> I find it ironic that being caught lying once is considered something that proves you're not officer material. There seems no controversy that the middle man

> I find it ironic that being caught lying once is considered something that proves you're not officer material. There seems no controversy that the middle management era of staff duty seems designed to filter out good officers and keep the worst or at least keep the folks unable to escape. Their point of view is if you start with a better pool of O-1 then as the good officers are eliminated on the march upward in rank, forcing the worst O-1 to none the less be better officers at the start will result in better O-4 range officers which eventually, in theory, will someday result in better O-9 officers. Remember unlike corporations, the military promotes from within, so todays 2nd Lts will literally be the commanding generals in about 25 years. Most corporations do not promote from within, or rarely do, and life long careers are dead in corporate world, so there's no ethical or moral argument in trying to make superior paper filing clerks today so as to get a better CEO in forty years. Its also worth considering that there's a peculiar form of hazing or abuse of junior military personnel where "caught" is really a combo of intelligence testing and social skills testing where at least one is required to pass. The reason for a baroquely complex process to take leave is to select for personnel who are some mixture of extremely smart able to outthink the opposition or good at social skills to schmooze successfully (which is a military intel or military police or green beret skill...). There's a power law distribution of importance where almost all decisions are not "newsworthy". Technically its an honor violation to fill out the wrong leave form and obtain the wrong signature in the wrong box and put it in the wrong mailbox, its an IQ and/or social skills test or hazing for juniors to avoid situations like that. In theory the kids are supposed to be selected via that process to be smart enough and observant enough to avoid making dumb mistakes when it actually counts. In practice once in a long while psychopaths get thru the process and bend the hazing to more self serving purposes, LOL, and THEN that stuff makes the news, not unlike a lot of corporate internal politics. Or more explicitly, you're supposed to not "get caught" technically AWOL because you're supposed to be smart enough to read the policy book and/or friendly enough with the "old timer" O-2 who's been there an entire year before you, such that you file your paperwork properly and avoid being technically AWOL. With the hope that someday if you make it to O-9 rank, or perhaps earlier, you'll have absorbed via osmosis enough written regs and adopted a hopefully moral culture that when you have to make an important decision you won't screw up.