You do know that a Specialist in the Army is one notch higher than Private

Private First Class to be exact and PFC is one small step from Private. You enter the military as a Private..

Point is, the media's making this Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits out to be a Kobe Fucking Bryant when he's nothing more than a low ranking order taker.

they do not know

The blame belongs with those ahem, wearing stars

Most enter the Army privates

Private E-1:no stripe
Private E-2:single stripe, refered to as "mosquito wings"
Private E-3:one stripe, one rocker. Also known as Private First Class
Specialist4 E-4:same pay grade as a corporal, only a corporal is
considered to be a Non-Commissioned Officer, and therefore will often
be found in a position of leadership. A Spec4 will sometimes be placed in a leadership position, but not always.

but I can tell you as a former specialist in the U.S Army, the only thing I was put in charge of was kitchen detail... As you noted above, "A Spec4 will sometimes be placed in a leadership position"...

And that very rarely happened..... My point is...this guy wasn't in charge of shit and the others certainly weren't taking orders from him.

That's why I wonder why they're not putting SSG Frederick on trial first. He was an NCO in charge of troops, unless he was able to get a deal?

He was a part of this and knows things that will help to convict the others. They need to get him talking first. Think of it as a chain reaction.

I was still a PV1 when I got out of AIT in South Carolina and
went to permanent party in Germany. "Where's your rank, soldier?"
"I don't have any, sir." Oh, how embarrassing. :)

especially when it was raining.... ;-)

Or some place at Fort Jackson I've blocked
from my memory? (Fondest unblocked is when we
got to start riding in the cattle trucks.)

It's a famous big ass hill that we had to climb over and over in Boot camp.... and when it rained it was almost impossible to climb...

I've spoken to many vets of that Hill and we all have the same recollection of that torture...

I remember the force march, full pack with weapon in
hand, but not the hill itself.

My favorite is the confidence course, going over the log
roll and landing face first in the dirt. Scared the DI,
she thought I'd broken my neck. I ended up so scabbed that
I got out of having to go through the gas chamber with
out mask the next day. I got to guard the weapons instead.

Wow.

Had no rank when I got to Ft Campbell Kentucky.

In many MOS', it did. Some Army combat units still use the rank.

A coporal is considered an NCO while a Specialist is not. Specialists used to be Spec-4s and the "Specialist" rank continued higher with SP-5, SP-6, etc.

I didn't know that about the rank, but I had noticed that the apologists never made comments about the court martials of "privates" they always referred to "specialist".

I'll tell you what. CNN is not doing Sivits any favors repeatedly showing the people in his home town making excuses for the torture. These pitiful people have a rather tenuous grasp on the facts and end up saying that what our soldiers did is justified by the burning of the mercenaries, who one man refers to as "our kids". :eyes:

There are more grades of "Specialists" than an E-4.

It works like this, and this counts on both the enlisted and commissioned side. There are really two classes of troops, those who control people and those who control equipment or processes.

If you are an officer you may be a Commissioned Officer, which would be anything from Lt, to Gen. But there is another class of Officers too, and those are Warrant Officers. The latter have control of equipement and they rule with an iron hand there. A helocopter pilot is an example, they have control of the aircraft but they can not give orders to troops on the ground. On the non commissioned side there are specialists and then there are NCO's. An NCO (which is supposed to begin with Corporal, but for all practicle purposes they haven't existed since early in the Viet Nam war) would be a Sargent, who can direct troops to do things, just as a Commissioned Officer can. Then there are the Specialists, who can't tell anyone to do anyting, just like a Warrant Officer can't unless he is in his domain (if you are on a copter the pilot is god, step foot on the ground and he's just another troop, but one who gets paid well).

So when you see these folks who will be court martialed being called Specialists it means they had absoltuly no command authority at all. Keep that in mind, they are the absolute bottom of the chain of command.

thanks and welcome to DU...

look for them to be scapegoated,and the big shots will come out smelling like a rose-

You're thinking of specialists in certain fields in the army, like doctors, pilots, and such.

Warrant officers are specialists in a specific field, like maintenance, logistics, piloting, even as physicians. Whereas, commissioned officers are assigned to branches, like quartermaster, infantry, administration. The difference is that while an officer in
the Quartermaster Corps can be assigned as a platoon leader for a refueling platoon in one assigment, in the next he can be given the job as a battalion S-4 or supply officer, and in the next he can be
placed in charge of a supply company. Warrant officers will more often then not be placed in the same job throughout their careers. A pilot will always be a pilot, a physicians assistant will always be a PA, and so on.

As for Warrant officers, some do hold command positions, some don't. When I worked in a motor pool my OIC was a warrant officer, my platoon leader was a 2nd Lt.

Currently there is only one Specialist rank actively used in the army, and that rank is Specialist 4. As for corporals, I have known and seen corporals when I first entered the service in 1978 and have seen lateral promotions from specialist 4 to corporal. So there may not be a lot of them but they are there.

I worked at a CIF from 1995 to 1997 and saw many corporals, most were assigned to combat arms units, like infantry, artillery, and some in the engineers.

I even had a section when I was a Specialist4, mainly made up of E-1's to E-3's, but I was still in command.

Specialist Sivits, the first to go on trial was probably not in command of anyone.