TychoMonolyth
Boreal Curing
Didn't Hugo Chávez have a huge parade with armored cars celebrating the return of all their gold?
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top of the heap to third world status in one generation
- Thread starter Gry
- Start date
early version of waterboarding? what it looks like from here...
Yep. Part of Van Deman’s legacy.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/how-a-young-army-officer-built-americas-empire-of-paranoia-with-torture-surveillance-and-85000-index-cards/
G
Guest
Not only did they avoid irritating the French in another moment of diplomatic cowardice and perpetuation of boundary-challenged colonialism, but they managed to give the Military Industrial Complex a good shot in the financial arm, and removed about 58,000 US Troops and millions of Vietnamese (and others) from the labor pool, ultimately creating a somewhat greater demand for labor in both countries.
And the smug sociopaths likely saw that as a good thing, helping out the wages of the working man, however indirectly, while making their DoD contractor buddies a shit-ton of cash.
But not my idea of a win-win..
The Forgotten People Fighting the Forever War
A devastating incident in Afghanistan shows the perils of relying on Special Operations alone to fight the nation’s battles.
Both the Trump and Obama administrations relied heavily on highly trained Special Forces units to keep Afghanistan from collapse. The strategy has kept recent episodes of the 21-year Afghan War out of the public eye, but it is failing to stabilize the country and is straining the United States military’s elite troops, who serve back-to-back combat tours without an end in sight and disproportionately give their lives in service of a war the public knows almost nothing about.
When Kunduz, a major city in northern Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban in 2015, U.S. Special Forces were dispatched on a secret mission to help Afghan commandos recapture it. Under-resourced and unprepared, the soldiers found themselves in the midst of a pitched battle with conflicting orders. The story of how it led to one of the U.S. military’s worst disasters in Afghanistan shows the perils of relying on Special Operations alone to fight the nation’s wars.
Major Michael Hutchinson, a Green Beret with the 3rd Special Forces Group, was in charge of the secret operation to help Afghan commandos recapture Kunduz. It was his fifth combat deployment, counting three tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, yet he had never experienced such intense fighting.
The mission had been scrambled together after Kunduz had come under attack four days earlier. The Afghan army and police, plagued by corruption and poor leadership, had abandoned their posts and left the city to the Taliban with barely a fight. It fell within hours.
Hutch, as the other soldiers called him, worried that the slightest mistake or miscalculation could end in disaster. The Green Berets had reached the area by air and lacked armored vehicles. Some had driven into Kunduz on quad bikes. They had a single map between them, and no one had set foot in the city before.After four days of fighting, they were still hunkered down at the city’s police headquarters, where the American and Afghan teams had set up a command center. That wasn’t the original plan: They were supposed to have established a foothold at the governor’s office, but got lost in the dark. They were under attack from all sides, and only air strikes and the snipers on the walls were preventing the Taliban from overrunning the base.
Hutchinson was in contact with an AC-130 gunship, which was circling overhead, to provide air support to his Afghan colleagues who were preparing to hit a building believed to be a Taliban command and control center.
The Afghans didn’t have radios, though, and were relying on limited cellphone coverage to make contact with Hutchinson. Communications were patchy, but this process had become routine. After hearing gunfire erupt, Hutchinson’s interpreter was able to reach them and confirm they needed air support for the building they were attacking. Hutchinson ordered the gunship to fire.
A series of technical and communication failures aboard the aircraft had prevented the crew from preparing for the mission. It didn’t help that Hutchinson’s team had run out of the batteries needed for the video receivers typically used to communicate with the aircrew.
That meant he didn’t know that things had gone seriously wrong. The building he had ordered the AC-130 gunship to strike was not a Taliban control center, but a trauma hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières.There, Evangeline Cua was in between surgeries. She had her own practice in the Philippines, her home country, but had taken a break to work for the aid group over the summer. It had been an intense several months, but nothing compared with the past four days. The hospital had been flooded with patients since the city had fallen, and health-care workers were using hallways and offices to create space for makeshift beds. Her heart broke when entire families came in, and she couldn’t save them all.The first rounds from the AC-130 struck the hospital’s emergency room. The operating theaters shook and the windows rattled. Cua looked up and exchanged glances with an assistant surgeon who had finished suturing a patient’s wound. The doctors had grown used to the sounds of explosions and gunfire. They laughed uneasily. It was probably just another clash, she thought, exhausted.
But then a second blast struck with terrifying force. All three theaters were in use when it hit. The surgeons leapt up and fled down the hallway, leaving their anesthetized patients on the operating tables. The doctors and nurses gathered across the hall, dragging tables together for cover, but it was too hard to breathe through the acrid smoke, so Cua groped her way back to the operating theater.
Her mind raced to understand what was happening. The hospital was supposed to be protected. All sides had recognized its impartiality. An air strike? Why? Another deafening blast shook the building, and the ceiling came crashing down, plunging them into darkness. She saw her patient’s heart monitor flatline. We’re going to die, she thought. Rounds hammered the building.
She imagined her remains being delivered to her parents in the Philippines in an urn. Or worse, what if her body was never found? She tried to focus on the patients’ lives she had saved during her time in Kunduz, but all she could think of were her parents. I’m sorry, Mom, she thought. I’m sorry. Nearby, she heard her colleague praying softly. “Pray with me,” he told her.
MSF’s country director, Guilhem Molinie, was in Kabul when he received a call from the hospital reporting the air strike. He immediately dialed Bagram Airfield, praying for a quick response. He felt sick to his stomach.
“The trauma center is under attack,” Molinie told the U.S. officer who picked up. “You’re bombing the hospital!”
The officer ran to the joint-operations center, pulled the battle captain aside, and told him about the call in a whisper. But Lieutenant Colonel Jason Johnston, the 3rd Group battalion commander, who was sitting in the next row, heard and leapt up. He asked the officer to repeat himself. None of them was aware the air strike was under way.
They tried reaching Hutchinson, but couldn’t get through for several minutes. They identified a plume of smoke rising from the center of Kunduz over a video feed and pulled the coordinates to check them against the ones provided by the hospital. When Hutchinson called back, Johnston told him about the report. Hutchinson stopped to process the message. He replayed the past hour and didn’t see how it could have happened.
“No way,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
Hutchinson ordered the aircraft to stop shooting, but didn’t mention the report to anyone else. As hardened as the other Green Berets were, it would deliver a terrible blow to morale, adding to the stress of the ongoing battle for the city. He told himself there must have been a mistake.But in the first morning light, the destroyed hospital building was smoldering. Cua and the other doctors and nurses who survived the bombing set to work trying to save the wounded as the sun came up. In the end, 42 people, including 14 staff members, would be reported killed in the strike.
Read: The forever war fought by America’s allies
After a week-long battle, Kunduz was more or less back under government control. Afghan soldiers cheered as the Americans drove past. Hutchinson hadn’t heard anything more about the air strike and, because he and his team had not visited the site of the blast, assumed the report was a mistake.
Hutchinson was elated. This was what he had secretly dreamed of since childhood: participating in a battle for survival with a small band of brothers. Every emotion he had suppressed during the battle hit him at once. His men were high with the feeling of being alive. They felt like heroes in a movie. They had saved a city from ruin against the odds. They weren’t prepared for the news.
On TV back at the camp, the world’s attention was indeed focused on Kunduz—but not on the Taliban’s defeat. Every major outlet was covering the U.S. bombing of the hospital, and asking whether the air strike was a war crime.
Hutchinson still believed he and his men had done the right thing by going into the city, and tried to console Ben Vontz, the young Green Beret responsible for communicating with the gunship that night, who was distraught. If the mission had failed, the Taliban would be entrenched in Kunduz by now, he told Vontz, and a door?to?door battle to drive them out would have yielded an even higher human cost.
It had been 10 years since Hutchinson’s first tour in Iraq. A decade was a long time to learn how to process the horrors of war. To him, it was clear the bombing was a mistake caused by equipment failure, exhaustion, and human error. Everyone had done their best in a situation they should never have been put in, he told Vontz. The combat controller was 25, and it had been his first time in battle. He was inconsolable.
By this point, an investigation team had reached Kunduz; they wanted to see Hutchinson immediately. The investigators stared at him uncomfortably. The media were describing Hutchinson as a potential war criminal. He refused to flinch and promised to help with the inquiry.
Hutch called home. His wife answered.
“Is everything okay?” Tina asked. “Because they’re calling it a war crime.”
Hutchinson was relieved of his duties and sent to Bagram Airfield to await the results of the inquiry. He felt confident that the investigating officers would realize the soldiers had done their best. The strike was an unfortunate mistake made in the heat of battle. He planned to bravely accept whatever punishment the military saw fit to administer and move on.
When a chaplain visited from Kabul, he was shocked to find Hutchinson in good spirits. He had been assessed to be a suicide risk. “I’m fine,” Hutchinson told him, trying to sound upbeat.
But he had started to hear that some in the Army’s headquarters believed he had violated the rules of engagement and wanted him to stand trial for murder. He tried to stay positive and kept to his gym routine to fight off the depression and negative thoughts nagging at him.
It had been 10 years since Hutchinson’s first tour in Iraq. A decade was a long time to learn how to process the horrors of war. To him, it was clear the bombing was a mistake caused by equipment failure, exhaustion, and human error. Everyone had done their best in a situation they should never have been put in, he told Vontz. The combat controller was 25, and it had been his first time in battle. He was inconsolable.
By this point, an investigation team had reached Kunduz; they wanted to see Hutchinson immediately. The investigators stared at him uncomfortably. The media were describing Hutchinson as a potential war criminal. He refused to flinch and promised to help with the inquiry.
Hutch called home. His wife answered.
“Is everything okay?” Tina asked. “Because they’re calling it a war crime.”
Hutchinson was relieved of his duties and sent to Bagram Airfield to await the results of the inquiry. He felt confident that the investigating officers would realize the soldiers had done their best. The strike was an unfortunate mistake made in the heat of battle. He planned to bravely accept whatever punishment the military saw fit to administer and move on.
When a chaplain visited from Kabul, he was shocked to find Hutchinson in good spirits. He had been assessed to be a suicide risk. “I’m fine,” Hutchinson told him, trying to sound upbeat.
But he had started to hear that some in the Army’s headquarters believed he had violated the rules of engagement and wanted him to stand trial for murder. He tried to stay positive and kept to his gym routine to fight off the depression and negative thoughts nagging at him.He couldn’t tell Tina much over the phone, but he tried to reassure her that everything would be fine once the investigation had run its course. She was on her own, pregnant and juggling two kids.ina knew not to ask questions, but she was scared about what was going to happen to them. “I’m not going to jail,” he promised her. She was worried. The images from the hospital were etched on her mind. She couldn’t help but read the stories about the staff and patients who had survived, even if in her heart she knew that her husband had done his best.The military changed its official story several times. The secrecy surrounding the investigation fueled the public’s worst suspicions, that the hospital had been struck on purpose. Hutchinson felt that people would understand if they heard firsthand how the mistake had occurred. He asked to be allowed to explain publicly what had happened. The battalion told him it wasn’t a good idea.
The investigators called Hutchinson in for questioning over and over again. Eventually, the investigating officer, Brigadier General Richard Kim, approached him. He didn’t believe Hutchinson’s version of events, he said. He thought that Hutchinson had broken the rules of engagement and illegally used pre-assault fire. “Would you like to change your story?” he asked.
Hutchinson was shocked. He could accept having made a mistake and that civilians had died as a result. He could accept that the tragedy was preventable. He was prepared to accept whatever punishment was meted out. But to be accused of trying to cover up a deliberate act? That was too much. It couldn’t be real.
This post was excerpted from Donati’s upcoming book, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War.
Jessica Donati is a national-security correspondent and former Kabul bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...-afghanistan/617776/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
A devastating incident in Afghanistan shows the perils of relying on Special Operations alone to fight the nation’s battles.
Both the Trump and Obama administrations relied heavily on highly trained Special Forces units to keep Afghanistan from collapse. The strategy has kept recent episodes of the 21-year Afghan War out of the public eye, but it is failing to stabilize the country and is straining the United States military’s elite troops, who serve back-to-back combat tours without an end in sight and disproportionately give their lives in service of a war the public knows almost nothing about.
When Kunduz, a major city in northern Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban in 2015, U.S. Special Forces were dispatched on a secret mission to help Afghan commandos recapture it. Under-resourced and unprepared, the soldiers found themselves in the midst of a pitched battle with conflicting orders. The story of how it led to one of the U.S. military’s worst disasters in Afghanistan shows the perils of relying on Special Operations alone to fight the nation’s wars.
Major Michael Hutchinson, a Green Beret with the 3rd Special Forces Group, was in charge of the secret operation to help Afghan commandos recapture Kunduz. It was his fifth combat deployment, counting three tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, yet he had never experienced such intense fighting.
The mission had been scrambled together after Kunduz had come under attack four days earlier. The Afghan army and police, plagued by corruption and poor leadership, had abandoned their posts and left the city to the Taliban with barely a fight. It fell within hours.
Hutch, as the other soldiers called him, worried that the slightest mistake or miscalculation could end in disaster. The Green Berets had reached the area by air and lacked armored vehicles. Some had driven into Kunduz on quad bikes. They had a single map between them, and no one had set foot in the city before.After four days of fighting, they were still hunkered down at the city’s police headquarters, where the American and Afghan teams had set up a command center. That wasn’t the original plan: They were supposed to have established a foothold at the governor’s office, but got lost in the dark. They were under attack from all sides, and only air strikes and the snipers on the walls were preventing the Taliban from overrunning the base.
Hutchinson was in contact with an AC-130 gunship, which was circling overhead, to provide air support to his Afghan colleagues who were preparing to hit a building believed to be a Taliban command and control center.
The Afghans didn’t have radios, though, and were relying on limited cellphone coverage to make contact with Hutchinson. Communications were patchy, but this process had become routine. After hearing gunfire erupt, Hutchinson’s interpreter was able to reach them and confirm they needed air support for the building they were attacking. Hutchinson ordered the gunship to fire.
A series of technical and communication failures aboard the aircraft had prevented the crew from preparing for the mission. It didn’t help that Hutchinson’s team had run out of the batteries needed for the video receivers typically used to communicate with the aircrew.
That meant he didn’t know that things had gone seriously wrong. The building he had ordered the AC-130 gunship to strike was not a Taliban control center, but a trauma hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières.There, Evangeline Cua was in between surgeries. She had her own practice in the Philippines, her home country, but had taken a break to work for the aid group over the summer. It had been an intense several months, but nothing compared with the past four days. The hospital had been flooded with patients since the city had fallen, and health-care workers were using hallways and offices to create space for makeshift beds. Her heart broke when entire families came in, and she couldn’t save them all.The first rounds from the AC-130 struck the hospital’s emergency room. The operating theaters shook and the windows rattled. Cua looked up and exchanged glances with an assistant surgeon who had finished suturing a patient’s wound. The doctors had grown used to the sounds of explosions and gunfire. They laughed uneasily. It was probably just another clash, she thought, exhausted.
But then a second blast struck with terrifying force. All three theaters were in use when it hit. The surgeons leapt up and fled down the hallway, leaving their anesthetized patients on the operating tables. The doctors and nurses gathered across the hall, dragging tables together for cover, but it was too hard to breathe through the acrid smoke, so Cua groped her way back to the operating theater.
Her mind raced to understand what was happening. The hospital was supposed to be protected. All sides had recognized its impartiality. An air strike? Why? Another deafening blast shook the building, and the ceiling came crashing down, plunging them into darkness. She saw her patient’s heart monitor flatline. We’re going to die, she thought. Rounds hammered the building.
She imagined her remains being delivered to her parents in the Philippines in an urn. Or worse, what if her body was never found? She tried to focus on the patients’ lives she had saved during her time in Kunduz, but all she could think of were her parents. I’m sorry, Mom, she thought. I’m sorry. Nearby, she heard her colleague praying softly. “Pray with me,” he told her.
MSF’s country director, Guilhem Molinie, was in Kabul when he received a call from the hospital reporting the air strike. He immediately dialed Bagram Airfield, praying for a quick response. He felt sick to his stomach.
“The trauma center is under attack,” Molinie told the U.S. officer who picked up. “You’re bombing the hospital!”
The officer ran to the joint-operations center, pulled the battle captain aside, and told him about the call in a whisper. But Lieutenant Colonel Jason Johnston, the 3rd Group battalion commander, who was sitting in the next row, heard and leapt up. He asked the officer to repeat himself. None of them was aware the air strike was under way.
They tried reaching Hutchinson, but couldn’t get through for several minutes. They identified a plume of smoke rising from the center of Kunduz over a video feed and pulled the coordinates to check them against the ones provided by the hospital. When Hutchinson called back, Johnston told him about the report. Hutchinson stopped to process the message. He replayed the past hour and didn’t see how it could have happened.
“No way,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
Hutchinson ordered the aircraft to stop shooting, but didn’t mention the report to anyone else. As hardened as the other Green Berets were, it would deliver a terrible blow to morale, adding to the stress of the ongoing battle for the city. He told himself there must have been a mistake.But in the first morning light, the destroyed hospital building was smoldering. Cua and the other doctors and nurses who survived the bombing set to work trying to save the wounded as the sun came up. In the end, 42 people, including 14 staff members, would be reported killed in the strike.
Read: The forever war fought by America’s allies
After a week-long battle, Kunduz was more or less back under government control. Afghan soldiers cheered as the Americans drove past. Hutchinson hadn’t heard anything more about the air strike and, because he and his team had not visited the site of the blast, assumed the report was a mistake.
Hutchinson was elated. This was what he had secretly dreamed of since childhood: participating in a battle for survival with a small band of brothers. Every emotion he had suppressed during the battle hit him at once. His men were high with the feeling of being alive. They felt like heroes in a movie. They had saved a city from ruin against the odds. They weren’t prepared for the news.
On TV back at the camp, the world’s attention was indeed focused on Kunduz—but not on the Taliban’s defeat. Every major outlet was covering the U.S. bombing of the hospital, and asking whether the air strike was a war crime.
Hutchinson still believed he and his men had done the right thing by going into the city, and tried to console Ben Vontz, the young Green Beret responsible for communicating with the gunship that night, who was distraught. If the mission had failed, the Taliban would be entrenched in Kunduz by now, he told Vontz, and a door?to?door battle to drive them out would have yielded an even higher human cost.
It had been 10 years since Hutchinson’s first tour in Iraq. A decade was a long time to learn how to process the horrors of war. To him, it was clear the bombing was a mistake caused by equipment failure, exhaustion, and human error. Everyone had done their best in a situation they should never have been put in, he told Vontz. The combat controller was 25, and it had been his first time in battle. He was inconsolable.
By this point, an investigation team had reached Kunduz; they wanted to see Hutchinson immediately. The investigators stared at him uncomfortably. The media were describing Hutchinson as a potential war criminal. He refused to flinch and promised to help with the inquiry.
Hutch called home. His wife answered.
“Is everything okay?” Tina asked. “Because they’re calling it a war crime.”
Hutchinson was relieved of his duties and sent to Bagram Airfield to await the results of the inquiry. He felt confident that the investigating officers would realize the soldiers had done their best. The strike was an unfortunate mistake made in the heat of battle. He planned to bravely accept whatever punishment the military saw fit to administer and move on.
When a chaplain visited from Kabul, he was shocked to find Hutchinson in good spirits. He had been assessed to be a suicide risk. “I’m fine,” Hutchinson told him, trying to sound upbeat.
But he had started to hear that some in the Army’s headquarters believed he had violated the rules of engagement and wanted him to stand trial for murder. He tried to stay positive and kept to his gym routine to fight off the depression and negative thoughts nagging at him.
It had been 10 years since Hutchinson’s first tour in Iraq. A decade was a long time to learn how to process the horrors of war. To him, it was clear the bombing was a mistake caused by equipment failure, exhaustion, and human error. Everyone had done their best in a situation they should never have been put in, he told Vontz. The combat controller was 25, and it had been his first time in battle. He was inconsolable.
By this point, an investigation team had reached Kunduz; they wanted to see Hutchinson immediately. The investigators stared at him uncomfortably. The media were describing Hutchinson as a potential war criminal. He refused to flinch and promised to help with the inquiry.
Hutch called home. His wife answered.
“Is everything okay?” Tina asked. “Because they’re calling it a war crime.”
Hutchinson was relieved of his duties and sent to Bagram Airfield to await the results of the inquiry. He felt confident that the investigating officers would realize the soldiers had done their best. The strike was an unfortunate mistake made in the heat of battle. He planned to bravely accept whatever punishment the military saw fit to administer and move on.
When a chaplain visited from Kabul, he was shocked to find Hutchinson in good spirits. He had been assessed to be a suicide risk. “I’m fine,” Hutchinson told him, trying to sound upbeat.
But he had started to hear that some in the Army’s headquarters believed he had violated the rules of engagement and wanted him to stand trial for murder. He tried to stay positive and kept to his gym routine to fight off the depression and negative thoughts nagging at him.He couldn’t tell Tina much over the phone, but he tried to reassure her that everything would be fine once the investigation had run its course. She was on her own, pregnant and juggling two kids.ina knew not to ask questions, but she was scared about what was going to happen to them. “I’m not going to jail,” he promised her. She was worried. The images from the hospital were etched on her mind. She couldn’t help but read the stories about the staff and patients who had survived, even if in her heart she knew that her husband had done his best.The military changed its official story several times. The secrecy surrounding the investigation fueled the public’s worst suspicions, that the hospital had been struck on purpose. Hutchinson felt that people would understand if they heard firsthand how the mistake had occurred. He asked to be allowed to explain publicly what had happened. The battalion told him it wasn’t a good idea.
The investigators called Hutchinson in for questioning over and over again. Eventually, the investigating officer, Brigadier General Richard Kim, approached him. He didn’t believe Hutchinson’s version of events, he said. He thought that Hutchinson had broken the rules of engagement and illegally used pre-assault fire. “Would you like to change your story?” he asked.
Hutchinson was shocked. He could accept having made a mistake and that civilians had died as a result. He could accept that the tragedy was preventable. He was prepared to accept whatever punishment was meted out. But to be accused of trying to cover up a deliberate act? That was too much. It couldn’t be real.
This post was excerpted from Donati’s upcoming book, Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War.
Jessica Donati is a national-security correspondent and former Kabul bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...-afghanistan/617776/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
‘We feel incredibly betrayed’: Thousands of Guardsmen forced to vacate Capitol
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/21/national-guard-troops-vacate-capitol-461220
Guardsmen were later let back into facilities after an outcry from lawmakers.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/21/national-guard-troops-vacate-capitol-461220
Guardsmen were later let back into facilities after an outcry from lawmakers.
Will There Be a Trump Presidential Library? Don’t Count On It.
If you understand how presidential libraries are created, it’s hard to see how Trump ever gets it done.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/22/trump-presidential-library-plans-461383
If you understand how presidential libraries are created, it’s hard to see how Trump ever gets it done.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/22/trump-presidential-library-plans-461383
Khashoggi murder film ‘The Dissident’ targeted by suspicious negative reviews
Users flood Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb with negative comments about documentary, in apparent troll campaign
https://www.middleeasteye.net/the-dissident-jamal-khashoggi-negative-reviews
Users flood Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb with negative comments about documentary, in apparent troll campaign
https://www.middleeasteye.net/the-dissident-jamal-khashoggi-negative-reviews
"draft the white trash first, around here anyway" from "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle. of course, in Johnson County Tennessee, there were not many citizens of color, then OR now...they DO (or did, not sure) have the distinction of the highest (or second highest) rate of heroin addiction in the state per capita. yes, including Memphis. "WOOHOO! we're number one!"
G
Guest
Yep, the military removed hundreds of thousands of them from labor pools via the war and draft in general, but the numbers I referenced initially were the dead who wouldn't ever return to the job scene back home, where ever home was, Asia, US, Australia, or elsewhere.
Recently, and for some time, over 1 in 3 street/homeless persons is a veteran, and the suicide rates are HIGH.
Many enlisted youngsters in today's volunteer US military, despite contradictions and spin from Uncle Sam, DoD, Pentagon types, etc., are in there because it was a way out of the barrio or the ghetto. It was a means for education and training, and maybe down the road, affordable loans for a home or ????
Then the reality of the recruiter's promises make themselves more clear, and rolling the dice on catching a bullet in an illegal war is some pretty stout tuition.
I say it with hesitation, having 2 sons, and seeing the abuses the Gov has put our military to, but I sometimes wish for a return to the draft, but NO freebies or waivers based on status, for the children of those who are wealthy or in government seats.
I agree with those who say that if we ALL stood to lose kids in these wars and conflicts, we'd, as a Country, maybe be a little slower with the confetti and brass music at the start of talk of rolling through someone else's turf and killing them. It's a whole different matter when folks at home have some real skin in the game.
That's my .02 cents.
I told my older son and daughter that if they ever looked like they were seriously considering enlisting, I'd roll them up in scrap carpet in the basement and keep them there, feeding them pizza until they found sanity & changed their minds.
The legacy of heroin use specifically in black areas has an interesting and very ugly backstory to it.
Yep, the military removed hundreds of thousands of them from labor pools via the war and draft in general, but the numbers I referenced initially were the dead who wouldn't ever return to the job scene back home, where ever home was, Asia, US, Australia, or elsewhere.
Recently, and for some time, over 1 in 3 street/homeless persons is a veteran, and the suicide rates are HIGH.
Many enlisted youngsters in today's volunteer US military, despite contradictions and spin from Uncle Sam, DoD, Pentagon types, etc., are in there because it was a way out of the barrio or the ghetto. It was a means for education and training, and maybe down the road, affordable loans for a home or ????
Then the reality of the recruiter's promises make themselves more clear, and rolling the dice on catching a bullet in an illegal war is some pretty stout tuition.
I say it with hesitation, having 2 sons, and seeing the abuses the Gov has put our military to, but I sometimes wish for a return to the draft, but NO freebies or waivers based on status, for the children of those who are wealthy or in government seats.
I agree with those who say that if we ALL stood to lose kids in these wars and conflicts, we'd, as a Country, maybe be a little slower with the confetti and brass music at the start of talk of rolling through someone else's turf and killing them. It's a whole different matter when folks at home have some real skin in the game.
That's my .02 cents.
I told my older son and daughter that if they ever looked like they were seriously considering enlisting, I'd roll them up in scrap carpet in the basement and keep them there, feeding them pizza until they found sanity & changed their minds.
the rich/well connected will ALWAYS find a way to protect their kids. if nothing else, they will bribe DRs to falsify test results, fake x-rays etc. bone spurs, maybe?
the rich will NEVER be held to the standards the rest of us must live by. if all else fails, they will send them overseas, like Switzerland, where they have NO extradition. dual citizenship, anyone?
G
Guest
That's been the way it's been. I'd hope we find a way to not perpetuate that pattern, whether it involves culpability for crimes against others, or the wars, drafts, etc.
These days Docs seem to sometimes fear the law/DEA/licensing boards/etc. more than they respect the Hippocratic Oath.
I'd like to see Docs who falsify records to keep those persons from having to sweat and bleed with the rest of society, lose their licenses for the side-cash they're making. And licensing boards look poorly on criminal fraud and bribery gigs.
The recent bribery prosecutions involving Hollywood and other folks, paying for bogus records, in order to get their kids into the better schools, sent some chills up the spines of those who thought they were immune, I'd bet.
Granted, they didn't get the sentences the hobo in the alley would've gotten, had they committed the same offenses, but they got popped, perp walked, prosecuted, and sentenced.
I think that's a good starting point to bring things around.
But yes, money has always screamed.
It goes out to the base. Head out 62. Turn left at the 76 station.
Good song. First I’ve heard it.
Somebody else from that area. He used to play out at Pappys. Did some work on his house. Since sold. You may have heard of him...
A song about Gram Parsons. ODed in JT. Cremated at the monument.
I think the video was actually done out at Pipes.
https://youtu.be/3PXDDIj7qtg
'Boogieman'
Well-known member
Draft people to fight a war that only benefits elitist? I can't support that.
Pssst the draft isn't optional
'Boogieman'
Well-known member
Captain obvious over here...
