From Bubblehead via ninme -
The court-martial of former HMS Talent CO Captain Robert Tarrant continued today, with the presiding officer directing an acquittal on three of the five "ill-treatment of subordinate" charges lodged against him, ruling that the prosecution had not presented a strong enough case for conviction...
Expect non-guilty verdicts on the remaining charges within a few minutes of the panel being sent out. The guy's clearly guilty of being a jerk, but there's nothing in military law to cover that particular crime, as many of us know from first-hand experience in dealing with people like Capt. Tarrant.
Bubblehead is so right. I remember the CO of my second submarine was so mean that the DCA would get spontaneous nose bleeds everytime the CO was in the same space with him. Yup, he was that bad. Personally I thought he was just a jerk, but I wasn't going to bleed for him. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Although I do think that's when my ulcer got started...
Years after I transferred off that sub, I ran into my old roomate who had since abandoned nuclear power and become a CEC Officer. He told me that nearly ALL the junior officers under that CO on that sub left the Navy. It got so bad that the boys at SUBLANT sent someone down to tell the CO that he needed to do something to improve his officer retention. He promptly gathered all the JO's into the wardroom and chewed them out for being too sensitive and thin skinned, they needed to suck it up and "stay Navy"! Priceless. Yeah, he was the real deal. Class A, number one A**hole.
However, he was tactically brilliant. He smoked the training simulators and he ate up the at sea exercises. If we had gone to war, he would have brought us home alive and done significant damage to our enemies. Strangely enough I got more personal awards and better fitness reports from that raging screaming flaming A**hole than just about any other tour I've had. Something like the Patton I saw in the movie with George C. Scott. Great guy to have around when the bullets are flying, complete jerk the other 99% of the time.
Bottom line is just like Bubblehead said, no rules, regs or laws in the military against being a jerk. And as Bubblehead noted in his follow up, he was aquitted of the other two charges...no surprise to any of us who have served with his type...
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http://www.filecatch.com/trends/be/31-09-2010.html
Posted by: Krista | 01 September 2010 at 03:16 AM