The state of the barracks, an issue often whispered but rarely shouted about, is finally taking center stage. I'm peeling back the curtain on the living conditions that our soldiers and their families battle daily, from the silent enemy of mold to the disheartening rise of sexual assault. Beyond the barracks, discipline and leadership within the ranks make headlines as we scrutinize the controversial reactions to disrespectful actions in the Second Brigade, 39th Armored Regiment. This episode isn't just about identifying the problems; it's about sparking conversations on accountability, leadership, and the tough path to positive change.
Honor and dishonor walk a fine line in the military, and in this episode, we're examining surprising cases that will challenge your preconceptions about military conduct. I invite you to join me on this reflection and action, where we'll shed light on interesting cases that give soldiers a bad name.
The state of the barracks, an issue often whispered but rarely shouted about, is finally taking center stage. I'm peeling back the curtain on the living conditions that our soldiers and their families battle daily, from the silent enemy of mold to the disheartening rise of sexual assault. Beyond the barracks, discipline and leadership within the ranks make headlines as we scrutinize the controversial reactions to disrespectful actions in the Second Brigade, 39th Armored Regiment. This episode isn't just about identifying the problems; it's about sparking conversations on accountability, leadership, and the tough path to positive change.
Honor and dishonor walk a fine line in the military, and in this episode, we're examining surprising cases that will challenge your preconceptions about military conduct. I invite you to join me on this reflection and action, where we'll shed light on interesting cases that give soldiers a bad name.
What up, what up, what up, as we're getting back into the joe show running things through. This is our first Sunday scary since being back. This scary is going to be about the recent interrogation that the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps got roasted. Sergeant Major of the Army got roasted. I didn't really pay attention to the other two. I was hinting on some big facts like the Barrick's investigation that happened during the months of September, october and November of 2023. Also, an uptick in sexual assault and substance abuse and fentanyl becoming a like, not an epidemic, but a significant increase of risk in the Marine Corps. I thought that was really interesting, because now they are specializing every UA to be one of those drug tests.
Speaker 1:Other, what the fuck moment is that we have a allegedly a Nazi supporter and a Ku Klux Klan member running a battalion. I don't know how that worked, but we'll get into that. And then, finally, you know, someone said to me hey, we're not going to do anything stupid, so you don't get dishonorably discharged. And I basically told this man, listen, if you don't kill anybody, you don't rape nobody and you don't do no shit to kids, you're not going to get a dishonorable discharge, which sounds crazy, and I'm going to give you some examples of some things that have happened recently that I just am mind blown and how they are still in the military and haven't been kicked out, as you know. Thank you guys for checking the show out. We have no sponsors and we don't do any of that stuff on here. We might do in the future, I don't know, we're working on it. But thank you for you guys listening and continue to share the show because of you guys subscribing, liking and listening at all, getting traction and continuing to help the show grow. Right now we're doing just about a thousand streams of episodes. So I want to say thank you to the 999 people because, yes, I listened to the show myself at least once. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1:First up with the United States Marine Corps, our major black getting roasted because he basically failed the barracks inspection for having almost 20% of the barracks in failing conditions. He said in his opening statement, and I quote, that the military housing and health and welfare of our soldiers is the most important thing. This will sustain all Marines to always be mission ready and always adapt to the ever-changing life conditions. Not essentially, every senator on that board and review board came at him some sort of left white and what have you. Because they said hey, I thought we had a threshold of only 5% of buildings being inadequate. Well, you're at 20%. You are four times higher than what the standard is supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Next, with that, it affected almost 4000 individual Marines on a multitude of different bases and affected families, because what ended up happening was you had soldiers staying with families and then a bunch of stuff was happening left and right and you know multiple MP cases which, whatever, that's entirely different topic, but essentially like, yeah, we all know that the housing across barracks is pretty much trash. Like you have buildings that are almost 100 years old, like you use some TLC, have rotting mold, have pipes failing, have wall mouths not being replaced, like example, okay, I saw a barracks get flooded, I'd say a month and a half ago. A month ago they fixed the flood, got all the water out, but all the insulation like the pink stuff in the fiberglass product in the drywall, essentially was all sitting there, soggy and moldy, and it is basically just rotting there because no one has gone in to take the wall apart and take care of that. Not sure if that's a soldier's lack of discipline, not sure if that is the Army maintenance program. I don't know whose fault to blame, but like that that's an issue. Like you're going to have it, guys end up getting sick because of that, and it's something that might be noted. Like, hey, like who is really at fault when things like that happen at the barracks? I mean, a pipe burst, that's not the soldiers fault. So like hey, we're gonna point the finger the other way and it's like well, how long did it take for them to report it? I don't know. I mean, if you can't walk into a barracks because of Standing water, it's just flooding out. And I'm sure most guys on the age of 22 they live in the barracks don't know, like, what the pink installation is and why it's actually really bad. Just because, like, let's be real, in today's day and age there's not many betrayed people who know how to actually work down a frame in a house and build something, because trades just aren't the way. Like we all know that major issues happening. I digress.
Speaker 1:So this other major. His Response was this that he was going to change topics and introducing new sexual assault prevention courses and a new substance abuse program course. Kind of interesting that he just didn't even respond about the barracks failing, but At least at least he's doing this where he said due to a high, high rate of Sexual assault coming up, we now introduce a 40-hour course that every Marine needs to go through when they get to their new joint gaining unit, as Well as refresher courses, kind of like what the sharp program is if you're in the army. That's it's a sexual assault prevention response. That's what's called the Marines sharp is sexual harassment assault response program. I didn't really look in the details of like what the victim advocate protocol protocol is, what the SOP is, and we're reporting to a representative if they are Service member or civilian, if there's teams of that, just like in the army. I didn't really look to compare, contrast the programs. It's a good topic to look into Later on. Thank you, tini.
Speaker 1:So then, with the substance abuse program, this is mostly due to a Higher rate of death due to the overdose of fentanyl. They did not disclose how many deaths there have been, they haven't disclosed the percentages. They haven't disclosed any drug related Incident reports. The only thing they said is that there was a higher rate of fentanyl. So they're introducing the UA program to now test for and I quote, opiates, narcotics, thc, delta 8, cannabinoids and fentanyl. Fentanyl is the last labeled one.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure where people think it's a good idea to do fentanyl like, if you do fentanyl you are Setting yourself up for failure. It is not cool to do. It is not okay. A Lot of people maybe don't end up dead but like, maybe you're in Texas and you've ever driven down 35 in a major city, you will end up like a guy yelling at your Gatorade bottle, you as a cell phone. If you stay on ventinol and I don't think anybody that cares about you wants to see you there.
Speaker 1:Don't do it for sergeant major of the army also essentially failed the army housing inspection these past few months, but they did bring up an idea saying that there is an idea to privatize it. Privatizing as in not using subcontracted government employees, not using soldiers for details. Like they are going to have their own team of builders, team of uh, I guess community members in in a business sense that is going to manage, run and maintain the barracks. Now, what, what does the cost and play have in comparison to using the subcontract people? Or what? What does it look like? Are they going to completely re-change, remodel the barracks? Because, like.
Speaker 1:Also, I acknowledge it has to be a barracks. It's not meant to be the best place of comfort, it's not meant to be a bougie luxury apartment. So you know, maybe, maybe at least doing like a dorm setting and kind of like a setup, as if like what the air force does make, that would be, I think, a better position and a direction to look to than just saying, hey, like we're going to completely destroy the barracks and rebuild them. I I also understand that. So I want to be clear that I don't think we should just demolish and put in luxury apartments. Okay, any an e2, e3, that's 17, 18, 19 years old, does not need a luxury apartment because one they don't know how to maintain it, they don't know how to clean it, they don't know how to work with appliances probably. So I understand, pump with a brakes on that.
Speaker 1:But doing a dorm oriented, I think, barracks similar to the air force, is a way to go about it and then privatizing, using private companies that get um inspected and regulated by local city codes. It, I think, is is the general consensus of a good way forward. Um, obviously, if you come down to a city that has very poor code enforcement or poor code regulations and is going through a lot of things. Locally. That may not be the best, but I think in other places it might be better, because there's gonna be a city ordinance that inspects the barracks and it's like a civilian say hey, I can now directly report this up and this will get sent up probably quicker.
Speaker 1:Then soldiers is calling, complaining, waiting, you know, like I said, two months to have wet, soggy, moldy insulation removing or replaced. Uh, what, what the actual proposal is for that? I'm not sure. Also, is this going to affect, like soldiers, like are they gonna have to do some sort of differential pay? Is it going to affect b a q or b a h or b a s, depending on if, um example, there's like cna packets or there's like tdy temporary housing, there is housing on base. I don't think it really messed with the housing that much, but it's just questions that got asked in the testimonial community and the committee, or, sorry, committees that kind of like, don't have a full, uh in-depth understanding of b a h, b a s and the extra pay incentives that service members get along with, like covering for our housing.
Speaker 1:Uh, the air force their only thing was they got a question about was still reducing their force and in their modernization plan they still said, hey, we're going to downsize our force due to automatic technology, including ai and robots taking over many of positions that we can replace a human for. This is quite similar to, if you know anything about the logistics industry on the west coast currently in the west coast, uh, ai and robots are taking away like truck yard positions, um, inside warehouse workers and the replacing with robots and ai. That's what the air force is kind of taking on a personnel standpoint, not not logistics or anything. And so instead of having so many computer operators, you just have a ai generated computer robot that does the computer programming and the computer software monitoring for you and then you don't have to have as many personnel. So I understand their aspect is like hey, you know it's less people we put in a fighting risk. I know that it makes them easier to join, but also makes it more competitive because there is less jobs available on the market.
Speaker 1:Overall, I think the testimony and the first hearing committee on the barracks and the current state of what the armed services is going through, I think it's a great topic and I think it's a great starting point. Um, I do believe that a multitude of congressmen and congresswomen are listening and are trying to make the armed services better because no matter, no matter which way you're left, right, democrat, republican, what have you no matter what your political stance is, you can't have a political stance if there isn't a military. That's an all volunteer force that, if and if we did go into a serious conflict, would be that a fight for your freedom of rights, because you would not be able to have that same freedom of right in a lot of countries around the world. I really hope that comes to a realization. I think it is coming to a realization to the next scary moment that happened. If you are at fort steward, 239 armored uh gallery regiment, what have you right? If you are there, what is going on? In the past year, you guys have had multiple deaths. You guys had someone fraud the entire Small Business Association and fraud a entire stock index, thinking that it was a legit banking scheme. I was kind of confused in reading it, but it's pretty much what it was coming down to. So that's not the stories I'm talking about. I'm talking about what happens when social media takes over.
Speaker 1:Lieutenant Colonel Decker and Command Sergeant Major Morgan were essentially called white nationalists in a fascist dictatorship. I don't know the full scope on what brought it to this point. So what happened is a soldier photoshopped their composites, which is like their display photos on a leadership board. So they basically took their photos, minimized them on composites and placed a Hitler stash on the Lieutenant Colonel Decker and a Ku Klux Klan hood on the Command Sergeant Major Morgan One. I mean, okay, that's entirely disrespectful and you shouldn't do that, and that is pretty fucked up to call someone a Nazi white nationalist with no prescribed evidence with that. So this was hung up in the battalion across the battalion of multiple spots. As a result, the Second Brigade, 39th Armored Regiment, decided to create a mass punishment.
Speaker 1:This also disregarded regulation, and if anyone knows about Fort Jackson, fort Benning or more whatever, have you the blue book on how soldiers need sleep and everyone's required four to eight hours, depending if you're in the field or in garrison. Well, no exceptions were made. Whether you had a family care plan, you had to get your kids or if you were coming off a 24 hour staff duty. Basically, if you came off that 24 hour staff duty, you were scheduled in six hours to do your eight hour shift. You were showing up to do your eight hour shift period. No discussions. If you pulled a night shift, you were still going to show up for PT. So if you got out at six, you need to be back there at six 15 to be the for PT, which you're still going to be late because, as everyone knows, you need to be 15 to the 15 to the 15 to the 15 prior. Just how it is.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, instagram and Reddit took to the offensive Instagram pages, which some of you know based on your rank and based on certain acronyms, called like WTF you can pretty much assume who I'm speaking about along with multiple Reddit Reddit threads, screenshotting, multiple pictures of group chats, text messages, fights, along with NCOs and soldiers not being able to attend, losing the weekend passes revoked last minute, can't get money back on their flights. It's a lot of really bad things were happening on this match punishment across a brigade, with this multitude of eight hour, with this eight hour guard shift going on concurrently and basically around the clock time simultaneously. These Sergeant, major, lieutenant, colonel did not take part in working anything outside of the duty day hours, which is unfortunate Because then, however, as we come into two weeks later, they essentially got told you need to stop this right now, which they did. So there's no longer ongoing eight hour, 24 hour shifts, there's still staff duty in the CQ and the normal things, but anything related to this incident has not happened About two weeks later and there is still no acting investigation on who did it, who posted it. I'm not even sure there's been really any articles released on.
Speaker 1:You know what was? What was the climate culture like? And this is where I want to bring up, if you are in these upper echelons of command and this is also circling back to the Sergeant Major committees and the Chief Petty Officer committees that you were in such high echelons, higher echelons of command, and you probably have not been on the line in a good 15 to 20 years. And when I say on the line, like in the direct line in a company, on a platoon, in a squad doing things, I think at the company level, I think the commanders is where it starts having some disconnect, because you have to put in systems, have to control metrics and readiness that you're doing different, different administration things versus the tactical part. Right, and at this level of being a battalion commander and a battalion command Sergeant Major, maybe you had policies in place that were not positive or good for the battalion as a whole. So I would ask looking at this is saying, hey, did you ever conduct climate surveys, like monthly climate surveys, like you're supposed to do in Army Command Policy?
Speaker 1:Did you conduct any sort of investigation and sign an IO and create a memorandum for record on this investigation before you just went gun hoe on this mass punishment? Was there any insight to who was on staff duty, who was in the battalion office after hours after the duty day? That's someone I would immediately hold accountable. Right, where was that? Where was the NCO supposed to be doing his checks? Who found the said papers? Who found the said images? And if it was Photoshopped and digital, hypothetically someone might have saved it. Did they do it on a Photoshop Gov computer, because you can access your composites on the Gov computer? There's a lot of steps that could have been done to, I think, do a proper investigation. But also, if I am higher echelons of command, as in a Colonel, brigade Commander or a Brigade Deputy or a Division Deputy General, I would open the IO investigation on myself and say, hey, like, where's your climate control surveys? Where is any recent feedback?
Speaker 1:There's also been multiple instances across the battalion prior to this. What's the follow-up reports with that? Has there been safety stand downs? Have there been or days to create like team environment building or organization building, administration building? Are we in touch with what's going on with our soldiers outside of the Garrison Environment mission? Because in the Garrison environment you're not mission critical, you're not going through super mission-related things Like if you're on a deployment or you have an NTC, jrtc rotation coming up. I totally understand that being important, pressing that maybe other issues fall to the cracks. But generally speaking, like what was the climate of your organization and your battalion? That's a really big question and my unit, for example we do try to do the monthly but at the minimum quarterly, quarterly is definitely ending like every time, like something does happen.
Speaker 1:They come in immediately hey, here's a chap, here's the resources, here's. We're going to have a safety stand down or day and talk about X, y and Z and discuss what's going on. That way there's never a disconnect. From the upper echelons of command and to the lowest level, everyone has a dissemination of information. This is a great time to have a dichotomy and a great time to have a conversation up and down, up and down the levels of command building that you can.
Speaker 1:You know NCOs who are maybe more senior, can understand, sometimes the Joe's. They also can be a middleman and step up as a professional leader, saying, hey, maybe this is what you think is going on, but this is the reason why give them the why, so that they feel important and they feel that what they're doing is necessary, right, if you empower your people to feel important, necessary and valued and what they're doing is meaning something more than just mopping a motor pool when it's raining We've all seen time to time understand, sometimes for punishment, but sometimes just is what it is. It's something to look at as leaders when you come up into the ranks and you have all these people right Now understanding you're not going to make everyone the happiest at every point in time and there's going to be times you have to make hard decisions. But that's the point you're in for Now. Do I think at any point in time that someone deserves to be called a Hitler or a Ku Klux Klan leader? No, that's absolutely not. There's probably.
Speaker 1:You could have done a open door policy. You could have discussed your disgruntleness to probably higher echelons. You could have gone to your chap. You could have gone to maybe CID or IG, depending on the issue. Let them kind of give you a back brief on what you can and cannot do, can and cannot say what they think the issue is, and then maybe there would have been a follow-up saying, hey, we're going to have an open discussion on things, right, and then that's where people need to speak up and use their words and be mindful and professional and polite to discuss what's going on from the upper echelons to the lower echelons.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give updates on this and I'm going to update you guys as I find out more. If there does come an investigation. What happens to the soldier after this? Well, hopefully there's a lot more answers that come out to what led to this event happening and finally we're going to talk about, finally we're going to get to the last part, which is, I said pretty much, to get a dishonorable discharge, you have to kill, rape or fuck with someone's kid. That's essentially how you're going to get a dishonorable discharge out of the army.
Speaker 1:And so here's some recent stories that have gone on right. First one he is an E7 Sergeant, first Class, not going to say names in or anything, not going to say who they are. Some of them actually aren't even in my unit or even on the installation that I'm at. Okay. So first one, right? I kid you not. Okay. So an E7 with an E3 in a emotional relationship, one that's a no-go, is fraternization right?
Speaker 1:Second thing going on with that is that it led to a conflict of interest which then escalated into domestic violence in a sharp case, which then led to a cease and assist order, then to a no contact order, where then both military police and civilian police helped create and these, you had these restraining orders, no contact orders, and this this dude put an Apple car tag on her car and was following her everywhere he went. Then, on top of that, he got caught in a altercation. After the restraining order, after received charges for assault, harassment, endangering, reckless driving, resisting arrest, this dude still did not get a dishonorable discharge. That's story one. Story two God dude, I had a rape charge, beat the case, but hopefully, after he beat the case, he said yeah, I did it, at least I thought, and what I thought could happen was yeah, maybe it got dismissed in civilian court, but the military have their own court, they have their own set of rules, set of things you can do and can't do. So I thought it was possibly like hey, maybe they'll come get them on that end. It never happened.
Speaker 1:Then the dude failed multiple UA's still just got a couple articles still in the army. Okay, he got caught with weed by civilians, came back to post, got caught again physically with the weed in hand and his decision was to eat it. So he ate all the evidence, if you will. So they couldn't prove that he had a shit ton of drugs I don't know how much he had and because he already failed the one UA and then they're like well, he's already gonna have weed in the system. So this is gonna be not exactly accurate to if he did this right now or 24 hours ago. Okay, interesting point, I guess. Smart move, I guess, if you want to put it like that, continuing right. So the chain of command took his keys, suspended his guy to post.
Speaker 1:This dude stole his roommate's car, still is acting in the army, following this back to back weeks after being suspended to post and already had that whole car situation figured out. He got caught being off post one three hours away. So one, if you put it in a pass that gives you the clearance to go 250 miles. Certain distance away, right, usually about two hours is about 150 miles, so it's a couple hours is kind of like the thing this dude was just saw far away. It took forever to report that any, any still has a guy in trouble. He is pending some things, you know, hopefully when he gets out, but like this dude, fucked up how many times and still did not get threatened to kicked out admin sub or anything like that blows my mind.
Speaker 1:Next instance okay, dude is married, got caught cheating on his wife, prostitution, adultery, money laundering, all while deployed. Came back from deployment still in, still has been kicked out. He got caught doing grand theft, auto beating his child, his wife wife was in the hospital had endangered welfare of a child, kidnapping that. Those charges eventually got dropped because he said that he had custody paperwork, which technically he did. It was just it was like six years old and never made changes to it, so they can't say if it did or didn't resisting arrest, dwi, and then he had about three or four DWIs.
Speaker 1:The dude still left the army as honorable. I'm not sure how that happens, I'm not sure what you have to do for that, but to get it dishonorable. I really am curious to see what you have to do and how far you have to go with that. That. That's just crazy to me, which. That is where we're going to wrap up this episode. I hope that some of you look into that Lieutenant Colonel and that Command Sergeant Major. If you get any updates about the situation, let me know. Also, we're dropping the new website and all the new podcast links. We're going to be doing a giveaway coming up, so stay tuned for that. Appreciate you guys. Thank y'all for still being here supporting the show, charlie Mike.