We’ll just state the obvious, which is that drinking and consorting with prostitutes should never be associated with any Secret Service mission.

Funny, but back in my days in the US Air Force, I was around a number of people even….even some who held Top Secret clearances with routine access to nuclear weapons mind you….who “consorted with prostitutes”…after a night of drinking in the Officer’s or NCO Club.

Back then, it was called “boys having fun.”

And the military actually encouraged drinking to excess as part of the whole “macho” scene. Besides, the bars at the Officer’s and NCO clubs were the greatest sources of revenue for the Base’s Non-Appropriated Fund coffers, which just happened to help fund all manner of “pet” projects for the Base Commander.

And what about adultery?

Indeed, while adultery has always been considered a Court Martial offense in the military, during my 20 years of service, I never ONCE heard of anyone being prosecuted for it…except of course, if they happened to be sleeping with someone under their command (pun intended).

The truth is, we as a culture, are horribly selective about which “sins” (sexual and otherwise) we prosecute in the court of public opinion.

The other truth that nobody wants to talk ab out is the fact that adultery and alcoholism run rampant in the US Military, probably even more so than in the rest of the US population as a whole.

Yet, alcoholism and adulterous sexual behavior (which I say pose even MORE of a “security threat” to our nation than a simple romp with a faceless prostitute during a one night stand) somehow seem to be “just the way it is” in many of these so-called “special” Government institutions.

Indeed, how is the serial adulterous behavior, reliability and “integrity” of a person like Newt Gingrich (who is STILL running for President) any different than what those agents now being dragged through the political mud have done?

Perhaps those who are now so eager to prosecute these folks should now come clean and share some of the past “sins” from their OWN lives for us to also judge.

Or, to put it another way, let those who are completely without sin cast the first stone.

Dare I call it “hypocrisy”?

Today’s editorial in the Chicago Tribune touches on that:

“All of this raises the question: Has none of these guys ever watched a James Bond movie? Read a Cold War novel? Heard the phrase “loose lips sink ships”? We won’t bother spinning a plot in which an American agent’s indiscretions compromise the nation’s secrets or the president’s safety. We’ll just state the obvious, which is that drinking and consorting with prostitutes should never be associated with any Secret Service mission.

No, these weren’t the president’s bodyguards. They were charged with setting up security ahead of Obama’s arrival. They were sent home, with their security clearances revoked, before he even arrived. But their actions damaged our standing in Latin America, the opposite of what we’d hoped to accomplish at the summit. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tale of espionage and blackmail or just drunken bad behavior. It’s a disgrace.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-hookers-20120420,0,2638823.story

Good, cleanly earned money, such as the megabucks pocketed by lobbyists, congressional aides, policy think tank hotshots, and the loosely labeled representatives of the people, is just fine.

Add in a sexy wench, a black book, whatever toys are used for the purpose, nights spent in a bed that his not one’s own, and that money is tainted.

Sure, consultants of all sorts will charge whatever the market will bear to get you out of trouble for whatever you might have done, from starting wars based on lies to coming up with “really big numbers” to justify an initial $700 Billion bailout, and no on bats an eye. Charge money for an hour of sex, and we go all puritan and holier than thou.

Both are equally wrong. Sleeping with anyone who is not your spouse is lying, which remains one of the formerly prized Ten Commandments. (Now downgraded to the Ten Suggestions.) However, the connection between our ruling class, their minions, and the truth is all but illusory at best.

Getting caught? Well, that’s just incredibly bad form.

Face it, we are all too often getting, well and truly, what the prostitutes got, and they were probably well paid. It’s just that the American people haven’t figured out a way to charge the government for the privilege of doing it to us.

And, would someone also please tell me how this nonsense poses a “security risk to the President”? None of this foolishness would BE a “security risk” if our culture wasn’t so overly obsessed with people’s sexual preferences.

Indeed, I’ve always found it fascinating that our culture will blissfully allow all manner of illegal shenanigans to be perpetrated by our elected and appointed officials, both in and out of their offices.

But just let one of them be found with a certain part of their anatomies in the (hired) help and all hell breaks loose.

We are a nation that prides itself in allowing personal freedom and social “enlightenment”. Yet we continue to allow an ever-shrinking minority of tongue-wagging busybodies and holier-than-thou hypocrites to obsessively foist their horribly misplaced moral agendas on the rest of us.

Our culture’s seemly preoccupation with (and prudish over-regulation of) things sexual (particularly regarding what consenting adults freely choose to do in their private lives) is, to me, even more disgusting than letting the other, clearly illegal behavior of crooked politicians (such as indefinitely incarcerating and torturing war prisoners, suspending habeas corpus and perpetrating illegal wars) continue to go unpunished.

As one of Canada’s former Prime Ministers once said,
“The Government has no business poking about in people’s bedrooms”.

To this I now add that what US Government agents do in their private lives…even while traveling on Government business…is ALSO none of the Government’s damn business either.

“We let the boss down,” Dempsey said. Right. What BS. In Nam, the company medic checked out the girls or gave them shots for the protection of the troops. The general is thinking about the Boss rather than his troops. What a surprise.

Of course “wheels up, rings off” could just have been a metaphor since it is described as a “saying” and attributed to just one Treasury Department investigator who may have had his words misconstrued as literal.

Given that it’s now obvious what a security risk this poses for the President and whomever else they are sworn to protect.

Also, the poor wives of these agents could receive rude and nasty travel gifts from their husband agents in the form of a sexually-transmitted disease.

This is bad news all around.

Could look like that, from a certain point of view.