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Friday, August 03, 2007
Military Recruiter Horror Story
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Yesterday, I noticed this post at the CityBeat blogs, calling for anyone with a military recruiter horror story to contact the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC). The blog entry explains, “ IJPC is asking students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors and others for their stories about encounters with aggressive military recruiters. E-mail your stories to or call Kristen or Julie at 513-579-8547.” It just so happens I’ve had some experience with military recruiters bending the rules of engagement with high school students, so I just called to share my observations. Please consider doing the same, if you know anything!
A few years back, when I worked for an area Catholic high school, there were some recruiters who consistently bent the rules of engagement for talking with students.
As I understand the game, recruiters are allowed to set up tables in the cafeteria. They are allowed to answer any questions if students approach them, and they are allowed to ask for names and other information once a student begins the line of inquiry.
Recruiters are not, however, supposed to approach students first. And it makes sense, if you think about it. That’s the line in the sand, to prevent recruiters from harassing students, profiling them, and so forth.
I started noticing that the recruiters would play games with this rule. For example, if a group of guys approached the pop machines, the recruiters would coincidentally always get thirsty at that same moment. They’d make eye contact with a kid, and if the kid said something like “Hi,” or “What’s up”—as is typical when you make eye contact with some high school boys—the recruiters would take that as an open invitation to engage.
Sometimes, they would pretend to be interested in news posted on the bulletin board on the other side of the cafeteria. They would slowly walk towards it, trying to make eye contact the whole walk back there.
After some colleagues started complaining, and after the principal told me there was nothing he could do about it, I decided to start following the recruiters around whenever they would leave their table. This made them very uncomfortable! After two days, they stopped with that game.
Then they had a new idea. They brought these keychains that were free giveaways. At the end of lunch, they would place themselves in the flow of traffic leaving the cafeteria, trying to hand out keychains, playing the eye contact game again. I used to lean against the door jam, staring at them until they returned to their tables.
I know… Some of you will go off how this is no big deal. But the bottom line is that these recruiters broke the rules, and those rules exist to protect kids from the horror stories you may have heard about REALLY aggressive recruiters.
I’ll be eager to see the full IJPC report.
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03 Aug 2007 at 12:10 pm | #
Recruiters are salesmen and will do whatever it takes to get their quota. They attempt to sell the sizzle and not the stake. They make promises to young people that they know will never be fulfilled.
Using slogans like “Be all that you can be” and “An army of one” which leads one to believe that you will be better off than you are now and you can keep your identity. The reality is somewhat different from my experience. They remove anything familiar that might remind you of your past. They give you uniforms and cut off all your hair. They demean you and strip you of any individuality. You become part of a squad, batillion, flight, team or squadron. You are precisely molded for the task at hand, which is murder of your fellow human beings. In order to accomplish this they must first dehumanize the enemy. Gooks, Sand Niggers, Slopes, Commies, Enemy Combatants and Evildoers are some terms used to make you believe that the opponent is less than human. Can’t have soldiers thinking about the wives, children, homes or farms the opposing soldiers left behind to come and participate.
War is financed from the top and money flows to both sides. Money isn’t concerned which side is victorious because they win regardless of the outcome. Halliburton could care less about Americans and our way of life. They left for Dubai so they don’t have to produce records or obey the Law of the Land here. They retain fat contracts to not only supply the means to destroy Iraq but also to rebuild what they have destroyed. Our military is a tool of war mongers that have convinced us that it is in our own best interest to continue war without end. This is nothing new and unfortunately has been accepted as just the way it is. We can change this, we must.
Having invested millions to create this killing machine we pretend to care about the veterans whose lives have been destroyed. Want a recruiting tool. Go to a VA hospital, locally or any other and see the results of this madness. Broken bodies with missing parts and minds that cannot disengage from the terror they have experienced for God, Country and the American way. This is blasphemy and is immoral.
Waving your flag and putting a yellow ribbon on your SUV keeps you in denial. Support our troops, bring them home to protect our nation. Stop policing the world in my name and get the money out of our political process. It is destroying our people and our way of life.
04 Aug 2007 at 06:01 am | #
anon 12:10, in five paragraphs you wrote a superb summary of our country’s “permanent war” economy.
If you’re not already a Beacon contributor, I urge you to submit articles to the Dean.
04 Aug 2007 at 02:09 pm | #
1) Recruiters Will Spend Over $4 Billion This Year to Tell Young People That the Military Is a Shining Path to Higher Education. That the military is their best option for attending college. Yet the Montgomery GI bill pays less than 2/3 of the average cost of a public 4 year university; 2/3 of enlistees never attend college and only 15% graduate.
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/thinking-of-enlisting/GIBill.htm
“Will I Get Money for College?
Maybe, Maybe Not…
Military recruiters often misrepresent the GI Bill as offering free money for college and guarantee a recruit that the money will definitely be there. But a recruiter can never know if you will meet all the conditions for eligibility. The rules are very strict and many veterans simply do not qualify after service.
* Over 2 million veterans have paid into the program since 1985.
* Over 700,000 of these veterans are not eligible at all due to their discharge.
* Only 43% of those who signed up for the military and began paying in to the program have received anything.
* 57% have received nothing at all!
Why does the military push the GI Bill?
The GI Bill is one of the best recruiting aids the military has - money for college is a top reason given for why people say they enlist. The average net amount the military has spent on the GI Bill per year is less than one eighth of what the military spends on recruitment. If the government were to drop the GI Bill program, they would probably have to spend a lot more money on advertising to potential recruits than what they actually pay out to veterans in GI Bill benefits.
* Average cost of public college - $12,127/year
* Average cost of private college - $29,026/year
* Maximum GI Bill benefit - $9,306/year
* Average GI Bill benefit (2004) - $5,540/year
Even if one only considered grants, what the Pentagon spends on college assistance each year is less than 2.9% of civilian federal grant aid for college. Federal aid in the form of loans and grants is still not enough when compared with the level of need, but it doesn’t cost $1,200 to sign up for it, and one is not liable to put in years of long hours and have to risk one’s life or kill other people in order to qualify.”
http://www.mediamouse.org/reviews/05230610_ex.php
“Qualifications for the GI Bill—one of the most talked about assistance programs—include a nonrefundable contribution of $100 dollars a month for the first year of service, three years of service, and an honorable discharge. If these criterions are met, soldiers then receive $985 a month for a maximum of 36 months or $32,000 total—an amount that rarely will cover tuition at state universities. Moreover, only 15% of those receiving the GI Bill are able to obtain their 4-year degree and to receive the $50,000 touted by the Army, one must sign up for infantry, armor, or artillery.”
2) Recruiters Will Spend Over $4 Billion This Year to Tell Young People That Military Service Leads to Acquiring Essential Job Skills. That good jobs await them upon discharge. Yet, veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer unemployment rates 2 to 3 times the national average; only 12% of males and 6% of females report that they made any use of skills they received from military training; and this year 500,000 vets will experience homelessness. One out of three men living on our streets are veterans of military service.
http://www.nchv.org/content.cfm?id=43
“Male veterans are twice as likely to become homeless as their non-veteran counterparts, and female veterans are about four times as likely to become homeless as their non-veteran counterparts. Like their non-veteran counterparts, veterans are at high risk of homelessness due to extremely low or no income, dismal living conditions in cheap hotels or in overcrowded or substandard housing, and lack of access to health care. In addition to these shared factors, a large number of at-risk veterans live with post traumatic stress disorders and addictions acquired during or exacerbated by their military service. In addition, their family and social networks are fractured due to lengthy periods away from their communities of origin. These problems are directly traceable to their experience in military service or to their return to civilian society without appropriate transitional supports.”
3) Recruiters Will Spend Over $4 Billion This Year to Exploit the Lack of Health Care Available to Students Who Fill the Low Wage Jobs without Benefits That Have Become the Hallmark of Our Economy. They will tell students about Free Healthcare. About the excellent treatment they will receive at military hospitals and Veteran’s Affairs benefits. Yet the VA has a claims backlog of nearly 600,000 and 50,000 Iraq veterans are on a never decreasing waiting list of more than 6 months for veteran’s health care. It takes 4-6 months to process an initial claim and almost 2 years to process an appeal resulting in significant hardship to veterans.
http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/11036515/detail.html
“VA workload reports for early February 2007 show that more than 600,000 disability compensation claims are waiting to be answered. In the VA office that handles El Paso claims, more than 21 percent of the 24,000 claims have been pending for at least six months.
In New Mexico, 28 percent of the 4,700 claims are also still pending after six months.
Veterans’ advocates say the backlog means veterans must wait to get money and medical care owed to them that many desperately need. They blame staff shortages at the VA, the aging population of America’s veterans, and the influx of claims from troops injured in the Iraq war.”
4) Recruiters Will Spend Over $4 Billion This Year to Tell Young People That Military Service Is the Best Way to Learn the Skills of Leadership and Self-discipline. That leading and unconditionally following their peers into battle will result in lessons that will last a lifetime. Lessons that can only be won through military action. Yet what of those veterans who are homeless, who are un or underemployed, who suffer from mental trauma, who find that the lessons learned from unconditional obedience have led them to a darker side of human experience?
How about the leadership and discipline lessons learned from struggling to heal the sick? To end world poverty and homelessness? How about to just ending child poverty at home? Or ending the AIDS/HIV scourge? Achieving world peace? Saving a livable ecology? Advancing social justice and democracy? Ending racism? Winning collective bargaining rights for janitors, clerks and hotel workers?
04 Aug 2007 at 04:15 pm | #
I find it disturbing that mankind is so vulnerable to lies of other humans. The bigger the lie, the more effective it seems to be. When the bait used is improving ones situation it becomes magnetic for the oppressed. People routinely decide against their own best interest because the liars are sophisticated. Wearing fine clothing and driving fancy cars appears to mean they can lie, cheat and steal with impunity. Having the main stream media to repeat your lies ad nausium cements the words into reality. The military has had years and unlimited resources to create this illusion.
This is a cancer in the bowels of our nation, that if left untreated threatens to destroy us. When the dictator, whom we call President, stands on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in full military regalia and spouts “mission accomplished” it is an embarassment and a national disgrace. Mr. AWOL puffs up his chest and struts like a banty rooster. If he is a military member, like his flight suit and painted name on the aircraft would indicate, he cannot be the commander in chief because he is no longer a civilian. This publicity stunt was a recruiting tool for military and was overlooked because the national fervor was being fueled by the neo-conmen that control him. The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has become The hand of deceipt and the home of the slave.
05 Aug 2007 at 05:21 am | #
(Speaking of Recruiter horror stories. I happened to dig up this story from City Clowncil Candidate Sean Holbrook)
An Army of Sean
There came a day when I figured that sooner or later I was going to have to get a job,
or something of that nature. I was still in my senior year of high school and college
didn’t seem to be an option, so I decided to join the ARMY.
“How bad could it really be?” I wondered. Before I knew it the soldiers at the
recruiting office had me at this shit hole called MEPS, to take the military version of the
SAT and to get a physical exam.
During the physical, I had to stand in a cold room with about 30 other guys in their
underwear while we waited our turn to go into these cold white little rooms with a
doctor in them, who fondled our balls for hernias, and made up spread our ass cheeks
under a fluorescent light so he could take a gander inside. After having our private parts
examined, we were all then sent to get HIV tests.
The idea of getting a HIV test scarred the shit out of me because I had slept with a lot
of nasty girls unprotected, abused IV drugs, slept with prostitutes and had swallowed
prostitutes blood—so I figured my chances were pretty much 50/50. A few of my
friends from my heavy drug using days had gotten the virus, I figured that it would be
my fate for all the evil shit I had done.
Over the next few weeks every time the phone would ring, I’d think it was the Army
calling to tell me I had HIV. Well, no HIV call ever came and I ended up graduating from
High School in Indiana. At that point, I was so ready for school to be over with that I
didn’t even go to my graduation, and shipped out for boot camp a few days later.
Honestly, I never really wanted to go into the Army; for me, the thought of it was better
than working at a McDonald’s. And really at the time what else did I have to do?
In the middle of June, I ended up at an airport in Columbus. This flight would take me to
Missouri, and to my boot camp at Fort Leonard wood. On the flight all I could think was,
“What in the fuck am I doing?” Every time the plane would rattle with turbulence I
prayed that it would just rip apart in mid-air or crash into the ground, giving me a guilt-free out to the stupid decision I had made. Eventually, the
plane landed safely and I was put on a bus driving into the Missouri wilderness, arriving
there around 2:00 a.m.
The bus door opened and
a drill sergeant screaming, “You have ten seconds to grab your shit and get off my
bus!”, greeted me. After our ten seconds were up, the drill sergeant then proceeded to
walk down the aisle of the bus swinging his little baton back and forth at us. To evade
the drill sergeant, some of us opened the emergency door at the back of the bus and
ran out, others climbed out the small windows of the bus, while the rest of us crawled
under the drill sergeants swinging baton. Once outside, we were made to line up and
be quiet, which became an impossible task when we all noticed something in the bus
window. There was a slightly overweight kid who got stuck in the window while he
was trying to get out, behind this little shit was the drill sergeant open-hand spanking
the kid as he flailed around suspended in mid-air. None of us could contain our
laughter and for that, we were made to maintain a push-up position for 30 minutes.
The next few days in Army processing were pretty much hell, you had to have a battle
buddy for everything you did. A battle buddy was just someone you were assigned to
and the two of you had to do everything together—you had to follow your battle buddy
into the bathroom to take a shit if he needed to shit, and shit is all my battle buddy ever
did.
The second day of processing I found out the true importance of a battle buddy. On
that day we had to get our shots. The recruiting office told us we would receive 3 air
gun shots containing eight different medicines. Well, something seemed odd outside
the lab when I didn’t here any air guns, and there were also two guys with towels
dipped in buckets of alcohol. Outside the lab before entering, these guys would wipe
your arms down with the alcohol then push you into the room where you would be
greeted with 8 guys all with 1 shot each in hand.
When I saw this sight the first thing I did was say, “Whoa…wait,” which was quickly
followed by one of the guys saying, “I am not staying late cause you want to be a
pussy.” Then the jabbing of needles began, after all 8 guys stuck me in the arms with
their needles I was sent to another station to receive a Tuberculosis test, and have my
blood drawn. After the blood drawing I was sent to another room where my pants were
ordered off and I was given a shot of antibiotics in the ass with a two-inch needle.
After we thought all the shots were over and about ten of us passed out, we went into
an auditorium and were made to sign a paper saying we waived the Army’s
responsibility if we died from an experimental pneumonia vaccine we would be given.
“Pneumonia vaccine? Experimental? Death? What the fuck?” I thought, but still I
went into that room and was given the shot. Afterwards, we were made to face our
battle buddies and march in place to get the medicine working; we had to face our
battle buddy because only 50% of us got the real shot, the rest got a placebo. Our job
as battle buddies was to observe each other and catch the other if he passed out from
the shot, the one who passed out was the one who got the real shot.
Even though the heat and humidity sucked, and it was boring as hell for the most part,
everything was going just fine until it was found out that I lied to my processing officers
in the recruiting process at MEPS. Taking the advise of my recruiters, I didn’t mention
to the people at MEPS that I had been in a serious car wreck earlier in the year, fucking
my shoulder up to the point where I needed a few months of physical therapy to repair
it. I never considered that maybe the FBI investigation performed on all new soldiers
might discover the truth. Why would the recruiters tell me to lie, when they knew I may
get caught? Oh yeah! They get paid a bonus just for me enlisting, they don’t care if it
meant I would get a dishonorable discharge, and have to face some military prison
time.
When the information was brought to me, I was informed I would have to stand before a
military court panel. My only thought was that karma was catching up with me and I
started freaking out. I was so pissed at my recruiters, and even more pissed at myself
for joining the Army in the first place; I needed a plan and I needed one fast—there was
no way in hell a dishonorable discharge was going on my record. That night in the
barracks, I stayed up and thought of different ways to make the Army think I was crazy,
if they thought I was crazy I’d go to a mental hospital instead of jail, and get a general
medical discharge. But really, what could I do?
The next morning, I woke up with a plan; not only would this ensure my admission into
the mental hospital, but it would also embarrass the shit out of my recruiters. It was
probably around 5:00 a.m. When everyone had left for formation; I stayed behind and
stripped out of my Battle Dress Uniform. I got completely naked then took out 2 tubes
of my toothpaste and covered my body with the toothpaste; after that, I took my locker
key and started sawing my pillow until the center was missing. I then placed my hand
inside the gutted pillow and grabbed as many feathers as I could. The feathers were
then placed all over my body, when I ran out of feathers I grabbed another pillow and
cut it open for more feathers. When it was all done I had created the world’s largest
chicken suit.
By the time I made it outside everybody was in formation; around 300 soldiers waiting
to be counted so they could eat breakfast. First came gasps, followed by laughter from
the new soldiers, and then came the screams of the drill sergeants at me. Every time a
scream would come my way, I would follow it with a “cluck” and little dance around like
a chicken. Eventually, one of the sergeants grabbed my arm; when he did this
toothpaste and feathers got all over his hand, which he quickly withdrew. It must have
smelled like mint for a radius of 10 feet around me. After the drill sergeant’s quick grab
and release, he then called the MP’s to come pick me up, and dragged me into the
barracks to put on some underwear.
“Oh shit,” was my only thought. I didn’t want to get picked up by the MP’s—I’d go to
jail for sure then. It was my intention to go to the hospital. I had to think fast so when
the drill sergeant pushed me into the barracks to get cleaned up and put something on,
I took my bootlaces from a boot in my locker and went into the bathroom to make a
noose. Once the noose was made I threw it over a stall rail and tied it, then put the
other end around my neck and waited till I heard the sounds of the sergeant coming
closer. When I heard him open the door, I dropped enough so the noose would cut off
circulation but still left me able to stand up if I needed to. Eventually, the sergeant
found me turning blue and cut me down with a knife he had. The look of total horror on
his face was unbelievable and as I laid on that cold floor gasping for air, I started
clucking again. This time I was sent to the hospital; they took all my shaving razors,
boot and shoe laces, belt and anything else with which I could kill myself.
The mental hospital made me sign an agreement saying I wouldn’t kill myself and made
me wear slippers that had smiley faces on them. Eventually they evaluated me and
started my medical discharge paperwork. It would take 3 weeks for all the paperwork to
go through, and they couldn’t keep me in the hospital all that time so they sent me to a
new group that they nicknamed CCC for people that would soon be leaving. CCC
stood for crazies, criminals and cripples.
In the CCC they really didn’t care what we did; one day we were locked in the barracks
while some colonels and generals came to inspect a new area being built at the fort.
They locked us up so we wouldn’t be an embarrassment, so that day we took all the
mattresses off of the bunks and made a giant fort with them. In the CCC you had to find
some way to keep yourself amused or you would go crazy—you controlled nothing but
your imagination. You had a set bedtime, set wake up time, set meals…everything was
set up and structured for you. You didn’t know when you would be allowed to go
home…It was almost like jail.
Most of the people in CCC were not crazy, criminal, nor crippled they were just creative
people who said, “Screw all this.” We didn’t really want to be there, we just didn’t want
to get real jobs in our hometowns and suffer our parent’s same fate. We all thought the
Army would send us to exotic places and give us unbelievable opportunities; but we
soon found out that we were nothing more than numbers. The Army was not waiting
for us to arrive—no one was waiting for us to arrive; if we wanted to do something
special we would have to make our own paths…Not follow the path that millions of
nameless soldiers have already made. I have nothing but respect for the Army, but I
learned it’s not for me.
One of the guys I came across in the CCC was a guy named Private Dunn, who was a
pretty creative guy and just as bored as I. One night we took a towel, a permanent
marker, 50 index cards and two rocks that we had shaped into dice and drew numbers
on. We cut the index cards in half and made two piles of them; we drew on the only
white towel we could find and made a game board with it. We called this game
Dunnopoly in honor of the private, and used a penny, nickel, dime, quarter and half
dollar piece for markers. As primitive as this game was, it filled many of the nights with
laughter and was a good boredom killer. There was also another person in CCC that
made the days a little better, her name was Private Kuntz; everyday I would get the
biggest kick out of hearing the drill sergeant scream “Private Cuntzzzzz” during roll
call.
Eventually, the Army sent me back home after many weeks. Once home, I asked
myself, “Now what?” I had to do something, but what?
Just not sure what to do, I ended up going down to a local college and started classes.
I also got a job working at a drive-thru. The drive-thru job sucked because I had to sit in
a thirty degree cooler all day and stack beer while it was ninety degrees outside, but it
gave me the opportunity to steal as much free beer as I wanted.
Classes started and everything started to make sense; I realized how good I really had
it. Sure most people would call me a loser, but I was on top of the world. I worked 20
hours a week, took 12 credit hours at school, lived in my parent’s attic and had all the
free beer I could drink. I drove 1984 Cutlass Supreme so there was no car payment;
hell, my only bill was a $50 dollar-a-month liability payment on the car. The beginning
of college was great, I was sober and felt free but that was all soon to change.
05 Aug 2007 at 04:13 pm | #
Dean: pray, how does a recruiter “profile” students?
05 Aug 2007 at 10:19 pm | #
Desiree,
Thank you for posting that story by Sean Holbrook. Until he got the toothpaste out his experience was similar to mine forty years ago. Drill Instructors would pick out two or three and humiliate them in front of everyone to instill fear in the rest. A very effective tool for the corp but with sometimes devastating consequences. I arrived back at the barracks from the chow hall to find such a victim hanging in the latrine. He obviously was not as creative as Holbrook or as self confident.
Sean Holbrook for City Council in 2007
06 Aug 2007 at 02:01 pm | #
The stories we’re reading related here have a direct street parallel.
But before I provide you with that analogy, let me relate my own recruitment story, circa 1967.
I received a very nice invitation from Annapolis, a recuitment letter when I was a Junior in prep school. The letter was from the swimming coach at Annapolis. It was not a form letter. It was a personal appeal, hand signed, and tyyped on a typewriter for this was before word processors. I was a swimmer, and a damned good one. (At fifty-seven I’ve recently begun swimming again, a mile butterfly five days a week.)
The letter made it clear, I would be accepted to Annapolis, that everything would be paid for, that I would be among the elite of the Armed Forces when I graduated as a commissioned officer in the Navy. The right-out-of-the-starting-gate deal placed before me was 1000 times better than anything these bum recruits that walk into the recruitment offices and sign up would or could ever even achieve within the armed services regardless of their realized potential as they matured. This is the military, and how the military works.
It seems to me now, as it did then, this was a criminal enterprise that was asking me to sign up and dedicate the first ten years, (four in college and a six year enlistment), of my life toward killing Vietnamese men, women, and children half way around the world.
No American who fought in Vietnam was defending their country, just as no one who fights in Iraq is defending their country but the Iraqis who fight American soldiers.
The American soldiers in Iraq are the bad guys, just the same as the American soldiers in Vietnam were the bad guys.
The military fighting these foreign wars of imperialism are wholly criminal enterprises. If you sign up today, you’re fighting for Exxon/Mobile, not Uncle Sam.
Now, as for the parallel, and the analogy, reading these stories about how these kids were swindled into signing up to be child soldiers; these experiences related sound exactly like how young girls are made into the hard working-est whores and drug addicts on any major metropolitan street corner in the country. They were all someone’s kid sister before they were recruited.
Like I said, I’m fifty-seven. I survived without yielding to a temptation far greater than anything being offered these kids writing here today. When I hear TV news, the news honoring heroes who gave their lives in Iraq, all I can think of are the whores that have died on our own mean streets during the same time span.
Their pimps and drug dealers would call them heroes too.
I’d lay my life down for a worthy cause in a heart beat. But these are not worthy causes.
I’m telling you like it is, like from a father to his son.
So, don’t be a fucking jerk. You don’t see President Bush’s kids being pimped out like that, and you won’t see mine either.
Don Robertson, The American Philosopher
07 Aug 2007 at 02:26 am | #
Don,
In a few days I will reach my 60th birthday and the parallels you draw between hookers and soldiers are from the same root. We could additionally include the people of color, native peoples and any other group that falls outside the box of WASP. Our ability to overlook the Golden Rule about doing unto others as you would have done to you is denial at its finest. Our ability to look down on other people and brutalize them because they don’t share our idealogical beliefs or more pointedly to use this as cover to steal their resources and destroy their sovergnity makes me livid.
The criminal punk in the White House is carrying on a family tradition. Prescott, George W’s grandaddy financed the Nazi’s in WWII and Daddy George led us into the mess in Iraq over a decade ago. This is to enrich their war profits through the Carlysle Group and other investments. Having served has head of the CIA George H.W. Bush has all the dirt on everybody that is anybody in Washington DC. Rather than have their carreers end our representatives acquiesce and our sons and daughters are murdered. You hit the nail on the head when you called this a criminal enterprise. Financing from the banksters funds both sides of the global cluster f$$k we refer to as the war on terror. The terrorists have taken the reins of government and the American People are being put into a hole that we may never get out of.
I do have a solution or at least a suggestion. First we need to redefine the commons to include water, food, energy, air, healthcare, transportation and natural resources. Next we need to investigate and prosecute these war criminals and seize all ill gotten gains. After that we must recover the gold that has been handed over to the international bankers through the fraud called the Federal Reserve. The national debt owed to these thieves must be cancelled and Congress needs to stop the fraudulent process of borrowing to fund pork that mainly goes to corporate welfare. All homeowners that are indebted to the banksters and in danger of forclosure need help to keep their property and home mortgage interest be reduced to a level that will service the loans 1-2% and capped at that. The CAFR funds around the country, currently around 100 Trillion federal reserve notes, that are now invested in war related corporations, should be used to fund the financing of homes for our people. Then we need to organize a voluntary group of citizens and all people that have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution for these united states(veterans and former civil servants) to review all acts of Congress, beginning with the most recent and working backward, to ensure Constitutional compliance and overturn any that don’t meet this standard which would eliminate admiralty law and relegate it to where it belongs. We the People are soverign in America and the lawyers that have led us to believe otherwise to enrich their club need to be given a fair trial by a court of the citizens they have harmed.
In closing I have one other suggestion. We revive the original thirteenth ammendment and prohibit any member of the BAR (British Accreditation Registry) from holding office in the legislative branch of government. This is a circular jobs scheme that makes lawyers rich because they write the laws and then interpret them as they choose. This special class of people, the club, has been destroying lives and acting under the color of law for far too long.
07 Aug 2007 at 02:42 am | #
Anon 12:10.... I am an Australian who stumbled across your magnificent piece as I was being redirected from another site. What you have written is truely amazing. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you have said. Are we so lame and without voice that we cannot do something about this? I am as frustrated as I am sad. I am a father of a ten month old boy: I will not sit back and allow this to happen to him. I am truely impressed with your eloquence, your intelligence and your passion. Keep it up!
07 Aug 2007 at 05:57 am | #
Easy, they don’t bother, for example, the skinny kid with thick glasses and a calculator.
07 Aug 2007 at 07:16 am | #
please see the recruiter scene in “Farenheit 9/11” for info on military ‘profiling’....
07 Aug 2007 at 10:42 am | #
The story of the Drill Sergeants makes me wonder:
Is no one smart enough to see it for what it is, what it’s purpose is?
About halfway through boot camp, I figured it out. From that moment on, I smiled. I got sent to every punishment they could think of; I even got sent to train with the SEALS… All because I knew their secret and couldn’t stop smiling at that knowledge. (Funny thing, the folk at Boot Camp thought I was nuts, but the SEALS actually asked me to join them because of it.) Fact of the matter is, the Drill Sergeants/Company Commanders go through the embarrassment and the stupid activities not to get any joy, not to make you miserable… but instead to get people to their lowest common denominator, where they start depending on each other for their day-to-day… It’s a “safe” analogy to the realities of the military… as anyone who’s ever been on a Aircraft Carrier that’s on fire will tell you, you HAVE to trust your fellow implicitly and without hesitation, no matter how silly it might seem to you when you don’t have the same information he does… It will save your life.
And the real question: Why the hell are we talking about Drill Instructors? By the time that you get to Boot Camp, you’re (as the Holbrook story makes CLEAR) recognizing that YOUR choice got you there. No, the real issue is the RECRUITERS, whose deceptive practices get folk there… not the Drill Instructors who actually teach valuable lessons.
Holbrook missed that part in his “Oh, poor me” diatribe. Fact of the matter is, he made a bad decision and didn’t have the honor or the self-respect to own it. The man deserved a Dishonorable discharge.
07 Aug 2007 at 12:06 pm | #
Military recruiters, and the wars they sell, are just part of the process of Natural Selection. Those who are stupid, ignorant or just plain trying-to-get-something-for-nothing get weeded out of our gene pool by these wars. This is the perfect example of addition-by-subtraction. Losing these fools improves the overall intelligence and morality level of the world as a whole and the United States specifically.
Interfering with this process in any way other than education to the potential dupes is doing society a disservice. We NEED to cull the greedy and arrogant members of our society and so we NEED to allow the stupid and greedy kids to fall for the lies of the recruiters. We NEED to get them killed off in these wars so that we can gain in overall intelligence and morality.
Is it moral to save the individual and thus doom the group as a whole or is it better to let the individual get lost so that the group grows, improves and survives? If the human race is to survive, it must divest itself of the weakest, stupidest, and most immoral members of the group.
07 Aug 2007 at 03:39 pm | #
Doug,
The Darwinist thinking you display here is further proof that the theory of natural selection is flawed. Did the world benefit from WWI or WWII which were the direct result of your failed logic. In order to blame the victim you use an intellectual argument that has kept mankind bound to brutal dictators through the ages. Kings and rulers have used this as a basis for oppressing people and dominating them for their own enrichment. Throughout history the result is always the same. Somebody always loses their head. You have been educated to think in terms of right and wrong/win or lose. The basic question will never be answered in those terms because the answer is unrelated to it. The answer will be found in your heart and not your head. Another example of exchanging truth for more intellectual thinking.
18 Aug 2007 at 09:44 pm | #
"against the rules”
So is the invasion of a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs.
29 Feb 2008 at 12:20 pm | #
I had a recruiter use carbon paper under my contract for a tech job. Upon looking under it I saw another contract for the infantry!
“Whats this?” I asked.
“W-well, ur, its a...secondary contract, if I cant get you the tech job for electronics.”
“Bullshit. You knew firsthand I didnt’ qualify for it, so you pulled this. YOU SOB!” I said and walked out, called his boss and he is selling cars now.
BEWARE! Teens, they are out there.