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US Nuclear Commander Suspended Over Gambling
mdsolar writes "The No 2 officer at the military command in charge of all US nuclear war-fighting forces has been suspended and is under investigation by the naval criminal investigation command for issues related to gambling, officials said on Saturday. The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced. Air force general Robert Kehler, who heads Strategic Command, suspended the deputy commander, navy vice admiral Tim Giardina, from his duties on September 3, according to the command's top spokeswoman, navy captain Pamela Kunze. Giardina is still assigned to the command but is prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other issues requiring a security clearance, she said."
Just don't take real people out of the loop and hand over control to joshua
One of the issues was apperently, counterfit chips.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/strategic-command-suspension-linked-probe-counterfeit-poker-chips/story?id=20413148
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Push the button.... don't push the button... Lemme just flip a coin!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Especially the Kettle brand ones with the Spicy Thai. Too bad you're paying for overpriced air when you buy a bag...
The only winning move is not to play...
...you can't fight in here: this is the war room!
What was he betting on? The outcome of WWIII? Well, I certainly hope he put his money on the right team.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Also, here's the current military pay scales:
http://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/militarypaytables.html
The guy is making around 12K a month.
That's got to be a serious habbit to resort to using fake chips.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
We really want a guy who owes the Mob 200K in gambling debts being leaned on to turn over top-secret information to erase his gambling debts. It's pretty easy for someone with an addiction like that to snowball from handing out a floor-plan to an office containing harmless stuff to handing over access codes or whatever. One of the things about being in a position where you're entrusted with the safety and lives of your countrymen is that no one should be able to have leverage over you. It's one thing if someone threatens to kill your family if you don't give them XYZ information - you can go to the appropriate agency for protection or whatever needs to be done and it will get handled, no matter how high and hard it needs to be escalated.
It's entirely different if it's over gambling debts. Especially if you've caved before. Your career is over and you might go to prison. Some people, especially the kind that are gambling addicts, simply cannot see the long-term ramifications or can justify damn near anything to themselves. That makes them extremely dangerous in any position that has the word "nuclear" and "commander" in it's title.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
P.O.E.
...is based on the assumption that, for the rest of eternity, no one group of people with access to nuclear weaponry will get trigger-happy.
Hilarious.
"The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced."
This is only "highly unusual" because it is being reported throughout the mainstream media. But anyone who has been through an FBI/CIA interview knows that gambling issues are something that they probe for quite a bit. I doubt he was the first person fired or reprimanded that week for gambling.
Want to work in the defense industry? Then don't gamble or bet on sports because it is a red flag that often disqualifies people from employment or association. The higher up you go the more they'll pry into your personal life. Asking friends from college or even high school if you ever gambled (or had a drinking problem, used drugs, etc.).
News for nerds?
I can hit this part with a hammer and it won't go off... any takers?
and commit suicide.
Yes, really. That's the only way to atone for that level of disgrace.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I don't believe gambling is the reason. I think it is more likely he is being suspended for another reason, but they don't want this "other" reason to be made public.
That's just the cover story. He's really been cooking meth.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
Have gnu, will travel.
Now deal me in.
If it's only been actually cheating while serving your team, like Bonds, McQuire, Rodriguez or the other cheats, then you could be in. But gambling? No HoF for you.
DaveyJJ
Gambling sometimes pays off, for a while.
Shame they likely wont put him two months in CCU and then on a toilet scrubbing billet afterwards. All those fun times are only reserved for enlisted. Am I right?
You said the "Judeo-Christian Bible" so I assume that you're including the old and new testaments. So, you somehow don't believe that executing children who hit or swear at their parents is an instruction to do violence. Let's also not forget that: "He who sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed." Not suffering witches to live is also nice and non-violent. I suppose executing people who break the sabbath is just good sense as it is with executing any many who giveth his seed unto Molech (because, um, yeah...). Also "ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword." Also the stranger that cometh nigh [to the tabernacle] shall be put to death." Also "when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:". You're also supposed to kill anyone who tries to get you to convert to another religion, even if they're your wife or child, or just kill them if they don't share your religion.
There's just so much of that sort of thing in there, it boggles the mind.
I'm sorry, but you are full of shit. Better get some sleep, school starts early tomorow!
Obviously, he needs to be removed from his super-duper secret duties if the possibility of blackmail is significant but let's hope the poor fellow gets straightened out. Gambling is so terrible because first you go through disposable money, then the milk money and finally the money to which you have access but is not yours. My grandfather lost a house thanks to cards and horses; a friend's marriage broke up because her husband's business partner was a gambler. One day the fellow went to work and found his own office padlocked because his partner's gambling debts.
I hope it works out for the guy.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
That explains it all, really.
Yup. I was a defense contractor back in the 80s. While you couldn't be gay in the uniformed military, you could still have a security clearance and be a contractor or in the NSA or CIA - but you couldn't be in the closet, because that might be used for blackmail, especially in states where it was still illegal to be gay. So there were some famous researchers who'd had to come out to their families.
They asked about a lot of other things; they didn't mind that some of my coworkers had used drugs back in college and then stopped, but they really freaked out when one guy said he'd smoked dope, liked it, and might well do it again :-) (It took an extra six months for his clearance to come through.) And they really cared a lot about people who had relatives in Communist countries, not because they were worried that Cousin Ivan might have corrupted you into being a Commie, but because the KGB might threaten to kill your grandma if you didn't give them the secret plans. In my case, they asked a bunch of questions one year about my involvement in the Libertarian Party, because some of them weren't quite familiar with the concept that there were more than two political parties (plus the Commies, and they'd kind of forgotten about George Wallace.)
A friend of mine in the Air Force had a buddy who'd put down that his previous job experience included working at a candy store back home in the Bronx, and the guy who ran the place said he'd never heard of him. Had to have his dad go tell Cousin Luigi that it was the Feds checking on his security clearance for the service, not anybody checking into the numbers game that might or might not have been running out of the back room.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Tails I'll nuke, heads I don't.
Unless you (the house) are taking a cut of the money from other gamblers, it's not illegal. At least not where I live.
seeing as the public no longer shows an interest in privacy...why not start eroding key players for control of the next big rip off....security.
There's plenty of ways to get the information at wholesale price. The guy in TFA was caught by the sort of oversight that is almost impossible to arrange for the sprawling outsourced agencies that Snowden described.
I remember when the number one commander in the nuclear chain got caught cheating on his wife and lied about it. This means he was compromised and could be blackmailed. To bad they couldn't impeach him....
See, gambling is bad, kids, except of course if you're gambling in the State-sponsored casino. That's perfectly okay.
I don't think you understand what a "man who giveth his seed unto Molech" means.
Not arguing any religious points here, just pointing out some apparent ignorance.
Sen. McCain admitted to playing poker for money on Federal property, which is also a crime. Nothing happened to him except he got laughed at for losing.
Isn't gambling something you want a guy in charge of strategy to be good at?
Back in the 80s, you didn't need a polygraph for a vanilla Secret or Top Secret clearance, and I didn't have any of the spooky clearances or DEA clearances so I don't know what they did. I don't think the nuke people needed them either, but we didn't do nukes. I think the only particular lifestyle restriction I had was that I couldn't travel to communist countries without notifying the Feds first.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Look, I don't see a problem with him gambling. *Unless* he bet on war. That would be just a no-no and would go against all established tradition. If this scumbag bet on war, then he deserves a lifetime ban on war and any war-affiliated events. He should also be permanently barred from induction to the War Hall of Fame.