[alelks]

Prime example back in 2005. I was on the ASOT detachment as a contract instructor. I taught back there from 91-94 as a green suit. Anyway we had 4 guys fail the rural portion miserably (my exercise by the way). I mean they only turned in 2 reports out of 11. They basically gave up just a few days into the exercise and sat in their hotel rooms the rest of the trip. Well the Bn Commander came down and wanted to talk to the committee. Of course he was trying to convince us to keep the 4 guys in the course because they needed grads. He gave an analogy that recently they had a guy at Scuba school who didn't pass the first gate but the instructors saw something in the guy so they let him continue. Long story short he said the guy graduated.

Well while he was telling this story I was biting my tongue. At one point he said "I know we are producing graduates that are not trained in what we want them to do but......

Well that's when I absolutely lost it. I couldn't believe I had just heard that out of a BN Commanders mouth. I flew off the handle as every hair on my body stood straight up.

I immediately stopped him and said "Sir, I can't believe I just heard what just came out of your mouth. We are producing graduates that are not trained in what we want them to do? You tell that to the little 6 year old boy who's father isn't going to be coming home because we didn't train him properly, you tell that to the family members of the rest of his team when they don't come home." Then I really lost it and said "F*^$ General _________ because we all know where this is coming from it's a numbers game. Here's what you need to do. You need to do what's professionally ethically and morally correct because if we let these guys continue through the course it's just flat out WRONG. What do you think the rest of the class is going to think? I can tell you exactly what they are going to think. They are going to think, well these guys didn't do a damn thing during rural and passed so why should I bust my ass during Urban.:

You know the funny thing is and this is what's a shame, there were only two or three out of about 16 instructors that were verbal about this. Everyone else was just sitting there saying absolutely nothing.

Well I figured as a contractor they were paying me for my expertise and opinion and I let him have it with both barrels.

I called the detachment commander up that weekend and apologized for getting so verbal and of course he told me "No, thank you because we as green suiters can't speak or mind like that and that's exactly what needed to be said".

After that the 4 guys departed the course.

And that my friend is why I never wanted to go any higher in rank than MSG. It just gets too political after that and I would have gotten into tons of trouble.