I get why The Seattle Times Editorial Board wrote this piece. And I tend to agree: get rid of the Secret Service members who frequented prostitutes. Still, they seem far too excited about firing people.
THE 11 Secret Service agents who were part of the president’s advance security detail were hired, trained, armed and paid well for their judgment. They failed miserably. Fire them.
Take a couple of their supervisors off the payroll as well. The numbers involved in this scandal suggest a failure of command and control in a go-along, get-along culture without any professional oversight.
Well it’s probably a good idea to have an investigation first. We have a right to know what happened. Anyway, as bad as it was, you can count on The Seattle Times taking their metaphor too far.
In fact, the behavior is closer to the Army’s Abu Ghraib debacle or the Navy’s Tailhook scandal, where no rules applied and no one was apparently in charge. The heady arrogance exposed is as intoxicating for participants as the vast quantities of alcohol consumed.
Well no. Sexual assault and torture aren’t the same as members of the Secret Service visiting prostitutes. It’s illegal and they should be fired. There should be an investigation to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. If it impeded their ability to do their job perhaps there should be harsher sanctions. But honestly, Tailhook and Abu Ghraib are much, much worse. Why include them at all?
It might be helpful to remember that this story saw the light of day because a couple of the agents were too stupid to pay the hookers the going rate. Had they just ponied up the $60 we’d have never known about it.
While I agree that the agents should be fired, we should remember that there’s a reason that prostitution is called the “worlds oldest profession” and we shouldn’t be naive and believe that this sort of thing’s never happened before.
@1
That’s what I was stunned by – these assholes got caught for being cheap!
One of the escorts reported that the next morning – she stayed the night! – one of the johns tried to cheat her out of $60 – that’ll be the most expensive $60 he ever haggled over!
I’ll bet the agent is a Republican, and this is just another example of wage theft by management exploiting honest workers!
Prostitution is legal in Columbia, steeling from prostitutes is not.
@3
Good point!
The Times is equating this with Tailhook and Abu Ghraib because, like Sen. Sessions tried to do today, they’re desperate to pin some sort of scandal onto the Presidency. Duh.
As a former manager for the Navy with a significant security clearance (retired in 2008), I can assure you that no civilians or military on the maintenance side of the Navy would have ever considered this behavior appropriate in any officially sanctioned or related context.
There were no such thing as off hours if you work in a sensitive position. Total honor, above reproach.
I know people in authority who have been fired for the merest public drunkeness, let alone prostitutes, etc.
So, I can’t even begin to understand this behavior by the SS.
And don’t get me started on the GSA thing. I served for almost 35 years, helped organize a lot of meetings and conferences and I never heard of such a thing. It was always strictly business — with minutes and serious actions.
Her rate was $750-$800.
NY Times!
Golly I hope someone tells us their political affiliation.
Don’t you think these morons had to be DUMMOCRAPT? They are to take a bullet for their preznit!
You seem to forget how DUMMOCRAPTS tried to pin every 2001-2008 scandal on Bush!
If the foot shits… U wear it!
Now, imagine if you’re the agent who was too cheap to pay his girl riding home with all the other guys you’ve just totally screwed.
Glad I’m not him.
Ed Schultz on the Secret Service scandal…
So he excuses it! What a libtard moron.
@8 So they would have stood aside if the gun was pointed at Bush?
Every time puddyasswipe shows up on this blog, the I.Q. content of the comment threads goes down by 60 points.
@7 Actually, puddystupes, there were two separate arguments. One involved the girl you mentioned whose rate was $750 – $800. The other involved two agents expecting a $60 hooker who serviced both of them to accept $30 from each.
“It’s illegal and they should be fired.”
What’s illegal and under whose laws?
For this to be illegal, there has to be a U.S. law that makes it illegal for Secret Service agents to patronize prostitutes in foreign countries while on assignment in those countries, because prostitution itself is legal in Cartegena.
As for firing them, I suppose so, but I don’t see why private businessmen should have all the fun. Why can’t public servants enjoy the same perks of life as bankers, lobbyists, corporate lawyers, executives, newspaper owners, etc.?
“A Secret Service supervisor who retired in the midst of the Colombia prostitution scandal made light on his Facebook page of his work protecting former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the Washington Post reported Thursday evening.
“David Randall Chaney posted photos of himself on the social media site, including one that shows him behind Palin during the 2008 campaign, including the comment, ‘I was really checking her out, if you know what I mean?’ the report stated.
“The Post also identified Greg Stokes, an assistant special agent in charge of the K9 division, as the agent who was listed as ‘removal for cause.’ …
“Both Chaney and Stokes worked at the Secret Service for nearly two decades, the Post noted.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....andal?lite
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Okay, let’s skip over the super-tacky remark this juvenile numbskull posted on his Facebook page, and ask ourselves how someone like this got a Secret Service job in the first place. I mean, don’t they vet these people?
I suspect there’s a mathematical answer to that question, and the math goes like this. A decade is 10 years, so “nearly two decades” is a little less than 20 years, let’s call it 19.3 years. Now let’s subtract 19.3 years from 2012.3 years and see what we get … um … 1993.0 years. That puts us in January 1993. What happened then? Clinton took office.
Eureka! That’s it! It’s all CLINTON’S FAULT!!! These guys were hired to protect Clinton, so HE is responsible for what happened in Cartegena this month!!! Ask any winger and he’ll tell you it’s so.
I wonder if these guys stiffed Monica, too?*
* Just kidding! That’s an American Standard joke.
Attention Moderator — Spam Alert
Hey Darryl, #112 on the Friday Night Extravaganza thread looks like spam, maybe you should delete that one.
– Sarah Palin!
The fact that if anyone, Secret Service or otherwise, has sex outside marriage, it’s nobody’s business except the adulterer and his/her spouse. This is a non-story, and no punishment should occur.
How long do any of you suppose it’ll be before all the guys who got the sack turn up working for Blackwater (or Xe, or whatever the hell’s their name du jour)?
They already yanked the security clearances of the 11, pretty much killing their careers, even working for a private government contractor.
@20
Yeah, who cares if your security team is fooling around with uncleared foreign nationals while on a high security job in a foreign country? It’s not like they have terrorists in Columbia.
@20
In a perfect world you may be right.
However, in our world, where sleeping with prostitutes could very readily lead to being vulnerable to blackmail and manipulation, then those of us hired and paid to protect a national asset – whatever you think of Obama, the President is a valuable national asset – must never put themselves in a position where they can be compromised like that.
I applaud you for earnestly imagining a world without the prudery ours insists on and imposes regarding human sexuality. Further, I encourage you to work to create a sexually liberated world – I think we’d all be far happier and saner, and there’d be far far less manipulation and exploitation by nefarious Catholic priests and Republican Congresscritters, and other shady neer-do-wells.
However, we live in this world, and avoiding being a target a blackmail is a basic demand for people we select to handle highly classified, highly valuable comodities.
@20
I am once again struck by the simple thinking, the one-dimensional, deeply wishful, divorced from reality cognition of glibertarians.
@9 “You seem to forget how DUMMOCRAPTS tried to pin every 2001-2008 scandal on Bush!”
You think all the shit that happened in 2001-2008 was CLINTON’S FAULT??