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Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Canadian booty camp goes maritime

Doing the mess around isn’t just for Canadian land forces anymore. Lt.-Cmdr. Tina Hanratty, XO of Her Majesty’s funny-looking Canadian Ship Moncton, was relieved for fraternization. Shouldn’t it be "sororitization"? The chief of Canadian land forces says that his three favorite songs are "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones, "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen, ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -Midwest Region/flickr
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -Midwest Region/flickr
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -Midwest Region/flickr

Doing the mess around isn't just for Canadian land forces anymore. Lt.-Cmdr. Tina Hanratty, XO of Her Majesty's funny-looking Canadian Ship Moncton, was relieved for fraternization. Shouldn't it be "sororitization"?

Doing the mess around isn’t just for Canadian land forces anymore. Lt.-Cmdr. Tina Hanratty, XO of Her Majesty’s funny-looking Canadian Ship Moncton, was relieved for fraternization. Shouldn’t it be "sororitization"?

The chief of Canadian land forces says that his three favorite songs are "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones, "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen, and "I Got a Feeling" by Black Eyed Peas. Funny, I thought those were the theme songs of HMCS Moncton.

Meanwhile, back in the US of A, Cmdr. Fred Wilhelm, the skipper of the USS Gunston Hall, walked the plank on allegations of sexual harassment, maltreatment of a subordinate, simple assault, conduct unbecoming an officer, drunk and disorderly conduct and use of indecent language, all of which are not cool. The command master chief got popped on similar charges. The XO got spanked for not doing anything about this.  

And the skipper of the USS Peleliu, Capt. David Schnell, got bounced for supposedly having improper and unduly familiar relationships with subordinates. I suspect this wasn’t just playing Go Fish with sailors. Ditto for Cmdr. Mary Ann L. Giese, commander of Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station Bahrain, who got popped for multiple inappropriate relationships of varying degrees.  

The other services are lagging badly behind the Navy in weird cases. The Air Force could only cough up Col. Carey Steagall, who is heading off to the pokey for five months for adultery, viewing porn on his computer and sending dirty e-mails, among other things.  

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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