FORT BRAGG, N.C. — An Army brigadier general who served five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan has been charged with forcible sodomy, multiple counts of adultery and having inappropriate relationships with several female subordinates, two U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.
Looking back at THIS EPISODE, I wonder if he’s a West Pointer. If he is, I expect he’ll be fine. If not, well, I hope he has a good lawyer.
Heared about this today – wow – sodomy….. that’s gonna suck (no pun intended).
The other GO mentioned (Duff) still seems to be on active duty as seen on this link:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ndu.edu%2Fcapstone%2FdocUploaded%2FPacific.pdf&ei=9ZljUP-XOoKsyAHtt4DYBA&usg=AFQjCNGPMbdYDEx5bdH87xHaV7edMCAc5Q
Does anyone know what awards or medals Duff was found guilty of faking?
Interesting. Now that the Army has established the Different Spanks For Different Ranks rule, this soldier will be retired without consequence, and likely land a plum job with a Defense contractor.
Had he only be a sergeant, or major.
Not surprising at all…my COL was openly cohabitating with his female CSM in Mosul. He was married, she was not. He only received a GOLOR (his second, he got an earlier one for misuse of FOO Funds), but went on to command a brigade anyway…Come to think of it, he was also from Ft. Bragg too.
This is really pathetic. “Hot water” hardly describes what this guy has done. Sadly, I bet the othr commenters are correct, that he’ll receive minimum punishment and be allowed to retire (make sure his family, assuming he has one, keeps TRICARE, etc.–that is a real issue, BTW). I worked for a serial adulterer when I was a captain in the 70s–we spent three years together in two different unit, to boot–he was the most dishonest man I’d ever worked for, before or since–was never found out. But I think if you’ll lie to your wife, you’ll lie to anyone. And he lied to everyone about everything–2715 a joke. We need to take these moral turpitude cases more seriously because they affect so many other people, not just the officer and his or her squeeze. BTW, I don’t think the West Point grad thing is always the case–I knew some VMI guys when I was on active duty who pushed the envelope. Not many, to be sure..
Mike:
Good points. The big difference I see is that a panel of VMI Marine colonels– and I know about a dozen of them on a first-name basis– is the LAST thing I’d want to face if I were charged with those offenses. I would get no mercy. Seems to me that the WP crowd expects, and generally gets, a certain immunity.
I just checked–he went to West Virginia University (cue marrying your sister WV jokes now): http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/sinclair-bio.pdf
Well, then– he’s hosed.
Not necessarily is he hosed. He’s someone’s protoge’ and that someone may have some pull still. But, all things being equal, his not being a West Pointer gives Odierno and McHugh the opportunity to present the appearance of justice after bungling the case of Big Johnson.
It is time for my annual agreement with Mike Burke: the failure in morality of these officers, and the others described here directly undermines Good Order and Discipline. By failing to take these cases in deadly earnest, the Army destroys itself.
Gentleman let me offer a different analysis. First he is a known toxic leader. I have that on good authority. He belonged to the Airborne and General Officer Mafia neither were able to protect him. Congress has their panties all a twitter over sexual assault, DoD and the services are scared that Congress will take sexual assault jurisdiction from the military. Someone on high has decided this guy is going to be the poster boy for sexual assault punishment, he is going to fry. I would hate to be his lawyer. He may have screwed in Afghanistan but now he is going to be the screwee.
Problem being: this assclown can win on appeal. Colonel (Retired) Johnson received light punishment. If BG Assclown gets harsher punishment, no military Appeals Court is going to believe that it was because his crimes were worse, or that his rank calls for the harshest implementation of Justice.
If I was his lawyer, I’d go ahead and buy the 700-series beemer – this case is going to go on for a another year or so, at taxpayer expense – long enough to buy that car.
The larger issue is that Lawyers (military and civilian in the roles of prosecutor, defender, and judge) have undermined the integrity of the UCMJ. The belief that the UCMJ is solid (as opposed to English Common Law as practiced in the civilian world), fair, and above all Just is absolutely critical to the mission.
Without it, we’ll witness our Army devolve into a Might-makes-right mob.
Dave O, I am not sure what you are getting at about the UCMJ; can you elaborate?
I am catching up on this one, but I don’t think this officer will escape and rightly so. If others have not been punished as they should have, then we have failed our respective services. The good order and discipline of the service is critical to the goodof the service. I was just forced to sit through ethics training focused on rpeventing attrocities activities which are at the least frowned on – mei lai for example, Abu Ghareb for a nother and of course a study from the 70′s to tell us how easy it is to fall into such behavior (3-4 hours that I could have been doing other training). Not to mention the “take a stand” training to encourage young NCOs to prevent this same sort of thing among their peers. So now we see a GO charged or at the very least accused of these activities, it makes it to continue to think that this training is unnecessary. Of course perhaps the target audience should be adjusted. The point being, when these activities are not punished in accordance with the UCMJ to the maximum extent, it is a failure by the leadership to protect the soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen entrusted to our care as leaders, male or female, regardless of race, religion, or orientation and that is unacceptable. Of course under the Royal Navy Articles of War (1775) the punishment would be death. (http://www.hmsrichmond.org/rnarticles.htm)