that.
We need our Special Ops folks to think and lead. Gallagher was a Chief and he knew better.
He may have been acquitted of the murder, but the other antics of the men in his platoon showed a significant lack of leadership on his part as well as the LT. It don’t take no GED to know not to have a reenlistment ceremony over a corpse.
SOF guys have to act under Big Boy Rules. The Chiefs and officers set the example for that. I do expect more.
Well said, Steeleyl
You have significant combat time, may we presume, from the certainty of your opinions regarding proper combat etiquette?
Poetrooper, there is no such thing as combat etiquette. Am I to assume that you have significant combat time?
How does my or your combat time relate to what Eddie Gallagher did? He certainly wasn’t in combat when it happened. He was on a secure compound and felt safe enough to take selfies and conduct a military ceremony over a corpse.
Never heard the expression, “The playing fields of Eton,” applied to conduct on the battlefield, Steeleyl?
There are those who think combat should be conducted as a gentlemen’s disagreement while others, like ol’ Poe, believe it’s an all out screaming, spitting, scratching, clawing fight to survive where all is fair as long as you destroy the screaming, spitting, scratching, clawing bastard who’s trying to destroy you. I fully and heartily subscribe to this latter belief.
This silly business of “fairness” being assigned to battlefield conduct is so much bullshit. It’s a phony luxury available only to those so superior in battlefield strength that they can afford to be gracious. To grunts out there in Indian country it’s meaningless, a back-in-the-real-world societal construct erected by those who aren’t there with you with their sorry asses on the line.
How does our combat time relate to what Eddie Gallagher did?
Son, if you ain’t been there then you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Kindly take your presumptuous postulations elsewhere. If you have been there, then you’re obviously one of the rare ones who didn’t learn much from the experience
Very well said, Poe. With your input, I now have no need for comment, as you speak for many of us.
You are making a lot of invalid assumptions about me based on absolutely no information, which surprises me based on what you say about your experience in the military and life.
I get it, you are the grilled old vet telling the young pups what war is all about. It’s an impressive performance, and I bet it works well with people that don’t know any better.
Unfortunately, I am long past being impressed by people that did a single tour of duty over forty years ago.
On top of that you are completely missing the point and clearly haven’t dedicated a moment’s thought beyond what is happening at the firefight level. The veiled insults, patronizing platitudes, and half-correct quotes from dead guys don’t help, but the way.
No one said anything about fairness or being gentlemanly. That is not at all what I am talking about, and the fact that you can’t think beyond that tells me that you don’t really have a good grasp on how wars are fought and why.
Contrary to your last statement, most of those who have ‘been there’ in a position of any kind of responsibility know that restraint and proportionality are especially critical in a counterinsurgency and in modern warfare in general.
Sadly I have to agree with part of your comment.. While i believe that calling what he did a “war crime” is WAY overstating the issue. It did violate the ROE which were lawful, even if the were Bernath level stupid..
You shouldn’t be sad because you agree with a true statement backed up by facts, sound logic and years of military experience.
It should make you sad that there are so many knee jerk responses with absolutely no basis in the core values of the service
I respectfully disagree. The fact that an experienced, decorated Chief made decisions that ended his career, along with the fact that stupid rules exist both should and do make me sad.
I would much rather that the rules our troops operate under are based on reality, not pie in the sky ideas, and I wish that regardless of the rules being stupid valuable men like Chief Gallagher would not allow themselves to go down a path that takes them out of the game.
I don’t see any of that being in conflict with facts and truth.
Treating enemy prisoners of war humanely and respecting human remains are not pie in the sky ideas, they are core to American values.
The same goes for restraint in the use of force so as to not cause unnecessary destruction, injury or death. That is at the heart of the ROE in this type conflict.
Not are these things central to our values and part of the legal ROE, they are central to any successful campaign in wars like this. Atrocities breed more insurgents and terrorists. Study any counterinsurgency in history and you will see the same lesson over and over.
The shame of it is that it is really pretty simple to not commit atrocities, especially in a disciplined unit- which is why I have no sympathy for SO1 Gallagher. He knew better, and he was part of the leadership of what should be a highly disciplined, well trained team.
The nature of war is violence, but the character and conduct of war changes. This war is more about ideas and influence than anything else, and we cede the high ground when we do stupid things like this. It encourages our enemies and erodes the support of our own people.
Against an organized and civilized enemy, I’d agree, but in previous conflict all of these terrorists would be treated as spies and executed on sight.They are ot, by any reasonable definition “prisoners of war”. If everyone in WWII or earlier had been subjected to the same standards, the courts would have been tied up for years. There are plenty of stories about Marines taking gold teeth from Japanese corpses in Iwo Jima, etc to support this.A As to “unnecessary destruction and death, I think WWII airraids show this has not always been the standard to which we’ve adhered. As for breeding more insurgents / terrorist, the studies you refer to generally refer to political conflicts. As much as the left would like to dispute it, this IS a religious conflict, and those that ascribe to radical islam will hate and attack us, regardless of our actions, as well as the fact that a very strong case can be made that our weak and subservient response to the Beirut attack(one of President Reagan’s worst moments), as well as other times when we showed weakness in the face of an attack emboldened and encouraged further attacks. The only thing an enemy like this understands is overwhelming strength, and they should be attacked with such. As to this war being about ideas and influence, you’re right to the extent that it is about civilization vs. a medieval ideology that is incompatible with civilization. As interviews with those in prison / refugee camps in Syria that have aired on TV over the last few days, these individuals are unrepentant for the atrocities they have committed, and CANNOT exist in civilized society. We are in a situation where they need to be eradicated by any means available, or they will continue to attack us. Tis is NOT warfare against a civilized foe, and cannot be conducted as such, or we will lose..
First things first: There are many categories of people captured on the battlefield, but none of them are subject to summary execution. Even spies get a tribunal. Eddie Gallagher and his platoon do not constitute a tribunal.
We did commit atrocities and war crimes in World War II, and it was as wrong then as it is now. The strategic bombing campaign, especially the population bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, are not universally accepted as militarily necessary.
You are right, ISIS only understands overwhelming strength. I’m all for killing terrorists, and I am not worried about hurting their feelings.
But who do you consider the enemy? Not all the people in the Middle East are terrorists. In fact, most aren’t. Some of them just happen to live in the territory that terrorists captured.
Insurgencies can be based on political or religious ideas. Al Qaeda, ISIS, HAMAS, JAM, and countless other groups we consider terrorist groups are insurgent groups trying to overthrow a government. Terrorism is just one of their tools. Some would argue that ISISs most effective weapon is information and online radicalization.
I’m not worried about some Syrian kid joining ISIS and coming here to attack us. I’m worried about the weird kid in the local high school being radicalized on Jihadi websites as we speak, partly because he , saw what Eddie Gallagher did and decides that America has no core values.
“First things first: There are many categories of people captured on the battlefield, but none of them are subject to summary execution.”
Yeah, well, that shows what you know about actual combat. There are reasons why prisoners get summarily executed, with the first likely being that the son-of-bitch just captured has just killed a buddy, or buddies, near and dear to his captors. There are other reasons which, if you’ve been there, you’ll know.
It’s not a game and it’s never fair–it’s, “My buddies and I are coming back and you aren’t, so sayonara, asshole.”
As long as the evil that is islam exists, there are those that will attack us in it’s name. To pretend otherwise is delusion
Insurgencies are -demonstrably- suppressed by a superior use of terror. There are numerous historical examples of this, that even cursory knowledge of history will show.
Rome versus Spartacus: There were very, very few uprisings, none serious, for centuries, after Rome nailed 6000 defeated insurgents to crosses along a major road.
Third Reich: there was -no- effective insurgency within Germany. None. Snuffed out by sheer terror. There were some random one-off attempts at assassinating Hitler. Very little organization. Von Staffenburg was an abberation, and then an example. See Spartacus.
The simple reality is terror and torture -work-, which is why they remain in use. If they didn’t work, no one would bother much with organized versions.
One may decide not to go there, but pompously declaring some superior method in the omission is ignorant at best and self-defeating almost always.
The current enemy refrains from attacking us when they are more afraid of us than of each other.
So, to be clear, are you proposing that the United States adopt the policies of Ancient Rome and Nazi Germany?
You are absolutely correct that a despotic police state coupled with mass murder will stop a rebellion in its tracks. Of course, this is completely counter to core American values and law, and would completely destroy US legitimacy in the world.
Aside from that, your examples aren’t really relevant. The Third Servile War was an open rebellion, not an insurgency. There was no attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic and establish a new government in its place- the gladiators wanted freedom. They weren’t even trying to end slavery in Rome.
Your Nazi example makes even less sense. The plot against Hitler was in no way, shape, or form an insurgency. The Nazi regime had the support of the German people up until the end of the war.
Look at some actual insurgencies for some actual relevant context. The US experience in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, for instance. Look at the Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation.
“core American values”
You keep using that phrase.
I’m waiting for “that’s not who we are”.
SteelyI, you appear to be a student of history, but you must not have studied much in the matter of “core American values” during the Indian War “insurgencies” for “some actual relevant context.”
And that’s on both sides, boyo.
If we go to War, we win. Whatever that takes.
Whatever it takes for the USA to win War, we must do.
War is a game of ruthless. With rare exception requiring rare participants on both sides, the winner is the most ruthless.
Insurgents win only when they are the most ruthless. If the “win” is ending an insurgency, then one is going to have to be the most ruthless. Else, you are cultivating a never-ending bloodbath.
There is no moral way to advocate for the defeat of your own nation. Again, the reality ain’t pretty.
If whizzing on corpses shortens a war, or merely allows it to be won, how can one advocate for -not- doing so? Likewise posed “trophy” shots.
The offense was not in unsavory photography. The offense was being publicly disobedient, thus prejudicial to good order and discipline. Giving an order that one reasonably may assume will be violated is in and of itself likely prejudicial to good order and discipline. It is also criminally stupid.
You cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Some folks are willing to say “y’all keep fighting for folks elsewhere. Be sure to obey all our squeamish and ignorant demands, because y’all are bad for disobeying us, safely over elsewhere. It certainly ain’t the folks safely elsewhere that are bad for saying fight and lose gracefully.”
Utter bullshit.
If we send em, the ROE has to start with “win”, and ” win” needs to include the defeated enemy shitting themselves at the thought of us ever coming back.
There is -no- moral way to advocate for the defeat of one’s own country, including demands not to use the means needed and necessary to win.
That is the winning of war. The alternative is losing.
Fyr, when ROE’s are patently stupid and capable of costing friendly lives then they are meant to be avoided, evaded or outright ignored.
In the early going in Vietnam, we had our share, handed down by staff wienies at rear area HQ’s. They were largely ignored because we knew that they would soon be rescinded and no one wanted to be one of the dead troopers whose senseless deaths were the cause of that rescission.
ROE’s tend to be promulgated by former Eagle Scouts, not former street fighters.
Poetrooper, your post is very wrong on many levels. It is barracks lawyer B.S.
First and foremost, SO1 Gallagher’s crimes had to do with the treatment of a detainee. This has nothing to do with ROE.
Second, ROE are orders. Staffs don’t give orders, commanders do. If you ignored ROE in Vietnam you violated orders.
Finally, commanders establish ROE for a reason- we call it the mission.
If the mission is counterinsurgency or peacekeeping, the ROE are probably going to be very restrictive because winning the support of the people is essential to the mission.
Let’s say a platoon takes sniper fire on the street and erupts in a ‘Death Blossom’, killing half the people in the neighborhood. Maybe they get the sniper (I doubt it), but they create many more insurgents and terrorists. It hurts the mission.
So, the ROE in those situations is to only return fire on positively identified targets. Contrary to popular belief, troops always have the right to self defense.
We don’t deliberately kill noncombatants, we use proportionate force, and we avoid unnecessarily targeting civilian infrastructure and cultural targets. These are rooted in American values, and they lend legitimacy to American military force- something that other nations (the Russians, or North Vietnam, as an example) don’t have.
“Finally, commanders establish ROE for a reason- we call it the mission.” Sorry, you’re wrong.. that is how they SHOULD be established.. The reality is they are political.
“Contrary to popular belief, troops always have the right to self defense.” Wrong again, see also Beirut Barracks / unarmed guards..
“Let’s say a platoon takes sniper fire on the street and erupts in a ‘Death Blossom’, killing half the people in the neighborhood. Maybe they get the sniper (I doubt it), but they create many more insurgents and terrorists. It hurts the mission.”.. During street fighting in Germany in WWII, this is exactly what happened.. take sniper fire from a house level it. Take mortar fire from a village, destroy it.. the insurgency you reference did NOT materialize from these actions.
“We don’t deliberately kill noncombatants,” Negative Ghostrider, see also Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc..
My father served in Vietnam, and witnessed first hand the stupidity of ROE that allowed the north vietnamese attack from the ho chi min trail in Cambodi, while our troops were not allowed to return fire / defend themselves. Feel free to dispute this if you like, but my father was there, and has the scars to prove it, so pardon me if I trust his word a bit more than yours on the subject.
I’m sorry Steelyl, but you ascribe intelligence and motives to the rule makers that are just not there.. in legal terms, you assume facts not in evidence.
The political leadership controls the military and can set limits on the use of military power. They give the military its mission.
You do realize that the Marine Barracks bombing was almost 30 years ago? We have changed a lot since then. Look at any ROE card issued to troops in the last 20 years or so, and it will clearly state that troops always have the right to self defense. That said, the commander in Beruit made a bad decision based on his read of the situation at the time.
You don”t seem to understand what an insurgency is. It is a movement to overthrow the legitimate government of a country from within. In World War II Germany, an insurgency would have been German citizens seeking to overthrow the Third Reich. So, no, us fighting the German Army in Germany did not spark an insurgency in Germany .
World War II was a war against a nation state. For much of the war, we restricted our strategic bombing to industrial and military targets, even going as far as conducting our raids during the day to improve accuracy.
We did use population bombing, Dresden and Tokyo being the best examples, and they are controversial to this day. Tokyo killed more people than Hiroshima. Curtis LeMay admitted that he would be charged with war crimes if we had lost the war. Of course, we were facing millions of casualties in an invasion of the home islands, and Japan was showing no indications of surrender.
The decision to drop the bomb was undertaken by the President after deliberation with his key advisors, and remains controversial to this day. I hope you aren’t comparing that decision to Eddie Gallaghers decision to perform a reenlistment ceremony over a corpse.
Of course I won’t dispute your father’s experience, but we bombed the crap out of the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia with B-52s for over a year, and had all sorts of covert action going on there as well.
Dude, you’re a fucking theorist spouting exactly the kind of high-minded “command” bullshit that gets good men killed.
I served as an NCO in the line and I served as a staff wienie NCO at both airborne battalion and brigade levels and I can tell you, you don’t have a clue as to the realities of combat, at least not in the war I fought in.
But if the correct people give you the correct orders, you will obey and the enemy will behave as desired and you will achieve the desired result.
Any unwanted outcome is on you, not the masters.
The Left, in a nutshell.
Dude, don’t get all butt-hurt just because I called you on your ‘I was a line NCO, I’ve looked death in the eye’ BS. I thought NCOs were supposed to have a thick skin. You’re better than that.
“…at least not in the war I fought in…”
Ah, now we are getting somewhere. I know you guys had the My Lai massacre and a few other incidents, but did any of your soldiers every send pictures of themselves playing with body parts or pissing on a corpse and/or flying an SS flag to Wikileaks or post them on their or Instagram? Did the VC ever get on your Family Readiness Group Facebook page and post pictures of your guys on patrol?
That’s what’s going on in this war. If you don’t think the photos of Abu Ghraib and other incidents didn’t fuel the insurgency, you are absolutely clueless.
Keeley,
I have acquaintances that fought in the Pacific Theater of WWII. One was a Marine that fought in a number of island battles. And I mean “stuck in the bayonet” fighting.
I am reasonably informed that posing a corpse is absurdly tame compared to the everyday “business as usual” of that campaign.
We won.
Trying to have maintained some sort of “law of land warfare” ROE would have likely prevented victory and raised our casualties by an order of magnitude.
The enemy routinely faked surrender only to get into grenade range. Thus, most surrendering enemy were massacred. Often horrificly. On the other side, some of our POWs were butchered and eaten. Eaten. Others were herded into trenches and burned alive.
Overcoming those folks required exceeding them. Ponder what that actually means.
The current enemy is somewhat less organized, but no less savage.
You have to persuade them to quit. They hold life rather cheaply compared to us. Persuade them to quit.
Abu Ghraib??? My Lai???
Bwahahahaha!
Your true colors are finally revealed, Less-than-Steeley-eyed; you are just a butt-hurt little butterfly fluttering around here citing all the bad things Americans have done in the past half century.
Since you’re here getting vicarious kicks preaching to real soldiers about honor and integrity in combat, you’re gonna love this: I actually had a couple of drinks with Calley one time, long after the war. Just happened to take a happy hour bar stool next to his one evening in Columbus while there on business. He wasn’t a bad little guy–kinda pathetic, really–certainly not the monster you’d be sure to label him–just a guy who should never have been a butter bar in charge of troops in combat.
I also had a retired officer who worked for me for a few years who was an officer in a Cav Troop that went into My Lai shortly after the event. His opinion was that the entire population in that area were full-blown VC, totally hostile and actively involved in mining, booby-trapping and other nightly operations against American forces.
And no, that doesn’t mean that I condone what happened, but it does make me better able to understand how it could. While you, on the other hand, knowing absolutely nothing but what some liberal professors have told you and written, still use it after all these years to tar American troops fighting in a very dirty war.
And while we’re at it, it just so happens that it was, in fact, my sister airborne battalion that was issued hatchets and harvested Viet Cong ears with command approval until the media got ahold of it. Hope that doesn’t make you choke on your herbal tea, honey.
As the ladies like to say way down here in the land o’ cotton,
“Bless your precious little heart.”
I do realize that Beirut was over 30 years ago (I vividly recall watching the aftermath on the news, and enlisted about 5 years after)And yes, ROE has changed since then, in general our troops have loaded weapons now,but especially under obama, they were almost universally required to wait until fired upon to fire themselves. There were also rules that if a terrorist was firing at them with a belt fed, and dropped it as soon as the belt ran dry, they had to stop firing as well. To claim those are not BS ROE is just silly.. And yes, the political leadership controls the MIlitary, and sets their mission, AS IT SHOULD BE, we are NOT a dictatorship, but that does not mean that politicians should meddle in every aspect of war. They should set strategic goals, and GTFO the way.. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about McNamara, or Clinton/ Obama, or hell, back to Truman and MacArthur..Politicians who have no clue what they’re talking about setting ridiculous rules NEVER ends well. No, not comparing the bomb to Chief Gallagher, just using it as an example to dispute the idea that we never targeted civilians. Yes, we did bomb the Ho Chi Min trail.. EVENTUALLY, and there was TONS of blowback from the left about it. Same thing for the covert actions that were taken there. If the same dims in power today had been around back then they would have pushed impeachment on Nixon for it. For most of the war, all the Vietnamese had to do was scurry over the border, and they were safe..
Barracks lawyer my ass. One of an NCO’s most important functions is to fade the heat coming down from command levels on his troops while keeping them safe.
It appears you’re skilled at assembling a large body of knowledge–too bad you don’t have the common sense to apply it effectively.
Gallagher committed only the crime of the improper corpse picture.
Per the acquittal on the other allegations.
Or are you one of those “accusation = guilt” types?
“Crimes”.
My dad recounted many such stories to me Poe, and I don’t disagree. That being said, the Chief should have understood the climate in which he was operating, and the consequences of not adhering to them.
“…the Chief should have understood the climate in which he was operating…”
I almost always agree with you, Fyrfighter, but in this case, nope–WE should understand the climate in which HE was operating.
Even worse, being demoted to E6 means he’ll have to wear his crackerjack uniform with the ludicrous/goofy looking Dixie Cup hat instead of the spiffy looking navy chiefs uniform at his retirement ceremony.
I wonder if the driver of that WW2 Jeep with the 2 dead German soldiers tied on each side of the Jeep like Deer got demoted. Saw that pic while at the range years ago along with pics of civilians lined up on a trench edge being executed. They just couldn’t win the case so that shit bird had to demote Eddie. What happened to the other guys in that pic??????
In the bigger scheme of things, I seriously doubt the Chief cares. The people who MATTER will still call him “Chief”. He will offset the loss in pension with endorsements and book deals, and the BIG NAVY will save face because they made it look like they slapped his pee pee right proper. In the end, the band plays on.
he’ll still get high 3. he’s not going to loose anything
Don’t think that applies any longer, SFC(R). One of our ninjas look it up, perhaps?
From the Navy Times:
“By keeping the highly decorated Gallagher as a first class petty officer, Gilday allows the SEAL to retire after more than two decades in uniform with a high year tenure determination that shaves little money off his military pension.”
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/10/29/cno-wont-let-convicted-seal-retire-as-chief/
Gallagher falls under rule f, here:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/1407
This is the old ‘Final Pay’ rule, which was awesome if you got promoted right before you retired.
Gallagher’s last paycheck will be as an E-6, and that will be used to calculate his retirement check.
The individual who wrote that Navy Times article is ignorant of Federal law regarding retired pay and the effect of reduction-for-cause on same. Federal law – specifically, 10 USC 1407 – mandates that personnel retiring under the “high-3 average” system who are reduced for cause at or prior to retirement and who were never subsequently promoted to a higher grade will have their retired pay determined using the older “final pay” rules, without benefit of high-three average.
Prior to court-martial, Gallagher was a CPO (E7); he was reduced in grade from E7 to E6 as part of his court-martial sentence. This reduction due to court-martial sentence means his retirement pay will be computed using his final (E6) pay rate only – and as noted above, will also result in a reduction approaching $400 in his monthly retired pay. Over his remaining approx 40 years of life expectancy, that amounts to the approx $200,000 in lost retired pay noted above.
Outstanding financial analysis Hondo. Are you a part-time actuarial or accountant? LOL
Reading about the High-3 Average system really makes me feel old. My DIEMS was prior to September 8, 1980 so my retired pay is calculated based on the more generous Final Pay formula. No complaints here, but the last four decades have passed quickly.
Actuary or accountant? What, are you trying to insult me? (smile)
Just kidding, and no to both (which are each honorable and honest careers for those with both the aptitude and desire to do that type of work). I just have some aptitude for numbers – and also enjoy running numerical claims to ground and seeing if the claims actually make sense.
Gallagher will also get Social Security Retirement Income, Hondo. That’s not an either/or deal. It appears on the surface that he’s being stiffed, but SSRI is based on your age when you start it, not when you retire. It will likely make up the difference, especially if he works in a civilian job after he retires.
Holy shit outstanding gentlemen. Educated debate.
What I want to know is if all those other sailors in the picture with Chief Gallagher (I can call him what I want to)and the dead ISIS FIGHTER got reduced a grade, list two months pay, and paid the same price? If they didn’t, why not? And what about all the JAG officers who broke regs? What punishment did THEY receive? As a mildep I have always felt the JAG office was neither fair or competent. Seems to me someone(s) had a hard-on for the Chief and this was payback time. Best REVENGE is to move on and live well. Best wishes from an AFBrat.
Ladies- Let me first apologize for not issuing a trigger warning. I assumed that this collection of hardened warriors would be capable of hearing words and ideas they didn’t like without being offended. Maybe PH can set up some sort of safe space thread you can all post on without having your ideas challenged. Or is that what the FGS or Weekend Open Thread is for? Second, since this post has gone all over the map and I can no longer keep up with who has responded to what with what, I am going to post my thoughts here in one place so you can all jump in at once and we can have something resembling a discussion. First and foremost, I think killing terrorists is great. I have no problem with killing them with whatever tools we have at our disposal. The more we kill, the better. However, I do want to keep the killing to terrorists and bad guys in general as much as possible. I think wantonly killing civilians, mistreating detainees, and needlessly destroying infrastructure is bad, and can detract from our ability to accomplish the mission especially in a counterinsurgency. Rules of Engagement are an essential part of that. It isn’t about being fair, or even being nice. It is about accomplishing the mission. There is actually a set of Standing ROE developed by the Chairman that are modified for specific theaters and missions. This one is old, but you will get the idea: https://www.jag.navy.mil/distrib/instructions/CJCSI%203121.01B13Jun05.pdf Note this language: “Unit commanders always retain the inherent right and obligation to exercise unit self-defense in response to a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent.” Here’s how the Marines train Rules of Engagement: https://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/TBS/B130936%20Law%20of%20War%20and%20Rules%20Of%20Engagement.pdf I like this part: “The importance of understanding the Law of War in the current operational environment cannot be overstressed. All we need to do is look at one of the several cases where questionable actions have been publicly showcased to understand its importance.” This part is also really good: “All persons we detain on the battlefield, regardless of their status, are treated the same. All… Read more »
Well, this is interesting.
NOT Fake News:
“Trump Makes SEAL Gallagher A Chief Again”:
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/11/04/report-trump-makes-seal-gallagher-a-chief-again/
Other sources state it may happen by 11 November 2019.
Have contacted Admin to post this story for TAH comments.