Can SOMEONE explain the difference between a combat veteran....

[catnhatnh]

...and being combat adjacent to the media????

From NBC News:

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/iowas-joni-ernst-deliver-gop-response-state-union-n286976

Newly elected Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst will deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, Republicans announced Thursday.

The freshman senator is the first woman elected to the office from Iowa and the first female combat veteran to serve in the United States Senate.

From wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Ernst

Ernst is a lieutenant colonel in the logistics branch and currently commands the 185th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion at Camp Dodge, the largest battalion in the Iowa Army National Guard.[11][12] As of 2014, Ernst had served 21 years between the Army Reserve and the National Guard. She spent 14 months in Kuwait in 2003-2004 as a company commander during Operation Iraqi Freedom.


Does any-fucking-body fact check anymore????

[randys1]

1. Vicious, full of hate, Ernst is...very dangerous, very very dangerous

[TwilightGardener]

2. Thought you had to see combat to be a combat veteran.

Not just serve in the theater or region. Did she forward-deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan?

[TexasProgresive]

3. When you don't know what you're talking about

Combat vet sounds better than combat adjacent vet. It just to complicated for some simple minds. When my Dad died I gave the funeral director a written script for the obituary. Dad served in the European theater as a combat infantryman. He reenlisted at the beginning of the Vietnam adventure and served in Special Forces but not in Vietnam to my knowledge. So I wrote that he was a WW II Vet and a Vietnam era vet. Well those 3 letters were edited out. I printed out the correct obit and had it distributed to all who attended his funeral. 3 LETTERS!

[Bandit]

4. I don't believe there was any combat going on in Kuwait

I think if she had actually served in Iraq even as a REMF she could be classified as a combat vet, but since she has never seen a single day of combat, I think referring to herself as a combat vet is an out an out LIE.

[TwilightGardener]

7. My husband served briefly in Iraq during the war, but was otherwise deployed at

support bases around the Middle East. But he does not consider himself, or call himself, a combat veteran. He simply never saw combat, never fired a weapon.

[pinboy3niner]

8. USNews: "According to her bio, her unit ran convoys from Kuwait into southern Iraq."

It's not clear from that whether she ever personally did that, and whether she was ever awarded the Combat Action Badge; as company commander, her normal assignment would have been at the unit HQ in Kuwait.

[catnhatnh]

9. Looks like a trial balloon...

...I found this letter to the editor from last October:

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/dct/article_75aea20c-54b1-11e4-b812-cf4aa783e9fb.html


"Mrs. Ernst was the Commanding Officer of Transportation Company. This company was responsible for the delivery of water, fuel and other supplies to units in secure areas. Joni Ernst did not lead her troops into combat, as one of her ads claims."

[Art_from_Ark]

15. In 2012, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Arkansas was forced out of the race

when it was revealed that he might have fudged a bit about his military record. And he actually was a combat veteran.

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/06/28/democratic-3rd-district-candidates-resume-padding

[sarisataka]

10. An officer

Go on a convoy? Puh-leeze

The only time a company CO leaves HQ is for chow or a brown-nosing opportunity

[pinboy3niner]

11. Okay, now you've done it, Marine!

I'm a graduate of Benning School for Boys (Army Infantry OCS), 1968, and was retired for disability as a Captain.

And the only VN War movie that depicted a platoon of grunts going out on combat patrol while their L-T stayed behind in basecamp was about the Marines.

All kidding aside, I believe the company commander of the trans co. at our local Army Reserve Armory was awarded the Combat Action Badge on deployment to Afghanistan. That award indicates her personal exposure to combat on that deployment, during which they had 1 KIA and several WIAs. They were running fuel convoys with gun trucks for security.

Semper Fi!

[sarisataka]

12. I served with all types

I had a grand time when cross assigned to an Army unit commanded by a full bird, he had just finished two years at Pendleton. His staff was mortified the way we went at each other, an O-6 and E-5 playing the dozens every day. He unloaded a couple years of crap and I dished it back We became good friends.

When assigned to logistics we only let a couple L-Ts out on the road and they were well supervised. One did get a CAR- our version of a CAB. Any higher ranks were encouraged to stay at HQ and do "IMPORTANT THINGS!" (like finger painting)

In MP or Inf assignments we did often have officers come out (still well supervised). Several of those did receive combat awards.

Hoo-ah

[ChosenUnWisely]

5. She was in the rear with the gear

She was not in a front line unit she was support.

Just watch the pukes will make her look like she was Patton.

[seveneyes]

6. Subtle differences are sometimes difficult to distinct from their similarity

That is obvious. Like Civilian versus military unlike we are all human and fragile on the outside.

[MohRokTah]

13. She was a trooper.

A Garret Trooper.

[UTUSN]

14. R#1 & K n/t

[jmowreader]

17. There is a problem with correctly describing Joni Ernst's service

They don't let us put the word REMF in the newspaper.

Until now I never heard the term "combat adjacent soldier." Nuthacker Ernst is a REMF, she always was a REMF and she will always be a REMF. And no amount of spin from the "liberal press" is going to change that fact.

[catnhatnh]

18. I just invented "Combat Adjacent" as far as I know...

...it just seemed to fit so many who blow their own veteran horns...

[jmowreader]

19. True, but if you get sent overseas you're called a combat veteran...

...no matter how big a REMF you are.