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petty officer P.B. Hegseth [1]

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Date: 2025-02-02

I didn’t realize that Pete Hegseth had joined the Naval National Guard. What? The Navy doesn’t have a National Guard. Oh! Really? He was in the Army National Guard. Okay. I thought he might have been a Petty Officer. Petty Officers are considered the backbone of the Navy, bridging the gap between enlisted sailors and commissioned officers, generally equivalent to various levels of Sergeant in the Army.

Despite being the Secretary of Defense, the more I learn about Hegseth, the smaller he becomes—hence, for me, he is a “petty” officer—lowercase intentional.

His military “career” was thin. He trained in ROTC while in college and then entered the Minnesota Army National Guard as a second lieutenant—a part-time commitment. Much of his military credentials come from three deployments—each for several months and each with minimal substance. The first was as a platoon leader at Guantanamo Bay, overseeing 20 to 40 soldiers guarding prisoners. No combat. The second was in Iraq as a civil-military operations officer working on reconstruction and local governance efforts. The third was in Afghanistan, where he served as a senior counterinsurgency instructor, training Afghan forces. He had no leadership experience in combat.

His first official action on his first day as Secretary of Defense was not based on his oath: “…I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same….” Instead, it was an act of revenge ordered by the Retribution in Chief, D.J. Trump, who also routinely violates his oath of office. Petey (aka Pete Hegseth) suspended the security clearance and revoked the security detail of retired Army Four-Star General Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). On Inauguration Day, Trump had two portraits of Milley removed.

The security detail was removed from Milley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former National Security Adviser John Bolton in relation to the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. All three men remain in danger of retribution, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

Petey also instructed the Department of Defense’s inspector general to investigate “the facts and circumstances” surrounding Milley’s conduct so that the Secretary could determine whether it was appropriate to reopen his military grade review and possibly demote him post-retirement. This may prove difficult since Trump fired the DOD inspector general along with 16 other inspector generals throughout the government on January 24, 2025, the day before Hegseth took office.

In regard to the investigation, Petey’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, said, “Undermining the chain of command is corrosive to our national security, and restoring accountability is a priority for the Defense Department…” Of course, what is Petey to do when the most threatening domestic enemy of the Constitution and America is Trump?

Mark Milley learned this while serving under Trump as JCS chairman. He told investigative journalist and author Bob Woodward, “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.” In his retirement speech on September 27, 2024, Milley said to the U.S. military, “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator, or wannabe dictator.”

Clearly, Hegseth took an oath to a wannabe dictator. His actions on his first day in office mark him as a petty officer.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/2/2300791/-petty-officer-P-B-Hegseth?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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