Posted on 04/07/2020 3:18:37 PM PDT by conservative98
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has resigned after giving a profane speech defending his firing of a ship captain who warned about the coronavirus infecting his crew.
Modly resigned after meeting with Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Tuesday, according to multiple reports.
Acting undersecretary of the Army James McPherson will replace Modly.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
President Trump said he had "no role" in Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigning.
He said: "I would not have asked him...I did not speak to him...That was a very unselfish thing for him to do...He didn't have to resign but he felt it would be better for the country."— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 7, 2020
What Modly did was madness. I’d say both of these guys needed to go.
The only madness was the poor words he chose (naive or stupid) to describe the captain. Firing the captain was correct, not madness.
Didn’t Moldo fly some 8,000 miles to slam the capt or did I hear that wrong. Trump fired him, something Trump has shown reluctance to do.
According to the quote in reply 2 Trump is claiming he had nothing to do with it.
Wow, the Navy took a bad situation and made it keep getting worse. The real focus should be on them making sure that the men and women who serve are safe.
re: search
did search, this is the only article with modly in the topic or keywords.
“Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.”
I called this on Friday.
The removal from command was a given. I'm certain the Capt. knew this when he sent the memo, and he felt it was a worthwhile trade to get his sailors the help he felt they needed. Whether it was necessary or a sound judgement is speculative, but reasonable people can disagree.
For Secnav to personally step into the s#!+ rather than directing the strike group commander, the COCOM commander, the CNO, any one of their deputies or assorted undersecretaries... or even the Navy Chief of Staff is highly unusual. Maybe he also felt it necessary to avoid a mutiny risk throughout the fleet of something as critical to missoon, but again reasonable people can disagree.
For him to personally and abruptly fly 8000 miles and then very personally have a tantrum over a contaminated ship's PA system during a pandemic... that is madness.
Fired whom? Sec Nav? Nothing I’ve read said that or that he asked for his resignation so don’t know where you are getting that. An assumption? As far as flying 8000 miles, that was done to speak directly to the crew, nothing wrong with that, especially based on all the interest. But again, I totally disagree with the wording Sec Nav used. But firing a senior officer who did what he did was not wrong. That Capt basically gave out classified readiness data, something even junior officers know not to do.
The Navy didn’t make this worse, Modly did.
No doubt in my mind the Capt needed to go. The fact he allowed that spectacle of the sendoff take place removed any doubt. Modly I am less sure about.
You are correct reasonable people can disagree. It was Sec Nav who removed him after talking with the chain of command so I see no problem of him flying out and talking to the crews. Personally, I think someone in the chain should have fired the Capt, but since it became such a media fiasco, I think that is why Sec Nav did it. Remember too, Sec Nav had his Chief of Staff talking to the Capt telling him what the Navy was doing before the Capt released his letter, including a couple of times the day he released the letter. So Sec Nav was involved with this particular ship already, for whatever reason. But, there are a lot of questions left unanswered, including why the Capt felt it necessary to release the letter when Sec Nav, the CNO and Pacom Commander were already involved and active in trying to resolve the issue. I fault the CNO and Pacom Commander for the problem to begin with by allowing a port of call, for whatever reason, in early Mar to Vietnam. Seems that port call should have been cancelled since the virus was well underway at that time.
Sounds like he was Pattoned.
So now we have outed two people - two more senior leaders in the Navy - who couldn't do their jobs. What happened to my Navy? And this shit has been going on for a while - let's not forget a few short years ago we were playing bumper cars in the Pacific with billion dollar warships.
But look. It's no different in DC. We have all of these people who are wailing and gnashing their teeth because, even though they don't know how to do anything, they are angry that Trump isn't listening when they try to tell him how things get run.
And look, from everything I can see Crozier is a good fellow and a fine officer. He just isn't fit for command, but 95% of naval officers aren't.
It did seem to get pretty out of control.
Who selected Modly in the first place?
Naturally, I have a name in mind.
If Modly didn't think that his rant on the Roosevelt wasn't going to wind up in the media then he's either naive or stupid. And if that was grounds for removing the captain than that certainly is grounds for removing the Secretary of the Navy as well.
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