Let em have it Fatbuck! i am right behind ya!!

Career ending. The guy is a senior captain, he has met all the requirements for major, but I can guarantee you that no promotion board will promote him with a letter of reprimand. He will be passed over 2 times for major and after the 2nd time he will be given a competancy hearing where they will look at his entire career (10-13 years) and make a judgement based on his overall service. Then they will let him know if he is allowed to continue serving in the national guard and reserve. At that point he has 2 chances to be promoted again, if he fails those then he is released from the reserve. So maybe he has 2-3 years in the Active army and another 2-3 years in the USAR or Guard. If he can make it to 18 years total service he will be allowed to do his 20 then be retired or if he doesnt make 18 he will be kicked out completely. The chances of being promoted to major after being passed over the first time is something in the range of 1/300, once he hits the usar of guard the chance goes up to something like 1/5 then drops way down to 1/1000 if you get passed over the 3rd time.

The active army does have certain career performance goals that you have to meet to continue to serve, and as an officer he need to get promoted.

I understand, but career-ending to me means dishonorable discharge. As in, all of a sudden you don't have a job anymore. This dude might be able to serve a few more years. CNN needs to choose their words more carefully IMO.

I see your point. Us in the military understand what they mean by it, but I can see where it would be misleading to those not in the service.

No its career ending. Chances are he will get passed over 2 times then accept an honorable discharge. He has a year or two left. his career is over.


That being said, the guy doesnt deserve that, he was sent into an area to construct a vehicle based temporary outpost, he did just that, also had a number of observation posts. Resupply was set for the next day, and the defensive measures were set the same way hundreds of outposts have been set up before and since. They chose a crappy spot, that from what I have read was the best spot in the area. They were attacked by a far superior (numbered) force and and won. Read or watch 'when we were soldiers'. Same situation only they didnt serve in a tiem of insta news where some dud cutting a fingernail in afghanistan is a big story. Not saying that that much death and injuries isn't signifigant because it is, but its nothing to what has happened in the past.

Exactly.

I think CNN is just trying to make the story more sensational.

Note, I am not endorsing the judgement against the officer, I am just critiquing CNN's writing style.

I wonder if there might have been a more obvious failure there, like not properly posting sentries or something along those lines? I agree that such a forward base is a tough thing to defend, as they repeated found in Vietnam, but are we getting the whole story?

I doubt it was sensationalism. If anything I see it as "inside baseball". The first paragraph of the article also states "Such a letter normally would prevent career advancement". I have seen the phrase "up or out" associated with officers in the military. He isn't loosing his job tomorrow, but everyone knows his career is effectively over.

From the article Pauldun posted:

Could barely get water, much less concertina.

The army (and the military in general) has mountains of lots of things that don't make it to the warfighter on the ground. For instance, there are thousands of airmen who never leave their FOB running around with PAC-4's, CCO's, and every other piece of fluff known to man strapped to their M-4's, while grunts running daily missions that include CQB are pimping M-16's with iron sights.

In our case, when we were going to a similar COP all we wanted were NVG's and chem lights (two things the army also has mountains of, especially chem lights). After begging and pleading and sucking the right dicks we finally got NVG's, from a captain who had no resposibility to supply us whatsoever. When we got back, we found out why we couldn't find chem lights. They were all being used at Trance Night.

I can guarantee you two things from personal experience:
1) When you're at a COP like that, you don't fail to post sentries. It just won't happen.
2) If they somehow had failed to post sentries, the senior officers looking to cover their own asses by throwing this captain under the bus right now would be screaming that shit from the rooftops.

Agreed, I see it as a reporter asks a military source, military source says "his career is over," reporter repeats "his career is over." Letters of reprimand for officers are very commonly referred to as "career ending" among servicemembers.