Forget About Throwing out Rumsfeld. This is The Guy That Should be Dumped……

LTG James R. Helmly gets our ”Hey Abbott Award” of the week. He is the Chief of the United States Army Reserve. If you want to blame someone for the horrible events at the prison in Baghdad, look no further than this guy.

The 800th Military Police Brigade involved in those events which have brought temporary shame upon the United States Army is a Reserve unit and as such it comes under the command of our award winner of the week. It could not have been mobilized to go to Iraq without the approval of LTG Helmly.

In addition, that unit’s commanding officer, a real piece of sleaze named BG Janis Karpinski, would not have been in that position, or for that matter, have had her “star,” if it were not for LTG Helmly's giving her that post.

Let us cut to the chase. An examination of the 800^th Military Police Brigade prior to its mobilization would show faulty attendance records, training records not adhered to, and wrongful statements concerning the condition of its unit equipment.

BG Janis Karpinski, who in civilian life is a “business consultant” living 800 miles away from the unit’s base in Long Island, New York, was not exactly up to speed as to the status of the unit. She traveled to and from the unit at government expense.

How come LTG Helmly couldn’t have picked a commander for that unit that would have lived a little closer? Are we to presume that there were no candidates (Colonels) in that area who were acceptable to him?

Also, BG Karpinski’s explanation that the Central Intelligence Agency prevented her from supervising the unit once it was in Baghdad is pure crap. No one can stop a one star General from walking around her unit. She didn’t care what they were doing in Baghdad, just like she didn’t care what they were doing in Long Island.

As for LTG Helmly, he is a “double dipper.” He got his three stars because he was a civilian employee of the United States Army. This scam is practiced throughout the Army Reserve system. People like LTG Helmly get paid for their military service at the same time they are getting paid for their civilian Army work.

We make the following challenge to this don’t-bother-me-with-details-LTG.

Walk into any one of your units here in the United States, unannounced during a weekend drill and see how they are not taking attendance properly and how they are not doing their scheduled training. You will find much of the equipment missing and what is there, will be in poor condition and not properly maintained.

You will find a bunch of young enlisted kids sitting around on a weekend doing nothing and hating it.

The rotten creatures who tortured the prisoners gave the United States Army a real Black Eye.

But the real villains are people like Karpinski and Helmly. They don’t deserve to be in the United States Army and they certainly don’t get to be called “General” by us any more.

We call them bums.