Keeping military recruiters away from your children in high school

BarbL aBarbL@comcastdotnet wrote in
:

And that's one of the good things of being a US citizen,
you can voice your opinion, I can voice mine.

so... explain to me exactly why you think that we are in Iraq
& what possible good is going to come of it.
every time i ask this question of anyone it is ignored & left
unanswered. obviously, this leaves me to my own conclusions
about such defenders.
lee
--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be
one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded
fear. - Thomas Jefferson

BarbL aBarbL@comcastdotnet wrote in
:

enigma wrote:
i'm really really uncomfortable with the ongoing nonsense
in
Iraq, threatening Iran & totally ignoring N.Korea...


That's because the media wants you to feel that way. They
slant it in a way to encourage those feelings. (Kind of
like the shark attacks, and child abduction "scares"
created by the media.)

well, that would be a handy pat answer if i relied on US media
at all, which i don't. i do not watch television at all. i
read foreign news far more than American news (because the
bias in US news is astounding). i was brought up not to
swallow gub'mint spin hook, line & sinker, unlike what appears
to be many people now.
what we have is an unstable situation in the Middle East,
exascerbated by an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation,
that nation is now in a civil war.
we have pretty much ignored another country (the one that
actually *had* alQueda ties!)...
we are threatening a neighboring sovereign nation on flimsy
excuses.
we have been totally ignoring a nation led by a nutcase who
was *known* to be developing nuclear weapon capability & just
happens to be in missle range of our west coast. why is that?

lee
--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be
one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded
fear. - Thomas Jefferson

Nan ) writes:
On 18 Oct 2006 01:06:35 GMT, (Catherine
Woodgold) wrote:

I think it's pretty obvious that if someone is actually
killed, it isn't "good"from their point of view.

I'm sure being killed by a Terrorist or Guerilla in their own country
wouldn't be "good" either.

Nan

With few exceptions, people do not want to be killed
by anyone, so being killed is not "good" from the point
of view of the person being killed (or their families,
generally speaking.

BarbL aBarbL@comcastdotnet wrote in
:

enigma wrote:
i think it will because the recruitment levels have been
stedily dropping for the past 4 years, after a big surge
in 2001.

I have seen nothing indicating that, in fact, numbers have
been up. The draft isn't wanted on so many levels. The
people in the military don't want it, there is no
indication that it's needed.

you don't believe recruitment & retainment levels are dropping?
no, the draft *isn't* wanted, but if the military is spread
over three theatres & recruitment is down, retention is down &
attrition is up, what do you think is going to have to happen?

BTW, i'm not particularly anti-military. i am antiwar,
especially this war in Iraq. it is not the soldiers fault
the Commander in Chief is brainless.

I'm sorry that I made that assumption. I made it based on
your negative remarks about the military. Your remarks
about the President only show that you don't like him. It
doesn't mean anything negative about him, as far as I'm
concerned. Politics and the military aren't the same thing.

no, they are not.
trust me, if we were actually under attack on our own shores, i
would be carrying a gun (oh, wait... i do that already. damn
coyotes)

i lived through VietNam.

Yes, it sound like that. That's what a lot of the rhetoric
sounds like, Vietnam era stuff. Remember when your friends
came back how people were jerks to them? We should learn a
lesson from that and behave better toward our troops now.

actually, no. i don't remember people being jerks to them. i
*do* remember that the ones with addictions & PTS couldn't get
proper medical care from the veteran's administration though.
rather like "thanks for serving, now Get Lost".
i was, unfortunately, good at dealing with drug ODs & come-
downs before i was even 17.
maybe it was different in cities, but out here in the boonies,
where there were no drug clinics or even pushers back then, it
wasn't pretty what the guys went through.

And, GW isn't "jr."

right. he's got that extra initial.

Congress and the American people to get thier backing for
yet another quagmire. he so expected the Iraqii people to
be happy Saddam was gone, that he refused to see what was
really going to happen.

I think it's a lot easier for the other side to say
"shoulda done this, not that" when they didn't do anything
to improve anything. It's easy to look back and have 20/20
vision.

i'm not looking back. i've been saying it all along. Bush lied.
he lied about WMD. then when that was proven a lie, he lied
about there being alQueda cels in Iraq... there are *now*, but
there weren't when Saddam was in power.

If we want to delve there, we could say that Clinton was
too busy screwing around to take care of things that built
up... there is plenty of blame to go around... but that
really won't solve anything anymore than calling this
President names does.

in the notes when Bush took office were memos about alQueda,
about Afghanistan, & N.Korea. Bush, since foreign policy wasn't
his strong point, chose to ignore that.
apparently he's not too strong on internal policy either,
considering the Katrina & Rita debacles too. gutting FEMA &
putting it under "Homeland Security" was not the brightest move.
the cronyism in appointing department heads is another poor
choice.
--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be
one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded
fear. - Thomas Jefferson

BarbL (aBarbL@comcastdotnet) writes:
It seems to me that the anti-military people in this
newgroup somehow think that the only thing the military does
is kill or be killed.

Straw man argument.

In article , enigma says...

BarbL aBarbL@comcastdotnet wrote in
:

enigma wrote:
i'm really really uncomfortable with the ongoing nonsense
in
Iraq, threatening Iran & totally ignoring N.Korea...


That's because the media wants you to feel that way. They
slant it in a way to encourage those feelings. (Kind of
like the shark attacks, and child abduction "scares"
created by the media.)

well, that would be a handy pat answer if i relied on US media
at all, which i don't. i do not watch television at all. i
read foreign news far more than American news (because the
bias in US news is astounding). i was brought up not to
swallow gub'mint spin hook, line & sinker, unlike what appears
to be many people now.
what we have is an unstable situation in the Middle East,
exascerbated by an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation,
that nation is now in a civil war.
we have pretty much ignored another country (the one that
actually *had* alQueda ties!)...
we are threatening a neighboring sovereign nation on flimsy
excuses.
we have been totally ignoring a nation led by a nutcase who
was *known* to be developing nuclear weapon capability & just
happens to be in missle range of our west coast. why is that?

lee

And we cant' understand why Iran would want nukes, when a hostile nuclear
superpower had just recently invaded the country to their right, then the
country to their left...

Banty

Banty wrote:
In article , BarbL says...
you know, the Navy will actually see combat when Bush invades
Iran & N.Korea. they're safe now because Iran & Afghanistan
don't have coastline...
How do you think those people got where they are now?
Teleportation?


The thing that jumped out at me too about that is that Iraq (assuming that's
what's meant by "Iran") *does* have a coastline.

Again - folks should be watching the gallery at the end of the newshour -
branches of service are included. There have been many Navy KIA.

By the way, does anyone have a website that breaks the Iraq casualties down by
various groups? With all the news discussion and blogs, I've had a heck of a
time crafting a Google search that gets me that.

You can get some information he

http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html

Of the first 2000 casualties:

OIF Deaths:

67.9% Army
29.1% Marine Corps
2.0% Navy (includes 1 Coast Guard death)
1.0% Air Force

Total DoD Deaths:

45.8% Army
9.8% Marine Corps
19.9% Navy
24.5% Air Force

I assume that they'll probably release another analysis
now that casualties have topped 3000, but it will probably
take some time.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Nan wrote in
:

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:31:14 GMT, "Jeff"
wrote:


"Nan" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:09:28 +0000 (UTC), enigma
wrote:


yes. i actually believe a military is still necessary.
what i
don't believe is that the US has any business going into
Iraq. unfortunately, it's so bunged up now we can't
leave...
the data was there about what would happen. why didn't
anyone
in the administration use that knowledge?
lee

Because it's a Republican Administration? G

No, because it is an incompentent adminsitration.

And the difference is.....??

in this case, none, but it's quite possible to have equally
clueless Democrats. stupidity knows no party line
lee
--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be
one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded
fear. - Thomas Jefferson

In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...

Banty wrote:
In article , BarbL says...
you know, the Navy will actually see combat when Bush invades
Iran & N.Korea. they're safe now because Iran & Afghanistan
don't have coastline...
How do you think those people got where they are now?
Teleportation?


The thing that jumped out at me too about that is that Iraq (assuming that's
what's meant by "Iran") *does* have a coastline.

Again - folks should be watching the gallery at the end of the newshour -
branches of service are included. There have been many Navy KIA.

By the way, does anyone have a website that breaks the Iraq casualties down by
various groups? With all the news discussion and blogs, I've had a heck of a
time crafting a Google search that gets me that.

You can get some information he

http://www.militarycity.com/valor/honor.html

Of the first 2000 casualties:

OIF Deaths:

67.9% Army
29.1% Marine Corps
2.0% Navy (includes 1 Coast Guard death)
1.0% Air Force

Total DoD Deaths:

45.8% Army
9.8% Marine Corps
19.9% Navy
24.5% Air Force

I assume that they'll probably release another analysis
now that casualties have topped 3000, but it will probably
take some time.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Thanks, Ericka!

And from this site - this should pretty much squash the
old-white-men-sending-young-black-men thing:

http://www.militarycity.com/2000casualties/

The data show that the casualties were mostly young, with slightly more than
half under age 25, and many more came from rural areas than urban enclaves. The
data also dispel the notion held by some that the burden of this war falls
heavily on minorities.
In fact, whites make up 74 percent of the Iraq war casualties while making up 67
percent of the total force. Blacks make up 10.7 percent of the casualties
compared to 17 percent of the total force, while the figures for Hispanics are
fairly close, 10.9 percent of the casualties compared to abotu 9 percent of the
force.

Banty

(Catherine Woodgold) wrote in
:

BarbL (aBarbL@comcastdotnet) writes:
It seems to me that the anti-military people in this
newgroup somehow think that the only thing the military
does is kill or be killed.

Straw man argument.

when one is defending the indefensable...
there was never a valid reason to attack Iraq.
there is rarely a valid reason to start a war, particularly
when one has NOT bothered with all other possible attempts to
defuse a situation first. not that there even was a
'situation' to defuse in Iraq.
ousting a dictator (even one we put in place) is really none
of our business, especially when our president is going on &
on about not being into nation building...

lee
--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than
that of blindfolded fear. - Thomas Jefferson