WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?

WHAT DID HE KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?

By Colonel George W. Tate, US Army retired ([email protected])

Still serving proudly 

Famed for his ability to DETECT tough questions from the media and from Members of Congress, on June 29 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was stopped dead in his tracks by a question from one of his own; a lady lieutenant colonel, who brought up a valid and vexing question about military retirement pay.

During a DOD town hall meeting, aired the world over, she asked him why she faces the prospects of having to pay a large chunk of her retirement pay to her much-wealthier ex husband.  Why indeed! 

The usually glib and facile Rumsfeld, uncomfortably facing a very public, televised moment of truth he’d rather not face, blinked.  Summoning the only dodge he could summon, the Sec Def trotted out his best Aw shucks manner and asked Is that a statute?  I’m unaware. ……

Indeed, Mr. Secretary, that’s a statute.  It’s 10 USC 1408, the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act, and it’s been on the books for more than 24 years.  And yes, Congress deviously backdated it to avoid an inconvenient conflict with a Supreme Court ruling which held that military retirement pay could not be divided as property. 

That statute, Mr. Secretary, is devastating the morale of your troops.  Though DOD has hidden the law under the rug for all those years, word of this DOD back-stab is finally reaching the field.  In this global war on terror, in this era of back-to-back deployments to battle insidious terrorism, the very troops tasked to accomplish those dirty missions for America are subject to a discriminatory law mandating that they hand over up to half of their retirement pay permanently to a former spouse.  And that’s in addition to alimony and child support.  Only military members, alone among all Americans, are subject to such a law providing lifetime benefits to ex-spouses above and beyond those available to the public at large and continuing even after the remarriage of the former spouse. 

The Secretary’s dodge won’t wash.  

His answer feigning ignorance of the law can be interpreted two ways.  Either he has been shielded by his underlings from the grim truth of what the USFSPA is doing to troop morale, in which case he’s made to look incompetent, or he took the unwise path of pretending not to know in order to cover his tracks.  In other words, he lied. 

Which of these is the more likely?

In 2001, on Rumsfeld’s watch, the Department of Defense provided Congress a voluminous report, delivered two years late to Capitol Hill, describing why the law is good for the troops.  Baloney!  The report silently, and without comment, overturned the on-the-Congressional-Record position of prior administrations regarding the USFSPA. 

And as you read this, Rumsfeld’s lawyers are scrambling to protect him from a federal lawsuit which names him, by name, as defendant, and which challenges the constitutionality of the law.  That case is alive and well in Federal District Court in Alexandria, VA, and if Mr. Rumsfeld wants us to believe that he doesn’t know about the USFSPA, he must think we’re all pretty stupid.  This case is far from resolution and if Mr. Rumsfeld doesn’t know his personal chestnuts are in the fire, we think he’s pretty stupid. 

Clearly Mr. Rumsfeld does know about the USFSPA. 

Just as clearly, his tap-dance on camera on June 29 was a disingenuous attempt to avoid public airing of the Department’s long-standing support for an ill-conceived law which DOD leaders support at their peril, and which decimates the morale of military career personnel, just when we need them most. 

Though DOD’s civilian lawyers fabricate fanciful theories for the Department’s aggressive and inexplicable support for the USFSPA, in fact the USFSPA created a unique, unprecedented, discriminatory, and wholly unnecessary body of law for military spouses only, on top of their rights comparable to other divorced spouses.  The USFSPA may have been well intentioned, but it has harmed far more than it has helped, and now more than 150,000 of America’s defenders have had their old-age security cashiered by it.  Some have been forced into bankruptcy and all are blindsided in divorce by DOD’s dirty little secret. The number of Americas finest who have been duped and stabbed in the back by their own chain of command rises daily. 

Wake up, Mr. Rumsfeld!  Recruiting is down. Divorces are up.  Military divorces, until recently less frequent than the general population, now exceed the general rate.  American troops are being sent into harms way with stressful frequency, against an insidious enemy which beheads and car-bombs innocents.  Throughout it all, the Department maintains it’s head-in-the-sand attitude about the USFSPA and that law’s pernicious effects on troop morale.   

Maybe it’s even worse than head-in-the-sand; maybe the Department shovels the sand over its own head and hides from the unpleasant truths about the USFSPA.  It has for more than 24 years failed to provide briefings and orientations to the troops to tell them that they may dedicate a lifetime of honorable, often dangerous service to America only to have their retirement security handed over to a third party civilian who took no oaths and never stood in harms way.  This, remember, is the same DOD which clandestinely reversed the policy position of previous administrations in its 2001 report to Congress.  

Even more indicative of DOD sentiment, in the current lawsuit in federal court, Mr. Rumsfeld’s lawyers fought (unsuccessfully) to exclude testimony from a soldier in Iraq.  And Mr. Rumsfeld says he didn’t know? 

Are military families important?  Of course they are.  Do they deserve more preferential treatment than their military sponsors?  What theory could possibly justify that?  Do military spouses deserve lifetime monetary awards that civilian spouses don’t get?  Why?  Is the playing field level in military divorces?  Absolutely not!  Why the Sec Def thinks that’s a good thing is known only to him.  As the lawsuit progresses, maybe he can explain it to the judge, and to the troops who wonder.  And to the courageous lady lieutenant colonel who nailed him on June 29. 

Until the Congress amends the USFSPA to eliminate its anti-military bias, or until it’s declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, it will be the single most demoralizing factor to the career military force.  Mr. Rumsfeld knows that, and he knew it on June 29.  

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=7788486&content_dir=ua_congressorg&mailid=custom