1) Hack's Column: THE GREAT PENTAGON HEIST -- PART II
2) Hack Notes
3) Letters To Hack
4) How To Unsub/Undupe, Change eMail Addresses, Ask Questions

--1-- Hack's Column

THE GREAT PENTAGON HEIST -- PART II
by DAVID H. HACKWORTH

Several weeks ago, I wrote about how the U.S. taxpayer and the credit-card
companies were being ripped off by the Department of Defense credit-card
racket. Well, truth to tell, I got the story only half-right, a fact that's
been impressed upon me by airmen and Marines, soldiers and sailors and DOD
civilian employees who've sent the largest barrage of mail I've received
since I wrote in 1971 that Vietnam was a bad war and we should get out
immediately. The como then was in support of my position, but this time
around I've been catching flak by the buckets.

In thousands of letters, our Joes and Janes are letting me know they're being
eaten alive by a flawed, government-required credit-card system that few
want. Many believe this is another setup that's good for the politicians'
reelection funds and bank executives' pockets, but bad for the troops. Many
blame their senior military leadership for not standing tall and fixing this
problem. "Our soldiers are being used by the Army," writes Chief Warrant
Officer Jim Campbell.

Here's a typical scenario that happens far too often: Sergeant Patriot, a
Green Beret, is awakened in the middle of the night and told to go join a
Special Forces team for a secret mission in Kuwait. He grabs his gear, kisses
his wife good-bye and heads to the airport, where he buys a ticket on his
government credit card. Once in Kuwait, since his mission is undercover, he
checks into a civilian hotel at $200 a night for a bare-bones room. He needs
wheels, so he rents a car. And all of his meals are eaten at restaurants --
which in Kuwait City ain't cheap. Patriot pays all duty-incurred expenses via
Pentagon Plastic, and after 45 days, when the mission's accomplished, he
returns to Fort Campbell.

But instead of getting a medal for a dangerous job well done, his command
sergeant major eats him alive. "Patriot, the Bank of America rep's been all
over me like a rash because of your delinquent account. You're 15 days in
arrears, and now you're on the command deadbeat list. The CO's fit to be tied
-- you've made our outfit look bad, and the general's had him for lunch. He
wants to see you NOW."

"But sergeant major, I don't even have orders yet, so I can't claim for
expenses," Patriot replies.

"Someone goofed, and I was too busy executing a hot-and-hairy mission to even
think about it in Kuwait. I went where I was ordered to go, and believe me,
it wasn't a vacation."

Orders are cut. Patriot hotfoots it to Finance. He files a claim. Bank of
America continues to demand its money and threatens to garnish Patriot's pay.
His credit-card bill is a cool $22,000, about what he grosses in a year --
and there's the wife and kids to feed.

It takes 48 working days for the folks at Finance to reimburse him, at which
point he finally can pay off his card. Six months later, he's passed over for
promotion for having a bad credit rating and bringing discredit on his
Special Forces Group. Fed up, he quits the Army with 14 years of dedicated
and distinguished service. Another casualty of the Pentagon credit-card
craziness.

Every day there are hundreds of our service personnel and DOD civilian
employees fighting through such nightmares. All because Congress
thoughtlessly passed the Travel and Transportation Reform Act of 1998, which
pretty much has had our Pentagon employees financing the U.S. government ever
since.

Only the very senior officers can afford to use these government cards.
Certainly most of the enlisted personnel -- whose wages are the lowest in the
USA except for migrant workers -- can't. And the irony is that the high brass
have the clout that puts them first in the line when it comes to
reimbursement.

"The Pentagon should go back to the good old days when you filed in advance
for travel and expenses and you could expect a check in 24 hours," says
retired Col. David Hunt.

Or better yet, the Pentagon should fire the money-hungry credit-card
companies and operate Pentagon Plastic itself. It's called taking care of the
troops.
*******
(c) 2001 David H. Hackworth
Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc.

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page, where
you can read up on other military issues and back columns. To get a free
copy of this newsletter each Wednesday, send a request to
<VoiceOfTheGrunt@aol.com>.

Snailmail address:
Twin Eagles Ink
P.O. BOX 11179
Greenwich, CT 06831
*******

--2-- HACK NOTES

* Hopefully, at this time next week, we'll have a new team ready to put
SFTT newsletter back in circulation. Chris Humphrey is building a new
website, which will zip the paper well into the 21st century. Have looked at
some of this rough cuts, and they're smashing. A lot of good folks have
signed up for the editor's job, and we've got the nominees down to a tight
and good short list. Tom Martin, an old pal from out soldiering days in the
'50s -- who was a candidate for the worst draftee of the year and ended up as
soldier of the year -- is taking over fundraising. Know he will bring in the
dough we need to pay the bills and the editor's and webmaster's wages.
Running down another good man -- a California CPA -- to take over as a pro
bono CFO, and we have a good man who has volunteered to be our lawman.

* Please keep your contributions coming. We need seed money to set up and
then to run. Remember your donations are tax-deductible. We're not set up
to take credit cards yet, but you can make checks out to SFTT and mail to PO
Box 11179; Greenwich, CT 06831.

* Paperbacks of THE PRICE OF HONOR and BRAVE MEN are now at your local
bookstores, amazon.com, and barnesandnobel.com. All profits from these two
best-selling books are donated to SFTT. If you want them signed, please send
with SASE (and instructions for inscription) to PO Box 11179; Greenwich, CT
06831, and I'll fire them back to you.

* From Rog Charles: "The SFTT trustees express their deep appreciation to
Marv Stenhammar for his service 'above and beyond' in support of SFTT over
the past three years. In at least two 'crisis' periods, Marv was all that
kept our comms up and the SFTT message on the net. Without Marv, we would
not have had the substantial success we have had. Airborne!"

* Have heard from a prominent Congressman that he's proposing legislation
to change the GI credit card system so our guys and gals won't get screwed
anymore. He found out about the problem in last week's newsletter. What we
do works...

Keep five yards,

Hack
*******

--3-- Letters To Hack

Subject: 'Three Card Monty'

Hack, just wanted to 'pile on' with some supporting observation and experience
of T/O staffing. Playing a numbers game with staffing is no new trick, even
for the Marine Corps. In each MarDiv there are three regiments with three
battalions. At any given time in each regiment, one is deployed, one is
preparing to, and the other is recently returned.

The one deployed is filled with a majority of under-experienced newer or
brand new Marines. Rare is a platoon staffed with the required NCOs and
experienced junior officers.

The battalion preparing to go is still staffing many of the various base
support billets. All of the new blood joining this battalion is brand new or
coming from a recently returned deployment because they still have time on
their enlistment. The recently returned battalion is full of those about to
exit the Marine Corps for any number of reasons including, admin.
separations, sick bay commandos, and disciplinary nightmares.

If you counted all the bodies on active duty performing in their primary
billet; the reality becomes that there would be less than two full
battalions. If you further follow this 'shell game,' you also logically
conclude that there is little room for additional career training,
maintenance or God forbid personal and family time. None of this reality is
a reflection on the men who thanklessly serve these billets. They will
follow where they are led. How long before the bad guys pick the right card?

Gerry Hollis
*******
Dear COL Hackworth,

Thank you for your recent article on the military's use of commercial credit
cards. Typically, on a 3-day trip for training, I end up picking up the tab
for transportation and sometimes quarters for my team, only to be reimbursed
a month or so later (if I'm lucky) by the paper-pushers.

It's not the soldiers that are the bad guys, although I'm sure there are
abuses like anything else.

Also, I just read about a (Congressional?) team that made a cross-country
trip surveying military installations on a PBS radio show. Maybe they are
finally waking up to the fact that we don't have enough money for parts to
fix our aircraft or to patch our runways.

I'd be happy if I could ever get half of my aircraft flyable so I could
train my pilots.

Thank you for your diligent work.

Respectfully,
CPT U.S. Army
*******
The above letter seems to have referred to this article:

Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
August 29, 2001
Congressional Panel Sees Tatters In Tour Of Bases
By Stephen Harriman, The Virginian-Pilot

Four members of the House Armed Services Committee,
including Second District Rep. Edward L. Schrock, touched down in
Hampton Roads on Tuesday on the first day of a whirlwind, four-day,
coast-to-coast, fault-finding tour of 23 military facilities.

What they found on their first day was a "recipe for disaster" that
outraged even Schrock. World War II-era hangars at the Norfolk Naval Station
are falling apart. The officer in charge of all the F-14 Tomcats in the
Navy's inventory does business in a double-wide trailer at Oceana Naval Air
Station. An 80-foot section of a pier at the St. Helena Annex of the Norfolk
Naval Shipyard collapsed last Friday.

"We're looking at all the problem areas," said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.,
who heads the military readiness subcommittee, "and I would say that from
what we've seen so far, we have a recipe for disaster."

Weldon is one of Congress' most vocal proponents of the military. His home
district newspaper, the Delaware County Daily Times, called him "...a
political Energizer Bunny who never stops working," and the late Virginia
Congressman Norman Sisisky once said he was "the most focused and tenacious
guy I have ever seen in my life."

Weldon's focus on this trip that he terms "aggressive" is greater funding for
the
military.

"If we don't get a serious increase in readiness funding and have an
awareness
among the American people that we need to put the dollars on the table," he
said,
"then five or 10 years from now we're going to see extreme problems in terms
of our
ability to respond to situations around the world.

"What we've seen so far -- we've been to four installations -- it's
mind-boggling and
it's scary."

The group, which also included Texas Democratic Reps. Solomon Ortiz and
Silvestre Reyes, boarded the Air Force version of a Boeing 757 at Andrews Air
Force Base at 7 a.m. Tuesday, and the entourage visited an Air Force Reserve
base in Massachusetts and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey before
touching down at Chambers Field at Norfolk Naval Station at 1:10 p.m., just
15 minutes behind schedule. They boarded a bus and visited Oceana, where
Capt. William C. "Skip" Zobel, the base commander, conducted a "windshield"
tour (no stops), then returned to Norfolk Naval Station, where Capt. Joseph
F. Bouchard, the base commander, narrated the tour.

Because of time constraints, the congressmen were told along the way, with
photos and narratives, of problem situations at other facilities in the
Navy's mid-Atlantic region: a deteriorating pier and ammunition loading wharf
at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base; severe structural deficiencies at a
building, the main pier and a wooden bridge over which ordnance is moved at
Yorktown Naval Weapons Station; structural failure at Building 31 at the
Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and the St. Helena Annex pier collapse.

Departing Norfolk at 4:30 p.m., they headed for Fort Riley, Kan., and then on
to Fort Lewis, Wash. The next few days will be equally rigorous, as they
continue through Idaho, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Georgia and
North Carolina, Weldon said.

"We're trying to create an awareness across the country," Weldon said.
"These problems are not related just to Virginia. These problems are not just
Ed Schrock's problems, although he's one of the most aggressive advocates for
more money for the military. He's been championing these issues since he got
to Congress."

Schrock, a former Navy captain who represents Virginia Beach and part of
Norfolk, has long been aware of the military's facility problems in the area.
One at Little Creek has him most disturbed.

"You have divers out there," he said, speaking of personnel assigned to the
rescue and salvage ships Grapple and Grasp, "the divers who risked their
lives to bring up John F. Kennedy Jr. and those people from TWA. Those men
and women are operating in metal ship containers. Hot as blazes in the summer
and cold as the dickens in the winter.

"That is no way to treat men and women in uniform. Quality of life also
includes the workplace. I'm just absolutely outraged. Truly outraged about
that."

Weldon was equally steamed at the overall picture. "In Hampton Roads, there
is a backlog of construction and maintenance work at military facilities in
the hundreds of millions of dollars," he said, yet "a lack of attention in
the Congress and the White House. Both have to be held accountable for this.
And both political parties. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue.

"We've got a $4 billion physical plant in this region that has an annual
maintenance budget of around $20 million. That's absolutely outrageously
ridiculous."
Bouchard, responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Norfolk Naval
Station, captured the group's attention best with a single sentence: "The
base is crumbling around me."
*******

  --4--   How To Unsub/Undupe, Change eMail Addresses, Ask Questions

I've got no additional information on Soldiers For The Truth other than what
Hack has said above in his NOTES ~ but I'll surely pass along whatever I find
out. BIG thanks to y'all who've offered such encouragement! :‹ )

As usual, this mailing goes to Hack's personal email contact list. To unsub,
change email addresses, notify of duplications, or ask for research help;
send a message to <VoiceOfTheGrunt@aol.com> as "SendMeHack" has no incoming
mail capability.

Judy
  *******