The Tillman “fraud,” and all that

By lex, on April 25th, 2007

My second job in a line squadron as a young lieutenant was to serve as the squadron Personnel Officer. Hard, administratively technical and thoroughly thankless, it was not the kind of job that hard charging strike fighter pilots lusted after. But while I was still too junior for one of the more prestigious “finishing” jobs in Ops, I had sufficiently proven myself in my “starter” job as the Aircraft Division Officer that the squadron leadership felt that they could trust me in one of the few junior officer billets that could actually get a commanding officer fired: The PersO job came with the “Personnel Reliability Program” as a collateral duty, and any CO who allowed that program to get porked away could be assured that no band would be playing at his change of command.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex