Navy says review board will not look at case of SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who will retire

[Igel]

2. It's a way out of the difficulty.

A lot of employees of retirement age when they hit some problem that properly would lead to termination are merely allowed to retire. It spares everybody effort and gets rid of the problem quickly. It often serves a greater good, in that if the retiree has a family they're not suddenly destitute at retirement age.

The only time I've ever seen somebody fire somebody and disallow retirement are cases like Comey, where he was fired just before he was scheduled to retire (losing part, but far from all, of his pension) and where there was some outside circumstance that made termination and not retirement necessary. (Not "preferred," not "face saving," but either they terminated the guy or there'd be no consequence at all because he wasn't going anywhere.)

In the case of Gallagher people want to punish him for what he was accused of, not what he was found guilty of, on the premise that if we punish our own then our own guys, when captured by ISIS and their ilk, will treat them nicely. ISIS follows its own drummer, though. It beheads those it wants to behead for PR, it executes those it doesn't want to screw with, it holds as hostages those it thinks can be used as goods for barter. ISIS don't care.