Editorial Analysis by Chip Beck
The Real Washington
The League of Families, National Alliance of Families, and Veterans Groups should note that nowhere in his resignation statement did James Wold use, employ, or imply the term "POW." This is consistent with his compliance of denying that Unrepatriated American POWs were ever held back, exploited, or otherwise detained at any time in this Century, never mind the Vietnam War.
Official policy has been to down play and eliminate the concept of POWs. Instead, the term MIA is being employed as a trade and marketing tool that benefits the economic policies of the U.S. and its new trading partners in the former and existing communist bloc. National honor has nothing to do with the new goals. "POWs" are an anathema to those who would be kings of commerce.
The one true point in Wold's statement was his comment that his three and a half year tour with DPMO had been "rewarding." It certainly was. As a retired one-star general who retired some two or three decades ago, Wold's military retirement paycheck, computed on the salaries of the 1960s, was not very high.
However, one of the perks offerred to Wold to take the position, and to follow instructions, was that he is now allowed to readjust his retirement pay using his "high three" years of salary that he was given in the past three and a year "rewarding" years. His annual retirement salary will most likely be greatly in excess of anything he ever earned while on active duty.
I don't have the figures to crunch all the numbers, but someone who has the time to pull them from the records should compute them. I would guess that Wold's new annual retirement income will be somewhere between 2-5 times as high as he earned in his last year of active Air Force duty.
The other person in the DPMO office to benefit financially and career-wise is Wold's Deputy, Little Whatzisname. The Deputy, who has stated publicly that he is not in this for career advancement, was originally sent over as a GS-12 liaison officer from the CIA. Not having been on the fast track at Langley, The Deputy has done quite well for himself by skipping pay grades while skipping between agencies. The practice of skipping pay grades has also been employed quite effectively by DPMO's Strategic Scammer and other DPMO career Porkers at the Public Trough.
Rewarding? Quite! Honest? You decide."