See:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=324238

There must be something more to this story. It appears these guys did this in the spirit of "mission accomplishment."

TOW .. it think this is biggest pile of crap .. If I had been along the line in this .. I would have recommended at least a letter of commendation for each of them ..not a courts martial ...they took the initiative and aided their units .. as for taking off base .. destroying .. did the clowns at the top think that maybe the equipment was no longer servicable .. and I wasn't aware that detroying a nomenclature plate was aiding the enemy ..
and it's not like these guys charged sold the equipment to anyone ...
by the way .. when I was in the air force .. we called this "Rehabbing."

Holton I am with Tow something else is going on.It is a known fact most people in small units have always scrounged for what they have or follow up units wasn't this a new unit who was charged.

I think it is very wrong to charge them for this..this has gone on in every war, and is par for the course..I think it's friggin ridiculous.

There is someone in the chain of command that needs a 14EE up their butt and it's not the Captain who used her initiative to complete her mission.

In my old outfit (long ago and far away) it was the general opinion that if you lost or left it you didn't deserve it and the guy that "found" it would put it to better use.

We never lost anything but we "found" some stuff.

Heck we did the same things in Nam, you will find that in any mil. org. Relocating parts is the norm in the military. The commander did what was needed to complete the damn mission and now she gets burned for it. WTF?

sounds like a bad case of internal politics to me..someone pissed the wrong person off.

What would you know about "internal politics"? You've never been assigned to a unit, right?

US kid have you made any posts at all that weren't an attack on me? do you have anything of worth to contribute to any of these discussions/debates?

I stand by what I said. I think it is a case of politics, someone pissed off someone and they are using 'scrounging' as an excuse to get to them.

This is what happens when an REMF gets involved. Simple as that. What bothers me is the lack of support from those guy's own command. They allowed this to progress as far as it did. What happened to taking care of your own?

I got nailed for comshawing a ground airconditioning unit back in desert storm. It belong to some gound Co.It had been sitting in our compound for three months, so I grabbed it, changed the tac marks and painted it from green to yellow and hooked it up to my troops tent. they worked the night shift. (it was 125 degrees in the day at the time) I was court martialed, but the General in charge of avation (later became Commadant) threw it out, because the way he saw it, I was only taking care of my men and that I didn't get any benefit from it. This incident followed me back to the states, but a phone call to the General from my Group Co's office phone to the now Commandant of the Marine Corps(he gave me his business card), settled the matter all over again. The Colonels complaint got him escorted off the air station by order of the Commandant. My Group Co, always went out of his way to really treat me differently after that episode! Damned Sgt Major didn't care, he always treated me the same...ration of shit coming and going.

Gotta love them Sgt Majors...assholes everyone, they must issue that to them when they get promoted or sumthing?

Semepr Fi
The Gunny

There is a long tradition of scrounging in the military; that's how you get things done, for better or worse.

I could give examples from RVN, but would rather not. However I can tell you that our Asset Redirection Program in II Corps and III Corps resulted in substantial improvements in personal safety, plywood, nutrition and AK-47 storage.

If you take the official peacetime standards and apply them to a shooting war set of circumstances nothing would ever get done.