Religious Freedom in (US) Military Questioned

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Darth Wong
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Post by Darth Wong »

Hawkwings wrote:Call me skeptical on this.
There's a difference between being skeptical and desperately making up whatever excuses you think are necessary in order to maintain your denial. You are doing the latter.
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Aaron
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Post by Aaron »

Hawkwings wrote:
As I understand it, when you're in the military, you get an email account that ends in @usarmy.mil or something like that. That's a military email account. It's also a personal email account, where that soldier can write whatever he wants.
You have got to be kidding. Yes soldiers get an email account but only a fool would use that for personal business, especially sensitive business. Best to send anything you don't want monitered from home.
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Post by Lonestar »

As I understand it, when you're in the military, you get an email account that ends in @usarmy.mil or something like that. That's a military email account. It's also a personal email account, where that soldier can write whatever he wants.
It's an official government address. As a practical matter you can use it to communicate with family and friends and not worry about the CoC bitching about it.

You can NOT use it to intentionally generate a hostile workplace. I don't know why you would think that.
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Post by Alex Moon »

Lonestar wrote: This was the guy who was on deployment and verbally assaulted by a Major that crashed his "Atheist Church"(In Texas I believe they are called "Churches of Free Thought" or something...mimicking the social functions of church without the religiousity).

And the Chain of Command CAN fail you Alex. The soldier in question may have not seen in perceptable movement on his greviences(and if you tell me there are not Officers who file them into the circular file cabinet I'll call you a Goddamn liar) and felt compelled to get something, anything, done. To quote my Sea Daddy:
Oh, there are certainly officers who will simply throw out his complaint, and the Major who originally caused trouble should be taken out to the woodshed. However, I find it hard to believe that there was no one who was willing to support him. Even if the chain of command was ate up, could he really not find a supportive EO rep in the BN or neighboring units (since the incidents involved were public)? Other soldiers who would go to IG with him to complain? A sypathetic chaplain?

It's a hell of a jump from "my chain of command doesn't support me" to "I'm going to sue the Army."
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Aaron
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Post by Aaron »

Alex Moon wrote: Oh, there are certainly officers who will simply throw out his complaint, and the Major who originally caused trouble should be taken out to the woodshed. However, I find it hard to believe that there was no one who was willing to support him. Even if the chain of command was ate up, could he really not find a supportive EO rep in the BN or neighboring units (since the incidents involved were public)? Other soldiers who would go to IG with him to complain? A sypathetic chaplain?
With a lot of these issues, the further along the CoC command you go it becomes more likely that they are simply going to back up the one lower than them. After all they get most of the information from the guy preceding him and officers are infinetly more trustworthy than NCO/NCM's, and part of the old boys club to boot.
It's a hell of a jump from "my chain of command doesn't support me" to "I'm going to sue the Army."
It is but when you get fucked in succession it's time to start thinking out of the box.
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Lonestar
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Post by Lonestar »

Alex Moon wrote:
Oh, there are certainly officers who will simply throw out his complaint, and the Major who originally caused trouble should be taken out to the woodshed. However, I find it hard to believe that there was no one who was willing to support him. Even if the chain of command was ate up, could he really not find a supportive EO rep in the BN or neighboring units (since the incidents involved were public)? Other soldiers who would go to IG with him to complain? A sypathetic chaplain?
I have no doubt, none, that there was a junior officer or a NCO that supported him. Likewise, I have no doubt, none that someone immediately above said J.O./NCO/Chaplain put a block to his efforts.

Now you're saying "oh, well, he could have gone to other units." So now he should have gone outside of his chain of command? For that matter, the whole series of incidents(no doubt started when he was in Iraq and this shithead O-4 went after him) may have convinced him that the Army sure as hell wasn't going to help him through normal channels. I am not having a hard time visualizing that that is what happened.

Having said that, if he was convinced that normal channels weren't helping his next step should have been trying to reach his congressional representative's office. Of coruse, if he originates from some podunk district/state with a big conservative Christian base that may not have helped either.

It's a hell of a jump from "my chain of command doesn't support me" to "I'm going to sue the Army."
Not if you're an E4 who has had the shit kicked out of him for a while. I note that he didn't try to raise Hell about it until after he was back from Iraq(maybe he felt that a warzone would be the wrong place for a grevience like this) and when he gets back he is given the runaround.
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
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Post by Darth Yoshi »

Hawkwings wrote:As I understand it, when you're in the military, you get an email account that ends in @usarmy.mil or something like that. That's a military email account. It's also a personal email account, where that soldier can write whatever he wants.
Actually, the .mil email account can only be accessed via DoD networks, often only on DoD computers, so it isn't a personal email account. In fact, every time you access a DoD network, a long disclaimer pops up telling you that use is consent to monitoring, and that action can and will be taken if you violate the rules.
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Lonestar
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Post by Lonestar »

Darth Yoshi wrote:Actually, the .mil email account can only be accessed via DoD networks, often only on DoD computers, so it isn't a personal email account. In fact, every time you access a DoD network, a long disclaimer pops up telling you that use is consent to monitoring, and that action can and will be taken if you violate the rules.
*bzzzzzt* I'm sorry, thank you for playing though.

Just one example
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
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Post by RogueIce »

Lonestar wrote:*bzzzzzt* I'm sorry, thank you for playing though.

Just one example
While you can access AKO from any ol' computer, the disclaimer at the bottom does say they can monitor you "for purposes including, but not limited to, penetration testing, COMSEC monitoring, network defense, quality control, and employee misconduct, law enforcement, and counterintelligence investigations."

So you can send your AKO e-mail out from any computer, but that doesn't mean the Army can't monitor what is being said.

As to whether you can use it as personal e-mail to send whatever you want to whomever, that I don't remember. Though I do remember most people found logging onto AKO annoying enough they didn't bother, preferring to use something easier instead. Might be different in the warzone though.
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Post by Glocksman »

Isn't this the base where SPC Brungart is posted?
I wonder what his take on this is.
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Post by jegs2 »

RogueIce wrote:Though I do remember most people found logging onto AKO annoying enough they didn't bother, preferring to use something easier instead. Might be different in the warzone though.
That's been my experience. Here in theater, AKO seems as sluggish as the day is long. Conversely, I can log on to and send a Hotmail message in no time flat.
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