John Murtha is calling for the removal of U.S. military troops from Iraq in the near future because he has heard enough from generals in the military about the need to do so.
These are the generals who do not offer these same opinions to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld because of the fear of no further promotions, or, in fact, demotions. Who can blame them? Why offer truth to an entity who refuses to consider any alternatives but his blessed opinion. It’s like talking to a rock and expecting a transformation to a different size, color or texture.
Rumsfeld’s silly reply to questions about his intransigence–offering that he is certainly open to dissenting opinions–is yet another in the factual litany of his lies.
Besides these generals telling Murtha that the war cannot be won militarily, Murtha is also calling for an end to troops in Iraq because of concern that the occupation is actually destroying the military. Specifically, he said: “The future of our military is at risk..our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards.”
Connected to this is a chilling and incredulous Michael Bronner-written story in the September issue of Vanity Fair, that highlights Murtha’s second concern:
The Recruiters’ War
By MICHAEL BRONNER
Vanity Fair
September 2005
Pressured to fill quotas, army and Marine recruiters have been enlisting kids who don’t meet basic physical, moral, and educational standards. Ten recruiters reveal just how corruptedand in one case deadlytheir job has become (from Vanity Fair, September 2005)
Near the western edge of North Carolina, bright-green kudzu vine spills like water down the hillsides of the Great Smoky Mountains. The kudzu seems to close in on the landscape at dusk. That’s when Tim Queen likes to run, 10 to 15 miles at a time on country roadstraining ground for the Marine Tim once hoped to become.
He’s a tough kid. He ranks “cliff-jumping off of waterfalls” high among his hobbies. He’s from a tough place: Cherokee County is one of the poorest, most sparsely populated parts of North Carolina, hill country where the descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers still speak with a unique southern brogue that takes some getting used to. (It’s also where Eric Rudolph, the accused serial bomber of two abortion clinics, a lesbian nightclub, and Centennial Olympic Park, in Atlanta, lived off the landand, some say, the sympathy of the localsfor five years as a fugitive before being caught.)
Tim was raised in a small home on seven acres with a brother and two sisters. His father, John, works on the production line at an auto-parts manufacturer. His mother, Sheilah, works at the local trout-processing plant, Carolina Mountain. Like most families in the area, the Queens are capable people, getting by on very little. They grow a lot of their own foodsquash, cucumbers, okra, corn, beans, tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, radishes, and watermelons, all out back of their house.
In the spring of 2000, just out of high school, Tim was working part-time with his mom at the trout plant and taking welding classes at the community college. One morning, two Marine Corps recruiters arrived on campus in their dress blues and set up a “fruit stand” (a recruiting table). They rarely made the trip all the way out to Andrews, Tim’s hometown, but one of the administrators at the college was an old Marine Corps master sergeant, so they were always welcome. That morning, they caught Tim Queen’s eye. “I think I may be joining you soon,” he announced.
Tim caught the recruiters’ eyes, too. It was crunch time, a couple of days before the end of the month, and they needed one more body to “make mission”their monthly quota. Timmy Queen would be that body.
The trip to Tim’s school was a training run for the younger Marine, Sergeant Jimmy Massey, who’d been on recruiting duty less than a year. He was out with his gunnery sergeant, Tim Dalhouse, being shown the ropes. Massey wasn’t new to the Marine Corps. He’d been in for eight years already, several of them working with new recruits as an infantry instructor at basic training at Parris Island. He planned to retire from the Marine Corps an old man; he was in for the long haul, and for many career Marines, doing a tour on recruiting duty is a gauntlet worth running, a roll-of-the-dice that can fast-track your career, all but guaranteeing promotion if you’re good. If you’re not, however, it can be a career-ender.
The latter prospect never entered Massey’s mind, he said. He was as gung-ho as they come. When he’d go out “trolling,” he’d always bring a propan English bulldog he named Tank Balls. When he brought potential recruits back to his office he’d show them a trick. “I had a toy gun in my desk, and when I’d pull it out the dog would go crazy,” Massey told me. Tank Balls would lunge at the gun, teeth bared. “It would really impress the poolies,” he added (“poolie” being Marine Corps slang for a new recruit).
On that spring day in 2000, Tim Queen was impressed by Massey and Dalhouse. “They was always saying things like ‘Semper fi’ and all that stuff, and it was definitely encouraging to be around. They seemed to me to be true and hard-core people, and I liked that.”
In many ways, Tim has the makings of a great Marine. He’s serious, polite, goes to church every Sunday, and keeps himself in shape. He graduated from high school with pretty good grades and scored well on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (known as “the ASVAB”), a standardized test given alongside the S.A.T. in many high schools, particularly in areas with deep military traditions. When Tim approached the recruiters that day, though, Massey thought his boss was joking when Dalhouse instructed him to proceed with the standard Marine Corps interview. Spend a couple of minutes with Tim and you’ll understand why: ever since the ninth grade, Timmy’s had a “twitch,” as his father puts it. When I met Tim, the term struck me as a significant understatement.
At regular intervalsevery 20 seconds or sothe muscles in Tim’s left arm seem to convulse, sending his arm in a lurch he struggles to suppress. He’ll also stutter when the twitch is bad, and blink involuntarily. His condition has never been formally diagnosed, but it’s pronounced enough, especially when he’s stressed, that he was not permitted to test for his driver’s license until he passed several medical screenings, including an EEG to rule out seizures. Tim told me the condition got worse after a prank in high school: some other kids pinned him inside a locker and he panicked. Since then, he’s also suffered from claustrophobia he characterized as “pretty bad.”
Tim told me he talked to the recruiters about all of his medical issues that first day. They told him not to worry, he said, that they’d seen this kind of thing before; no problem, he’d get in. In Massey’s version, after reassuring Tim, he concluded the standard recruiting interview the way he always did: “Tim, are you ready to be a Marine?”
“Yeah,” Tim Queen answered. He didn’t flinch.
For the rest of the article, go here:
http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/printables/051031roco02?print=true
just wanted to say thanks highlighting this issue. It’s sad that the civilian commanders aren’t concerned with the long-term health of our military. They are draining the well of recruits. Congressman Murtha recognizes that, which is why his message is resonating across the political spectrum.
Paz
I’m old enough to remember the tatters the army was in after Vietnam. It took years to build up morale and the physical presence of our armed forces. And now … its almost as if the Bush administration intentionally set out to destroy the army.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
We’ve heard about the methods that cult members (the Moonies, Family of God, etc.) use to get other people into the cult…I’m beginning to be sadly convinced that the military culture is nothing more than another cult, and that it takes a strong person to get themselves out of it unscathed. This is just another indication of people who have the job of luring more impressionable young people into the Cult of Militarism, by feeding them more and more lies…
I, and many other 20 and 30 year military people would disagree with your broad statement. It is not a cult. It is made up of highly skilled professionals doing the job they contracted to do for the government, led by career military men and the politicos in charge of the Pentagon and the administration. The fact that our military is suffering under the current adminstration should invoke some sympathy, rather than talk about a cult.
The fact that the recruiting commands have to resort to recruiting the bottom of the barrel bodes poorly for our national defense.
Believe me, none of these recruiters really enjoy putting less than qualified people into the military, but you did sign up to do what you are told.
Almost ALL military people would disagree, not just the old-timers.
Here’s a good place to put that
I’m up with that. If your conscience does not allow you to do your job, you should be able to leave the service. If I was still active, rather than retired, it would have been difficult for me to support our current actions directly. Whether or not I would have filed for CO status would depend on what job I was doing at the time. Sweeping a floor would be ok. Shooting at people would be entirely different, in this specific war and under these circumstances. Luckily, that situation never occurred in my line of work or we’d all still be glowing in the dark.