[Mb-civic] Uncle Sam wants your kids ... now!

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41798

WorldNet Daily    December 7, 2004

Col. David Hackworth
Defending America

Uncle Sam wants your kids ... now!

We'll soon have 150,000 U.S. troops stuck in the ever-expanding Iraqi
quagmire, a number that will probably grow even larger before Iraq holds
elections presently scheduled for the end of January '05.

Maintaining such a force is a logistical and personnel nightmare for every
grunt in Iraq. And according to several Pentagon number crunchers, it's
also driving the top brass bonkers.

Meanwhile the insurgents continue cutting our supply lines and whacking
our fighting platoons and supporters, who attrit daily as soldiers and
Marines fall to enemy shots, sickness or accidents. Empty platoons lose
fights, so these casualties have to be replaced ASAP.

Since this tragic war kicked off in March 2003, the United States has
evacuated an estimated 50,000 KIA, WIA and non-battle casualties from 
Iraq
back to the States – leaving 50,000 slots that have had to be filled.

The job of finding fresh bodies to keep our units topped off falls mainly
to the Army Recruiting Command. But the "making-quota" jazz put out by 
the
Recruiting Command and the Pentagon to hype their billion-dollar
recruiting effort, with its huge TV expenditure and big expansion of
recruiters during the past year, is pure unadulterated spin. Not that this
is anything new. The Command has a sorry reputation for using smoke and
mirrors to cover up poor performance.

"Hack, here's a snapshot of how little of our first-quarter mission has
been achieved," says an Army recruiter. "Look at it from a perspective of
a business releasing quarterly earnings information. To keep unit manning
levels up out in the field, especially in Iraq, there's no question our
recruiting mission is in serious trouble.

"These are totals for the 41 USAREC (Recruiting Command) Battalions, 
so
these stats represent the USAREC mission accomplishment:

"Regular Army Volume (all RA contracts):
"Mission: 25,322
"Achieved: 12,703 (50.17 percent)

"Army Reserve Volume:
"Mission: 7,373
"Achieved: 3,206 (43.48 percent)."

The Army National Guard is faring no better. A Guard retention NCO 
says:
"The word is out on the streets of Washington, D.C. 'Do not join the
Guard.' I see these words echoing right across the U.S.A."

By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard
could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or
about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality
recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling
their left foot from their right.

Shades of our last years in Vietnam.

"The bottom line is that Recruiting Command is in trouble," says another
recruiter with almost 30 years of service. "The Army has re-instituted
'stop loss,' which is basically a backdoor draft. They're stopping people
from retiring or completing their enlistment and leaving the Army. They do
this fairly often, mostly in August and September, depending upon how far
behind they believe they'll be at the end of September.

"I believe the Army will have to drastically change what they offer to
enlistees to overcome what's happening in Iraq. The war is ugly, and not
many kids want to enlist to be blown up."

Moms and dads are outraged about desperate Army recruiters on a
relentless campaign to sign up their teenagers. High-school kids are
running away from recruiters like they were George Romero's living dead.

"Recruiters have called my son a minimum of 20 times in the two years
since he finished high school," a dad reports. "The phone calls usually
come in clusters. I answered five calls in a two- or three-week span. Each
time a recruiter calls, he receives the same polite, respectful response
from me or my son ... no interest, and please take the name off the list.
When asked why the name hasn't been removed, excuses are made. While
recruiters are brief with me, when my son is on the phone, the sales
tactics are clever, prolonged and very high-pressure.

"I took the latest recruiting call. This time I also called the supervisor
at the local Army recruiting office, who's promised to take his name off
the list. She made excuses for the repeated calls despite the fact that
five calls were on her watch."

Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop
running and start fighting, we'll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely
with a draftee force.


Col. David H. Hackworth, author of his new best-selling "Steel My
Soldiers' Hearts," "Price of Honor" and "About Face," has seen duty or
reported as a sailor, soldier and military correspondent in nearly a dozen
wars and conflicts – from the end of World War II to the recent fights
against international terrorism.

Editor's note: Eilhys England contributed to this column.

***

-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option 
D - up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone 
forwarded you this email and you want to be on our list, send an 
email to ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.



Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20041213/1a466e21/attachment.htm