Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Slaughtermeyer



It's because the branches have lowered their standards for recruit acceptance. Even with that, it's unlikely that the army will make its goals this year:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1499164,00.html

This is a BRITISH news sourse as a reference for AMERICAN news?

"We may make mistakes -- but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

BTW...where are the mods?

ORIGINAL: rogueusmc
BTW...where are the mods?

Look for CHS over at Spooky's or on Andrew's site. WPO is apparently a mod no longer: it's become an expansion. [;)]

Uhhhh...Bodhi.............He was referring to the moderators.............[8D]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Regarding the so-called WMD's, here is an independent "think-tank" assessment of Sadaam Hussein written and published before the second Iraqi war, but after the liberation of Kuwait.
FWIW, the entire world believed the weapons were there, including the effeminate and liberal U.N. (which has totally surrendered the terms of the charter by which the U.N was created.)
http://college.hmco.com/currentconflict ... ssein.html

...Hussein stood on his balcony and declared he would PERSONALLY pay the surviving families of ANY terrorists who had damaged Israel or the United States, twenty thousand dollars

It's quite a backpedal from making the unsubstantiated statement (which you claim as 'fact') that Saddam "would PERSONALLY pay the surviving families of ANY terrorists who had damaged Israel or the United States, twenty thousand dollars", to citing an "independent think tank" (a textbook publisher) which states (correctly) that Saddam had WMD's prior to the First Gulf War, and (also correctly) that "there are now claims by the Iraqi government that these arsenals have been destroyed, but many observers are skeptical."

I was skeptical too and believed that Iraq had WMD's, simply because I did not believe President Bush would deliberately lie to the American people. At the time I was not aware of the neo-conservative agenda which as early as Sept. 2001 asserted that it was not enough to annihilate the network of Osama bin Laden, but that it was also imperative to "remove Saddam Hussein from power" and to "retaliate" against Syria and Iran for supporting Hizbullah. A brief synopsis of the neocon agenda and its influence on the Bush administration has been made by Israeli former MK Uri Avnery:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article242.html

What? No comment on the desertion figures.

It's quite a backpedal from making the unsubstantiated statement (which you claim as 'fact') that Saddam "would PERSONALLY pay the surviving families of ANY terrorists who had damaged Israel or the United States, twenty thousand dollars", to citing an "independent think tank" (a textbook publisher) which states that Saddam had WMD's prior to the First Gulf War,

If I'm reading the context of your statement correctly, are you now inferring Saddam never, ever had any WMDs?

And I would prefer to get my news from respectable sources rather than rely on far right rags such as the Manchester Guardian, the New Zealand Herald or someone's blog. I prefer Time, NewsWeek, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and even Fox as my news sources and I want multiple sources. I consider myself a "middle-of-the-road with conservative leanings" kind of guy. That means I listen to both sides before making up my mind. And I don't listen to Rush or to Al Franken. Their messages tend to get lost in the messenger's rhetoric.

I also think this thread has gone far enough. Mods, please lock it up.

Chez

PM VicKevlar about it.

After dropping in on this thread should I come to the conclusion that Jim Neighbors was killed in Iraq?

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez

What? No comment on the desertion figures.

I don't have the criteria by which the military officially defines "deserter." It's quite possible that there are less desertions now (m10bob's assertion that boredom can motivate deserters makes sense to me), and that someone might be less likely to desert now, when desertion is more likely to be viewed as an act of cowardice, than during peacetime, when going AWOL would be more likely to be viewed as just "blowing off steam."

However, I don't know the exact criteria by which the military defines what a deserter is, and don't know whether that criteria has changed. It could be that what was defined as an act of desertion prior to the war is now considered merely going AWOL.
Such creative statistical accounting is already being practiced with respect to recruitment (the military recently lowered its recruitment goals to make the shortfall of recruits less striking) and also in the way the military reports the number of wounded in Iraq. For example, if you were in a convoy and the vehicle ahead of you was blown up and you were injured when your vehicle crashed into the wreckage, you're officially considered to have been injured in a traffic accident, not wounded in action. In 2003, at the time when the official tally of wounded in action was 827, over 4000 casualties had been airlifted to Andrews Air Force base.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/04/1059849347169.html

In November 2004, when the official number of wounded in Iraq was about 8000, there actually were 17,000 soldiers who were injured or ill enough to be put on airplanes and flown out of theater, and none of those casualties appear on any public casualty lists.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/10/1537224

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
If I'm reading the context of your statement correctly, are you now inferring Saddam never, ever had any WMDs?

No, I did not mean to imply that the textbook got it wrong when it said Saddam had WMDs prior to the First Gulf War. I'll edit my post for clarity now.

Oh for the love of Great Ghu, somebody close this thread already...

I haven't read every single word on the 3 pages of this thread, but from what I have seen, I don't think this thread deserves locking. No one is making rude remarks towards anyone. All I see is a debate on mostly military topics. It actually seems quite fine to me. I've seen other threads that get locked up. They are much more deserving than this one. Just because some people disagree with others is no reason to lock up a thread.

(If I missed parts of the thread that make it deserving of being locked, I apologize)

As long as you guy allow me to kick the Anti-American garbage from Europeans. You Americans are too nice to them. That is also one of the reason I would like Alberta to separate from the rest of Canada I can not stand that Canada has become an European weenie country.

Dude, take it to the appropriate venue.

(In reply to Madmickey)

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

I haven't read every single word on the 3 pages of this thread, but from what I have seen, I don't think this thread deserves locking. No one is making rude remarks towards anyone. All I see is a debate on mostly military topics. It actually seems quite fine to me. I've seen other threads that get locked up. They are much more deserving than this one. Just because some people disagree with others is no reason to lock up a thread.

(If I missed parts of the thread that make it deserving of being locked, I apologize)

Look at page one again; might not be directly rude, but there's certainly enough political rhetoric, as well as willful political baiting, to warrant a lock-down. There's never a mod around when you need one...

ORIGINAL: m10bob

Uhhhh...Bodhi.............He was referring to the moderators.............[8D]

It was just a humourous attempt to try to get this thread back onto something remotely WitP-related. You seem so caught up in your off-topic fight that you couldn't see it. Oh well ..... [>:]

ORIGINAL: Slaughtermeyer

I was skeptical too and believed that Iraq had WMD's, simply because I did not believe President Bush would deliberately lie to the American people. At the time I was not aware of the neo-conservative agenda which as early as Sept. 2001 asserted that it was not enough to annihilate the network of Osama bin Laden, but that it was also imperative to "remove Saddam Hussein from power" and to "retaliate" against Syria and Iran for supporting Hizbullah. A brief synopsis of the neocon agenda and its influence on the Bush administration has been made by Israeli former MK Uri Avnery:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article242.html

Neo-Conservative agenda [:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

And since Matrix does not have a problem with your LEFT WING MICHAEL MOORE/ Stalinism propaganda guess I will jump right in.


** REALITY**

However, I don't know the exact criteria by which the military defines what a deserter is, and don't know whether that criteria has changed. It could be that what was defined as an act of desertion prior to the war is now considered merely going AWOL.
Such creative statistical accounting is already being practiced with respect to recruitment (the military recently lowered its recruitment goals to make the shortfall of recruits less striking)

885. ART. 85. DESERTION
(a) Any member of the armed forces who--
(1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently;
(2) quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service; or
(3) without being regularly separated from one of the armed forces enlists or accepts an appointment in the same or another on of the armed forces without fully disclosing the fact that he has not been regularly separated, or enters any foreign armed service except when authorized by the United States; is guilty of desertion.
(b) Any commissioned officer of the armed forces who, after tender of his resignation and before notice of its acceptance, quits his post or proper duties without leave and with intent to remain away therefrom permanently is guilty of desertion.
(c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.
866. ART. 86. ABSENCE WITHOUT LEAVE
Any member of the armed forces who, without authority--
(1) fails to go to his appointed place of duty at the time prescribed;
(2) goes from that place; or
(3) absents himself or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty at which he is required to be at the time prescribed; shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

The UCMJ hasn't changed. The difference between desertion and AWOL is that with desertion the individual has absolutely no intention of coming back and had disposed of his ID card. That definition has never changed since 1972 (when I joined). AWOL is basically an unauthorized absence (UA as the Navy calls it) and be a little as 1 minute late for work or as long as the individual stays gone. However, if the individual is in possession of his ID card, the military has a very difficult time proving desertion (unless you ran off to a foreign country) regardless of the length of time they are gone.

As far as "creative statistical accounting" goes, military recruiting quotas and criteria are constantly changing. I was a Navy Recruiter-in-Charge of a 7-man station in Yakima, WA for 4 years and the criteria constantly changed and this was in the 90's. Each service maintains their own set of standards for enlistment. Each one also changes them as the need arises. We sometimes allowed non-grads to join but very seldom as the other standards were raised for them. I think my station processed fewer than 20 non-grads for enlistment out of the 500+ people my station recruited.

And you can't compare month-to-month recruiting numbers. Recruiting is highly cyclic. For example, June was normally one of the best months for recruiting, May one of the worst.

From your writings, it would appear that you have never served in the military and so have no basis for filtering the crap from the truth. If you have served, then I thank you for your service but you still didn't learn to filter out the crap from the truth.

For example, if you were in a convoy and the vehicle ahead of you was blown up and you were injured when your vehicle crashed into the wreckage, you're officially considered to have been injured in a traffic accident, not wounded in action.

And I suppose I really wasn't in a plane crash because I wasn't the pilot. Any injuries incurred in the line of duty and as a result of enemy action is classified as a combat casualty. You don't actually have to be shot. I don't know where you get this BS from but I would pull my hip waders up higher if I were you.

Chez

Love your poster, Sarge. Unfortunately it's too late. He's already said it.

Chez

ORIGINAL: ChezDaJez
Any injuries incurred in the line of duty and as a result of enemy action is classified as a combat casualty. You don't actually have to be shot. I don't know where you get this BS from but I would pull my hip waders up higher if I were you.
Chez

Since you seem to be so good at coming up with data, maybe you can do better than Senator Chuck Hagel (Rep. -Nebraska, Vietnam vet and former deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration) when he tried to find out the total amount of Purple Hearts awarded to US military personnel in Iraq. That number is significant because it is an official record of the total number of battlefield casualties. When Senator Hagel asked, the reply he received was "the Department of Defense does not have the requested information."
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Maimed_in_Iraq_021804.htm

Removed...

5 bucks says this thing gets closed because there are some non-left wing posters up now.