{"id":7154,"date":"2006-04-17T09:47:39","date_gmt":"2006-04-17T13:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7154"},"modified":"2006-04-17T09:47:39","modified_gmt":"2006-04-17T13:47:39","slug":"maj-margaret-witt-can-no-longer-report-for-duty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maj-margaret-witt-can-no-longer-report-for-duty\/","title":{"rendered":"Maj. Margaret Witt can no longer report for duty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. armed forces need more people like Margaret Witt who are willing to step up and serve, the way she’s done for 18 years. But in Witt’s case, she’s no longer permitted to wear the uniform. You’ll never guess why<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1993, Maj. Margaret Witt was a poster woman for the Air Force’s flight nurse recruiting program. In her career of 18-plus years, the decorated, 42-year-old operating room and flight nurse from McChord Air Force Base earned stellar reviews for her work.<\/p>\n

In 2003, President Bush awarded her the Air Medal for her Middle East deployment and, later, the Air Force Commendation Medal, for saving the life of a Defense Department worker.<\/p>\n

Less than a year later, following an Air Force investigation, Witt, a reservist, was drummed out. Her offense: a committed relationship, but with another woman, a civilian, from 1997 to 2003.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Witt has been a decorated Air Force officer for 19 years. She wants to serve and injured troops could no doubt benefit from her service during a time of war. She has sterling performance reviews and, in 1993, the Air Force literally used her photograph in brochures used to recruit nurses. Not incidentally, the Air Force has a shortage of qualified, well-trained flight nurses right now.<\/p>\n

And yet, the Air Force still<\/i> threw Witt out of the military. Witt was told she “could no longer report for duty<\/a>, no longer be paid and no longer earn points toward retirement. Her promotion to lieutenant colonel was moot.”<\/p>\n

As for her “offense” that led to her dismissal, Witt didn’t even violate the latter part of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” As Pam Spaulding noted<\/a>, the Air Force received an anonymous tip about her sexual orientation, which prompted an investigation.<\/p>\n

Last week, Witt filed a federal lawsuit against the Pentagon with the help of the ACLU, which seeks to prevent Witt’s discharge. If common sense still has any role here, Witt will not only win her case, but she’ll be reinstated, get a check with back pay, and receive an apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. armed forces need more people like Margaret Witt who are willing to step up and serve, the way she’s done for 18 years. But in Witt’s case, she’s no longer permitted to wear the uniform. You’ll never guess why. In 1993, Maj. Margaret Witt was a poster woman for the Air Force’s flight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}