Update From Jill Metzger

     Jill e-mailed a month or so ago to say that she’s doing a whole lot better, and that she appreciated all the support she got in the aftermath of her ordeal in Kyrgystan

     Thank you to everyone who offered to help, whether it was advice on Kyrgystan or praying for her safety! I just thank God she’s back with her family and her country!

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5 Responses to Update From Jill Metzger

  1. bdj says:

    You actually believe that crock?

  2. Chris Penningroth says:

    What I know or believe is irrelevant. My friend is home safe. That’s what I care about.

  3. Rich Giddens says:

    If you call Major Metger a friend you are asking to have your own reputation put under a microscope. As a taxpayer, citizen and veteran I’m appalled that you don’t want to know the truth about this international incident that’s cost us tens of millions of $$. Stop the sophistry and platitudes and start dealing with FACTS. Why the sneaking of your "friend" (enemy of the taxpayer/citizen/veteran) Silly Jilly Willy out the back door with a 100% "PTSD" fraudulent pension without a LINE OF DUTY DETERMINATION as is required BY LAW? Why the grand jury appearence and why NO EXPLANATIONS from the Air Force? Why no Air Force Cross award ceremony?—this after Major Metzger’s claims of abduction and escape? After all, if she is to be believed only our naiton’s highest honors will do! Where’s Nancy, Hillary and Diane? Why aren’t they screaming "discrimination"? This all adds up to the obvious—doesn’t it? Your "friend" is indeed not the friend of the Air Force rank and file and neither are her protectors and enablers. We don’t like being ripped off, lied to and seeing our CORE VALUES defecated on by hypocritical lawless temporary occupants of office! You tell your. . . friend that her acceptance of a fraudulent pension is a CRIME against THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES and we will continue to expose her and her protectors. The offer that Military Corruption Dot Com made to her still stands and if she wants to collect cash instead of a jail sentence she had better start talking. Congress knows about this and so does the media and they are starting to get mighty curious. Things have a way of going round and coming round so you haven’t heard the last from US!

  4. Chris Penningroth says:

    Rich,

    Thanks for your comments. I am neither her commander nor judge, I am merely one of several thousand peers. I am also no public affairs officer and cannot speak for Air Force policy, regardless which agency makes it.
    It seems your investigative skills would best go in the PA direction, otherwise you’re going to have to check other open sources. I tried to allude before, but maybe I ought to just make it clear–I am legally constrained and can not make any comments on this case.
    I did edit your comment for language. Judgement call on my part. My Blog. I let your allusion to a relationship between her and I stand. Get out your electron microscope and bombard away! I can get you started if you like. . . ever hear of a Greek philosopher named Plato?
    If you don’t mind me asking, what are your core values (you refer to an “US”)? I’m trying to better understand your frame of reference.
    I’d also like to caution you that we military folks are human beings, subject to the same frailties as other ordinary human beings. We get the added bonus of being put in situations that most of the general public sitting at 1G and zero airspeed in the relative safety of your living room aren’t ordinarily subjected to. It’s easy for me to sit here in my pajamas and write this, for instance; there’s no real pressure to make a quick decision that could be easily second-guessed or interpreted incorrectly. It sounds like you’ve probably heard that before, but most folks who read this site may not have.
    We appreciate being regarded as supermen in the abstract, but there are practical difficulties sometimes.
    I agree things have a way of getting found out. Don’t check back here for updates. That is certainly not the role of Weltanschauung. I only get to talk about my personal life and a little operational detail once in awhile. At this lucky instance, my life happened to intersect something larger than normal (as if flying Vipers weren’t big enough). I’ve basically said everything I can, which isn’t much, granted. If you’re looking to cook somebody, you’ll have to look elsewhere. This site ain’t a fryin’ pan.

  5. Chris Penningroth says:

    I did a little checking at http://www.militarycorruption.com. While in principle I absolutely support checks and balances in the interest of maintaining the best ethical practices, I found that this site seemed too willing to publish innuendo and call it fact. While they seem to have done some good comprehensive research, they clearly (to me) drew a conclusion and are now trying to force all the facts into the mold. Funny, they claim to not be mainstream media, but I’ve seen CNN and another TV reporter do the very same thing!

    Personally, Rich put a hurt on their case from the get-go with the insinuation that something was going on or had been going on between Jill and me, not to mention the name-calling, which I edited out. Ad hominem is logical fallacy. Perhaps I should have left it in there to really show what kind of person was making the attack. I suppose if I’d had something to hide, I might’ve been intimidated. But unfortunately for “MCC,” no dice!

    That all said, if I’d been approached responsibly by a member of that web site, I still couldn’t really tell them anything exciting.

    MCC occassionally gave Jill her due. I do know that Jill was an extremely hard-worker, and she was very dedicated to the Company Grade Officers’ Council. I remember her complaining that the CGO pilots never showed up to meetings. I had to explain to her that while both she and I were working 12-hour days and loved our jobs, to her CGOC was a chance to network with others, and to me it was time away from studying the things that could kill me if I didn’t know about them. She grudgingly accepted that explanation, but I did notice our Sq/CC eventually gave us CGO pilots a push in the direction of CGOC. If a fighter squadron commander thought it worthwhile enough to push membership, you can bet the mission support squadron commander (her boss) did as well, probably even more. So Jill was pretty much automatically doing the “right thing.”

    There was some complaining going on that Jill made major ‘below-the-zone,’ if so, that would be pretty incredible since no one within a year or so of my peer group (the ’95s) was promoted BTZ. There was also some rueful bashing that it wasn’t fair for her to have been promoted without her masters’ degree. Actually, masters’ degree information has been masked from promotion boards since 2003 or so (although in future boards starting this year or next it will be shown again). So that complaint gets thrown right out. I can’t say for absolute certainty she wasn’t promoted below the zone, and right now I’m too lazy to go check the AFPC website to search for her name in all the majors’ boards from here on back.

    Again, I don’t really necessarily know what went on out there downrange. I do know Jill was a sharp troop when I knew her. We have over here at my current assignment a champion marathon runner in the making, and she also gets a lot of press locally (and she deserves it, she’s a sharp troop, too). Commanders like our runner here. They like most over-achievers, especially when they bring good publicity. There will always be others who get jealous of the attention lavished on them, just like a sibling rivalry (in many respects, that’s exactly what it is. . . we’re all competing for favor). I’ll even admit my own career hasn’t gone as well as Jill’s, but I don’t hold that against her, I hold that against me. If I’d had the discipline to work 12-14 hours a day and then get up every morning at 0500 to go run 10-15 miles, maybe my career would be going as well as hers was.

    All that said, I can think of a few other things that might have happened over in Kyrgyzstan. I haven’t decided what makes the most sense, but now that I’ve read MCC’s web site, I’ve decided Rich and his crowd probably jumped to conclusions. Since there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know, and since I wasn’t there, I’ll never really know the full truth. But I’m not going to rely on MCC’s opinion any more than I’d rely on Eason Jordan’s opinion.

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