Marines delay female fitness plan after half fail
This Feb. 21, 2013, photo shows female recruits at the Marine Corps Training Depot on Parris Island, S.C. More than half of female Marines in boot camp can’t do three pull-ups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year. (Bruce Smith / AP)
Washington — More than half of female Marines in boot camp can’t do three pullups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year, prompting the Marine Corps to delay the requirement, part of the process of equalizing physical standards to integrate women into combat jobs.
The delay rekindled sharp debate in the military on the question of whether women have the physical strength for some military jobs, as service branches move toward opening thousands of combat roles to them in 2016.
Although no new timetable has been set on the delayed physical requirement, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos wants training officials to “continue to gather data and ensure that female Marines are provided with the best opportunity to succeed,” Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman, said Thursday.
Starting with the new year, all female Marines were supposed to be able to do at least three pullups on their annual physical fitness test and eight for a perfect score. The requirement was tested in 2013 on female recruits at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., but only 45 percent of women met the minimum, Krebs said.
The Marines had hoped to institute the pullups on the belief that pullups require the muscular strength necessary to perform common military tasks such as scaling a wall, climbing up a rope or lifting and carrying heavy munitions.
Officials felt there wasn’t a medical risk to putting the new standard into effect as planned across the service, but that the risk of losing recruits and hurting retention of women already in the service was unacceptably high, she said.
Because the change is being put off, women will be able to choose which test of upper-body strength they will be graded on in their annual physical fitness test. Their choices:
— Pullups, with three the minimum. Three is also the minimum for male Marines, but they need 20 for a perfect rating.
— A flexed-arm hang. The minimum is for 15 seconds; women get a perfect score if they last for 70 seconds. Men don’t do the hang in their test.
Officials said training for pullups can change a person’s strength, while training for the flex-arm hang does little to adapt muscular strength needed for military tasks
The delay on the standard could be another wrinkle in the plan to begin allowing women to serve in jobs previously closed to them such as infantry, armor and artillery units.
The decision to suspend the scheduled pull-up requirement “is a clear indication” that plans to move women into direct ground combat fighting teams will not work, said Elaine Donnelly, president of the conservative Center for Military Readiness and a critic of allowing women into infantry jobs.
“When officials claim that men and women are being trained the same, they are referring to bare minimums, not maximum qualifications that most men can meet but women cannot,” Donnelly wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Awarding gender-normed scores so that women can succeed lowers standards for all. Women will suffer more injuries and resentment they do not deserve, and men will be less prepared for the demands of direct ground combat.”
The military services are working to figure out how to move women into newly opened jobs and have been devising updated physical standards, training, education and other programs for thousands of jobs they must open Jan. 1, 2016, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, a Defense Department spokesman. They must open as many jobs to women as possible; if they decide to keep some closed, they must explain why.
Military brass has said repeatedly that physical standards won’t be lowered to accommodate female applicants. Success for women in training for the upcoming openings has come in fits and starts.
In fall 2012, only two female Marines volunteered for the 13-week infantry officers training course at Quantico, Va., and both failed to complete it.
But the following fall, three Marines became the first women to graduate from the Corps’ enlisted infantry training school in North Carolina. They completed the same test standards as the men in the course, which included a 12-mile march with an 80-pound pack and various combat fitness trials such as timed ammunition container lifts and tests that simulate running under combat fire.
Officials had added specific training for female recruits when the pullup requirement was announced in December 2012, and they came up with a workout program for women already serving.
Military testing for physical skill and stamina has changed over the decades with needs of the armed forces. Officials say the first recorded history of Marine Corps physical fitness tests, for example, was 1908 when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered that staff officers must ride horseback 90 miles and line officers walk 50 miles over a three-day period to pass. A test started in 1956 included chinups, pushups, broad jump, 50-yard duck waddle and running.
The first test for women was started in 1969: A 120-yard shuttle run, vertical jump, knee pushups, 600-yard run/walk and situps.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140103/NATION/301030046#ixzz2pU5EQfEt
CALL OF DUTY
How Neo-Nazis and Gangs Infiltrated the U.S. Military: Matt Kennard’s ‘Irregular Army’
– BY MICHAEL THOMSEN Read at The Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/13/how-neo-nazis-and-gangs-infiltrated-the-u-s-military-matt-kennard-s-irregular-army.html
Fears of white supremacists infiltrating the U.S. military date back at least decades. In the 1970s, a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was discovered operating at California’s Camp Pendleton. It was not until 1986 that then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger issued a directive requiring everyone in the military to “reject participation in white supremacy, neo-Nazi, and other such groups which espouse or attempt to create overt discrimination.” Recruiters were asked to screen potential recruits for incriminating tattoos and associations with potentially troubling groups. Yet as recruiting levels during the first years of the Iraq War continually failed to meet targets, incentives to look the other way were huge.
Matt Kennard’s Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror is an angry account of how the Bush administration’s handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have necessarily reshaped the essential character of the armed forces—very often for the worse—by imposing operationally untenable political ideals on them.
Irregular Army begins by focusing on the prevalence of white supremacists and former gang members, groups that have had an increasingly easy time slipping through the military application process. “I get into fights myself twice a month because I’m a Nazi … I’m completely open about it,” one subject admitted to Kennard. Forrest Fogarty served in Iraq as a military police officer in 2004 and 2005, and had previously been associated with the National Alliance, the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country founded by The Turner Diaries author William Pierce. Fogarty is also the lead singer in the neo-Nazi hardcore band Attack, whose album Survival featured a photo of Fogarty in uniform and on duty in Iraq.
Many white-supremacist groups informally encourage people to enlist, not necessarily because of love for the government, but in order to gain weapons and combat training for the inevitable racial holy war, or RaHoWa. After the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, a heavily armed group of National Socialist Movement members patrolled the streets anticipating retaliatory attacks on white people. The group has also sent volunteers with camouflage uniforms and assault rifles to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border. In a 2009 report to the Department of Homeland Security, analyst Daryl Johnson focused on these groups, writing that the “greatest fear is that domestic extremists … [carry] out a mass-casualty attack.”
Kennard cites a number of U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command cases where neo-Nazi accusations were barely taken seriously. One soldier at Fort Hood was found to be posting on a prominent neo-Nazi message board, but no further action was taken because the investigator couldn’t find him for an interview. Another investigation in San Antonio found that a soldier had provided an Improvised Munitions Handbook to a leader in the supremacist group the Celtic Knights, which planned to attack five different methamphetamine labs around the city. The suspect was interviewed only once, and after the group failed to get explosives, the investigation was dropped in 2006. When Fogarty enlisted, his girlfriend at the time sent pictures of him at neo-Nazi rallies to his superiors. Fogarty was called before a committee and offered only one defense: his girlfriend was a “spiteful bitch.” The committee let him serve.
Discharge for misconduct numbers have fallen dramatically, from 2,560 in 1998 to 1,435 in 2006. Denials of reenlistment almost completely disappeared, dropping from 4,000 in 1994 to only 81 in 2006. These lax standards also made the military a more welcoming place for people in street gangs, like the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, and others. One of Kennard’s sources, Army Reserve Sgt. Jeffrey Stoleson, estimated street-gang members to make up as much as 10 percent of all soldiers. Stoleson served two tours in Kuwait and Iraq and reported gang members at every level, many of whom bragged about what they would do with their newfound military know-how. Stoleson reported what he saw to superiors, complete with large photo dossiers of gang graffiti tagged around military bases in Iraq, but was immediately labeled a snitch.
Military-trained gang members were especially in demand along the Mexican border. One 2007 report found 40 Folk Nation gang members stationed at Ft. Bliss who had been involved in drug distribution, robberies, assaults, weapons offenses, and even a homicide. The connection between organized crime and military experience have led to several domestic blowouts, and in many cases city governments have had to seek out either the military or National Guard assistance to fight against gang violence. All the while the military continued to hand out waivers to new recruits in record numbers. By 2007, one in every five military recruit received a waiver for something that would have otherwise flagged them for further review or rejection.
Kennard describes how this lowering of recruiting standards exacerbated many of the military’s worst institutional flaws. For instance, there are only 500 mental health professionals working in an Army of more than 1 million. Unsurprisingly, post-traumatic stress disorder rates for American soldiers are close to 30 percent, but for British soldiers who’ve fought in Iraq that number is only 3 to 4 percent. For German soldiers who fought in Afghanistan, the PTSD rate is 2 percent.
A woman serving in the Army is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire, and yet only 8 percent of all rape allegations in the military are ever prosecuted. Among the waivers issued to soldiers in 2006, 30 percent were for medical reasons, often related to being overweight. Yet, in the Green Zone, fast food companies like Pizza Hut and Burger King were allowed to compete with mess halls to feed soldiers. Likewise, there are more than 50,000 narcotic prescriptions filled for soldiers every month, including the amphetamine Dexedrine, which is used to help soldiers stay alert through long shifts.
Irregular Army might have made an even stronger case by widening its view of history. The composition of the American military and its connection to criminal groups is a long and complicated one, from the collaboration with Lucky Luciano to protect the New York waterfront during World War II to the rise of the Pinkertons and their role in attacking 19th-century unionizers.
Yet, Irregular Army makes a narrow but strong case that nothing good lies in the future so long as the American government continues to dissolve its standards of human decency to keep the pipeline filled with new soldiers. “What the War on Terror has shown us is that the Pentagon is prepared to dispense with both its regulations and its moral compass when faced with the need to stock future wars with soldiers,” Kennard writes. When the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon insisted on invading Iraq with 130,000 troops despite General Tommy Franks’s “Generated Start” plan that had asked for 275,000 soldiers, a titanic set of operational problems were set in motion. With as many as two-thirds of all Americans believing the war was worth fighting, and only one in three men in America met the physical, mental, and educational requirements that were the standard pre-9/11, the difficulty of recruiting new soldiers became a dire problem. The last 10 years have seen a prolonged and widespread lowering of standards that has left us with an army that is less fit, less well cared for, and less reliable than it had been before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than a decade after the decision to invade Afghanistan, and more than nine years after the debate over invading Iraq ended, the dramatic reams of rhetoric have evaporated and left in their wake an operational mess. At some point the terror we are sending American military to fight will become indistinguishable from the terror it is creating, if only because we have begun to lose control over what we are doing and why.
Carl Higbie (Carl Higbie)FIGHTING BACK
Did a Navy SEAL Lose His Honorable Discharge as a Punishment for Exercising his Rights?
– BY BRANDON CARO Read The Daily Beast http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-hero-project/articles/2013/12/11/did-a-navy-seal-lose-his-honorable-discharge-as-a-punishment-for-exercising-his-rights.html
Carl Higbie survived almost a decade of perilous service in the Navy SEALs, fighting through close calls in combat and multiple tours overseas, before a book proved his undoing.
Higbie knew there might be repercussions when he decided to publish a book, despite the fact that several other SEAL memoirs had come out well before his. But he never expected that his exemplary service would suddenly count for nothing while the Navy, in an unprecedented act of retribution, downgraded his discharge from “Honorable” to “General” months after he had left the military.
After decades in the shadows conducting clandestine operations, the Navy SEALs have stepped into the limelight in the past few years as a series of memoirs and Hollywood movieshave publicized the exploits of the once secretive community. The Navy’s response to the publicity has been mixed, openly courting it when it suits their aims—in one case reportedly requiring active duty SEALs to participate in a film “Act of Valor,” to drive up recruitment, but punishing those who step out of line.
Such was the case when Special Operations Petty Officer 1st Class Carl Higbie was railroaded out of the Navy SEAL community for publishing a book that disclosed no operational secrets, but expressed harsh criticisms of the US Military and political establishment. Higbie has suffered more than just the stain of having his service characterized as less than honorable; he is disqualified from using the GI Bill or other veterans’ benefits while the matter is being settled.
Higbie and his counsel, Guy Reschanthaler, are actively fighting to restore Higbie’s Honorable Discharge. Reschenthaler and Higbie first met while Reschenthaler was a Navy JAG officer defending one of the three Navy SEALs falsely accused of physically abusing Ahmed Hashim Abed, following his capture in September of 2009. Abed, the alleged mastermind behind the 2004 attack on Blackwater security contractors in Fallujah, Iraq had been sought for years before the SEALs finally caught up to him.
Higbie served as a witness for the defense in the 2010 trial that ended with the three SEALs eventually being exonerated of all charges. Compelled by what he saw as the injustice of the prosecution and a smear campaign against the SEALs, Higbie began to write down his observations. But his indignation at the military and political culture began earlier, during his second deployment to Iraq. On the SEAL’s second deployment to Iraq a friend of his on an Explosive Ordinance Disposal, or EOD, team was killed while transporting an IED that could have just as easily been blown in place, but for the demand of higher ups enforcing an obsoleteStandard Operating Procedure that required the ordinance be brought back to base and blown up there.
It was these two incidents, the trial and his friend’s death, that inspired Higbie’s book, Battle on the Homefront: A Navy SEAL’s Mission to Save the American Dream.
Unlike Luttrell who has become something of a celebrity while avoiding censure from the Navy—in Higbie’s case, his book cost him his Honorable Discharge.
“After [he] got killed.” says Higbie, “I wanted to scream. It was just so dishonorable. But during the [2010] trial, that’s when I actually put pen to paper.”
SEAL memoirs have come into vogue lately, though not all feedback has been positive. Mark Owen’s No Easy Day, which presents a detailed account of the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound as revealed by the triggerman himself, certainly ruffled a few feathers in the SpecOps community.
Marcus Luttrell’s book Lone Survivor is now a major motion picture with Mark Wahlberg playing the role of Luttrell. In the book, Luttrell rails against the Rules of Engagement, or ROEs, which he says hinder the SEALs’ ability to adequately defend themselves in such remote areas.
Higbie makes similar claims about the ROE, but unlike Luttrell who has become something of a celebrity while avoiding censure from the Navy— in Higbie’s case, his book cost him his Honorable Discharge.
According to his counsel, Higbie is the only service member ever to have had his discharge downgraded after his release. “I’ve practiced military criminal defense since 2008. I’ve never seen the Navy downgrade a discharge after the military had already awarded a characterization of service. I’ve asked attorneys who have practice a lot longer than I have. they’ve never heard of this. I’ve asked defense attorneys and prosecutors in the Navy. they’ve never seen this. I researched the topic. I found nothing. Frankly, we’re all amazed that Carl’s Command pulled an unheard of legal maneuver that violates Navy procedure, protocol and precedent.”
Says Reschenthaler.
Over a two year period, Higbie says that he tried multiple times to run his manuscript up through his chain of command but that, despite his attempts, none of his superiors ever reviewed it officially.
When his requests for review were met with silence, Higbie went even further according to a statements he made to the website Rangerup, and “ran the manuscript through a gauntlet of non-SEAL JAG lawyers and senior Naval Criminal Investigative Service officials to ensure that his writing did not violate any operational security or other Dept. of Defense regulations.” But, despite his attempts, Higbie couldn’t get a response from his superiors. “They saw the fact that I was legally allowed to publish this book,” Higbie say, but “people didn’t want to review it and be held accountable for its release.” Hibie’s account is echoed by his counsel who told Rangerup that, “he continually tried to have the public affairs officer look at it,” but never got it through because “they were icing the book. The Navy went out of their way to make sure his First Amendment rights weren’t being upheld.”
In early April of 2012, two years after he completed his manuscript, Battle on the Homefront was published by Ameriman, LLC based in Riverside, CT. On that same day that the book was released, the backlash began. After ignoring his requests to review the book for two years his leadership adopted a newfound haste and responded to its publication, Higbie says, by warning him in writing that he had committed “possible ethical violations.”
What ensued after the book’s release and the initial letter, according to Higbie, was nothing short of hazing. For the first time in his nearly eight-yearlong career he began receiving administrative reprimands, or Page 13’s as they are called in the Navy, for uniform violations, and other minor infractions rarely ever enforced in the elite SEAL community where loose grooming standards are the norm.
The blowback culminated in a Trident Review Board- a hearing comprised of high-ranking SEALs from both the enlisted and officer ranks. During the board many of Higbie’s compatriots who he says privately shared his concerns about SEAL leadership and their willingness to “throw good SEALs under the bus,” according to Higbie, came forward and spoke out against him.
Although clearly dismayed by the ordeal, Higbie believes the Trident Review Board was really a show trial. Their decision to revoke his top-secret security clearance was, he says, “made at a much higher level.”
After a lengthy struggle with his command, Higbie decided he’d had enough and signed an early-out release on July 8th, 2012, which terminated his enlistment contract a few months prior to its original completion date. In so doing, he had to pay back part of his reenlistment bonus.
The DD-214 CERTIFICATE OF DISCHARGE OR RELEASE that Higbie signed clearly states, “HONORABLE,” in block 24 of the document, under CHARACTER OF SERVICE.
“If it didn’t say ‘Honorable,’ I wouldn’t have signed it.” Higbie says.
In block 28 of the same document, under the reason for discharge, it says, REDUCTION IN FORCE.
However, early in September of 2012, after he’d been out of the Navy for nearly two months, Higbie received in the mail a DD-215, a correction of discharge form, containing troubling new information. In block 24 of the new form, under CHARACTER OF SERVICE, it now read GENERAL.
Captain Denton, the commanding officer who authorized the new discharge cited a Page 13 Higbie had received for “potentially inappropriate political speech” months earlier. But Denton had never actually met Higbie or served as his commander having arrived at the SEAL team after Higbie left.
In an effort to rectify what he sees as glaring inefficiencies and an overall failure of leadership in Washington, Higbie has announced his candidacy for Congress in Connecticut’s’ 4th district. The author of this article had already begun investigating the allegations that Higbie’s discharge was a punishment for lawful ideas expressed in his book, before learning of his political aspirations.
If Higbie’s discharge was a form of retribution carried out against a SEAL for expressing unpopular ideas, it will set a dangerous precedent unless his record is amended to reflect his honorable service. Among veterans there has always been an understanding that reputation— the character of one’s service—is sacrosanct. In elite communities like the SEALs, that code of honor is fiercely guarded and among those who have sacrificed and risked their lives to earn it, nothing is more devastating than its loss. Allowing the Navy to rewrite history and retroactively tarnish the honorable service of a Navy SEAL, if true, sends the message that any SEAL, any troop, is fair game for political payback.