Over 16,508,902 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?

This is the beginning.....

I caught this on the news ticker I have.... Army desertion rate highest since 1980 By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer 23 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Soldiers strained by six years at war are deserting their posts at the highest rate since 1980, with the number of Army deserters this year showing an 80 percent increase since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. "We're asking a lot of soldiers these days," said Roy Wallace, director of plans and resources for Army personnel. "They're humans. They have all sorts of issues back home and other places like that. So, I'm sure it has to do with the stress of being a soldier." The Army defines a deserter as someone who has been absent without leave for longer than 30 days. The soldier is then discharged as a deserter. According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year. The increase comes as the Army continues to bear the brunt of the war demands with many soldiers serving repeated, lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military leaders — including Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey — have acknowledged that the Army has been stretched nearly to the breaking point by the combat. Efforts are under way to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the burden and give troops more time off between deployments. "We have been concentrating on this," said Wallace. "The Army can't afford to throw away good people. We have got to work with those individuals and try to help them become good soldiers." ___________________________________________________ Now this is where I get pissed off, "We have got to work with these individuals and try to help them become good soldiers." Bullshit. Those men were good soldiers, or they would have never made it out of boot and AIT, they would never have been considered for combat duty. What happened is simple, they got a belly full. The saw too much and lost too many buddies that they couldn't cope anymore. Regs say no more than 365 days in a combat zone out of 3 years... these poor bastards are pulling a year tour, get three months back in the world, then get deployed for another year. What in god's name do you expect these guys to do? I dont care how cold blooded a troop is, at some point he is gonna break, and when he does, he either goes over the hill, gets himself killed, or swallows a bullet. _______________________________________________________ Record Suicide Rate Alarms Army Officials An Army study released last week indicates that during calendar year 2006 Soldier suicides reached their highest level since 1980. The 165-page 2006 Army Suicide Event Report lists 99 deaths by suicide, with 27 of the deaths occurring in Iraq and three in Afghanistan. There were also 948 of what the report terms "serious attempts at suicide." While the vast majority of the "completed suicides" in 2006 involved males, 10 of the victims were females, the report said. Seventy percent of the Soldiers were under 25, 98 percent were enlisted and 91 percent were from the regular Army. And while the suicide methods included drug overdoses, strangulation and poisoning, the vast majority - 71 percent - involved firearms. __________________________________________________________________ As the above news story shows, army suicide is on the rise. Help these people become good soldiers? Roy Wallace needs to figure out how to help these troopers cope. If it takes a return to the draft, so be it. It would also help if somebody with half a brain was trying to figure out how to accomplish the objective in Iraq and bring our people home. As it stands, we just send more people over to be shot at. I wore army green, I was proud to wear it. I admit, there were some operations I questioned, and these operations had me doing things under orders that any normal person would find in the black area of the gray region of ethical. I have to live with my nightmares about that. But to ask a troop to pull two year long combat tours with a three month break between them is cruel to the point of being inhuman. Already the majority of troops in the Iraqi theater of operations feel the war was stupid, they are accomplishing absolutely nothing and people are dieing for some political agenda. That is a major change since the war started. These people deserve a rest, hell, after one combat tour they deserve an early discharge, when you consider these guys and gals face an enemy that is unseen until he starts firing or blows himself up. There was a saying in Vietnam, "You cant fight an enemy you cannot see." That was in direct reference to the fact the VC did not wear uniforms, they looked like every other civilian in South Vietnam. The same is presently true in Iraq. Personally at this point we should bring in the Muslim countries, let them move their troops in, and as fellow Muslims, help stabilize the situation. We cannot allow our troops to be wasted in useless firefights that have no tactical or strategic gain. It is a waste of lives, blood, and sacrifice. Besides the facts are: Osama bin Laden never operated out of Iraq, Saddam wanted Osama dead. The training camps were in Afghanistan where we initially struck. By splitting our forces, we made it possible for bin Laden to remain at large. He is the one we want for 9/11. And to be quite honest, I wish that I could have 24 hours with him and his top people. And Here is the way to deal with terrorists: I am part apache, and it would be more than justified to stake each of those people out over an ant hill, face up, in the desert, with their eyelids split so they had no choice but to stare into the sun. I would set up a large screen monitor and show the impacts of the planes on the tours, and the collapse, with the sound track be the reading of the names of the victims, running over and over again. I would make a video record of the last hours of these men, and make sure it was broadcast on every News Service in every country that anyone ever considered terrorism, with a scrolling message across the bottom, "Should you use terror tactics on the people of the United States, this is the fate that awaits you." Yes, admittedly, I have a cruel streak, blame it on genetics. But, these people deserve no civilized trial or punishment.

Respect

I know a person, male, 20 something, who really has a problem with some ethical and moral issues. You see, I place respect in the category of morals and ethics. The more I get to know this person, the more I believe that he is an evolutionary throwback to stoneage human males. I have no idea what his history with relationships has been in the past, but considering some of his statements, I am very much surprised that some woman hasnt cut his balls off. He seems to profess the idea that women are nothing more than something for his pleasure, constantly commenting on body parts, and the fact that he cares only in what he can get, sexually anyway. Somewhere, this person failed to learn that women are more than pieces of meat, that they have a brain, spirit and soul. Sex isnt the only reason for a relationship with a woman, it is a basic biological drive that need not be a part of the relationship. In other words, a male can have an intelligent conversation with a woman, even sleep next to her, without sex. However, I do find it morally and ethically wrong to treat a woman like a whore, and believing that it is perfectly okay, no matter how willing she is. If she has no respect for herself, a man as a member of the human race should have enough respect for her to not take advantage of her.
last post
16 years ago
posts
2
views
896
can view
everyone
can comment
everyone
atom/rss

other blogs by this author

 15 years ago
Tributes
 16 years ago
Ramblings
 16 years ago
Thoughts and stuff
 16 years ago
corrispondance
 16 years ago
Political Truths
official fubar blogs
 8 years ago
fubar news by babyjesus  
 13 years ago
fubar.com ideas! by babyjesus  
 10 years ago
fubar'd Official Wishli... by SCRAPPER  
 10 years ago
Word of Esix by esixfiddy  

discover blogs on fubar

blog.php' rendered in 0.0773 seconds on machine '189'.