End 'America's Army' Funding

End 'America's Army' Funding

http://www.reasongonemad.com/columns/2010/2/19/end-americas-army-funding.html

By Bill Shein
February 19, 2010

War is many things, but it's certainly not a game. That's why we
can't allow a violent video game – designed by the Pentagon
specifically for children as young as 13 years old – to be used as a
military recruitment tool.

Over the last decade, the U.S. Army has spent more than $33 million
to develop, launch, and market an online, multiplayer, "first-person
shooter" game called "America's Army." It can be downloaded for free
by anyone 13 or older. It's also available for Xbox and PlayStation.
Launched in 2002, it's now in its third major release.

Like other violent video games, America's Army boasts an "immersive"
experience, featuring highly "realistic" imagery of military
operations, "realistic" sounds of weapons, and "realistic" missions
against a digital enemy known as "OpFor," or "opposition force."

A Gamespot.com review praises audio that "helps you feel like you're
really in the middle of brutal firefights." Which, of course, you're
not. Another review gushed over the way players are wounded and
killed: "It's pretty realistic – you take one or two shots and you go
limp, you take one more and you're done."

How do we know what was spent to create America's Army? It took a
Freedom of Information Act request by Gamespot.com to unearth the
budget. But the Army claims that releasing full details would be
"damaging to the U.S. Army's position in the video-game industry."

The Army has a "position" in the video-game industry?

The Pentagon points out that the game includes "training" exercises
that must be completed before entering "combat operations." The
training highlights teamwork, leadership, and following rules of
engagement – components, it says, of real-life military training.

To its credit, the Army is open about the game's recruitment goals.
The game's Web site features many links to goarmy.com. It also
includes sections about army careers and profiles of soldiers under
the heading "Real Heroes" – seamlessly merging "fun," video-game
fiction with real-life soldiering.

In testimony before Congress, the Army has boasted that America's
Army is its most effective recruitment tool. A survey at Fort Benning
conducted by the game's developers found that fully 60 percent of new
recruits played the game at least five times a week. Four percent
said they enlisted specifically because of the game.

And a 2008 MIT study found that "30 percent of all Americans age 16
to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game
and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than
all other forms of Army advertising combined."

At present, the game has nearly 10 million registered users.
America's Army tournaments are held regularly online and around the
country. To participate, sometimes you have to contact your local
recruiting office, as was the case with a contest in Odessa, Texas,
earlier this month.

America's Army is rated "Teen" for "blood and violence." Yet there's
no mention of real war or violence on americasarmy.com. The puffs of
"blood" in the game aren't real. Instead, gamers are told that in the
military, "You will discover a life filled with adventure and meet
other smart, motivated people like you."

The bottom line? To penetrate youth culture and boost enlistment, the
Pentagon has merged entertainment with war in a highly sophisticated
way. But as noted in a devastating ACLU report in 2008, America's
Army violates the U.N. Optional Protocol to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child – which the U.S. Senate ratified in 2002.

Among other responsibilities, the Optional Protocol requires that any
recruitment of a child under 17 take place only with the approval of
a parent or guardian. Yet parental consent in not required to play
America's Army. This is one of many reasons that citizens and parents
must demand that Congress close down this project.

Of course, that's unlikely. Why? Because it was Congress, in 1999,
that called on the military to find "aggressive, innovative
experiments" to increase enlistments.

Mission accomplished. But at what cost?

.

For Women Veterans, Battles Go On at Home

For Women Veterans, Battles Go On at Home

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/21/eveningnews/main6229789.shtml

Female Vets Face Lower Pay, Higher Incidence of Homelessness and
Fewer Services than Their Male Counterparts

Feb. 21, 2010
By Russ Mitchell

More than 212,000 female service members have been deployed to Iraq
and Afghanistan - 11 percent of the total force. One hundred twenty
have been killed in action and more than 600 wounded, but the losses
don't end there. CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell reports on the
battles these female warriors face after they return home.

Angela Peacock is just 30 years old, a veteran of the Iraq war who
was discharged from the Army for health reasons and became homeless.

"Why does it have to be so hard," she sobs, "to just have a home and
to just have a normal life?"

Peacock says she was living "from couch to couch" and "cleaning
people's houses so I could stay with them."

"It's disgusting," said Paul Rieckhoff, head of the Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans Association. "It's a national disgrace that
these heroic people are coming home and ending up homeless."

Rieckhoff's organization issued a report that says homelessness among
young returning female fighters is on the rise.

The report, "Women Warriors," says female veterans earn on average
$10,000 a year less in civilian jobs than male vets, making it harder
to afford a home. And less than 5 percent of the homeless shelters
run by the Veterans Affairs Department offer women separate housing from men.

"There are a variety of reasons why someone can end up homeless. A
core factor many of them face is untreated mental health injuries
like post traumatic stress disorder," Rieckhoff said.

Post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD was the reason Peacock was
sent home from Iraq .She had spent her time in Baghdad driving in
unarmored trucks and fearing roadside bombs.

"You don't ever know is today going to be the day," Peacock said. "A
lot of us wrote letters home like, 'If I die give this to my mom.'"

Her downward spiral accelerated when she returned from Iraq She
became addicted to prescription drugs. Her husband left her, making
her homeless. She found it hard to readjust to life back in St Louis.

"War does something to you where it just twists everything," Peacock
said. "I don't look the same, I don't act the same, I don't have the
same mannerisms."

"Almost half the women who we see today that are homeless are under
35," said Peter Dougherty, director of the homeless program at the
Department of Veterans Affairs.

The VA says on any given night there are an estimated 6,500 homeless
female vets. That's double the number a decade ago.

Angela Peacock now rents a house and has new support: GI Joe - a
companion dog provided by the VA to help her cope with the PTSD when
she's in public places.

"I have my days that are hard to get out of bed, and if fireworks or
something goes off I'm just like done for the day," Peacock said.
"But it's much better than it was. Much better."

For its part, the VA recently announced a five-year plan to wipe out
homelessness among all veterans - male and female.

.

Distant Wars, Constant Ghosts

Distant Wars, Constant Ghosts

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/distant-wars-constant-ghosts/

By SHANNON P. MEEHAN
February 22, 2010

SINCE the two recent NATO-led military strikes that accidentally
killed dozens of Afghan civilians, I have been thinking a great deal
about the psychic toll that killing takes on soldiers.

In 2007, I was an Army lieutenant leading a group on a house-clearing
mission in Baquba, Iraq, when I called in an artillery strike on a
house. The strike destroyed the house and killed everyone inside. I
thought we had struck enemy fighters, but I was wrong. A father,
mother and their children had been huddled inside.

The feelings of disbelief that initially filled me quickly
transformed into feelings of rage and self-loathing. The following
weeks, months and years would prove that my life was forever changed.

In fact, it's been nearly three years, and I still cannot remove from
my mind the image of that family gathered together in the final
moments of their lives. I can't shake it. It simply lingers.

I know that many soldiers struggle long after they leave the
battlefield to cope with civilian deaths. It does not matter whether
they were responsible for those deaths, whether it was a mistake of
the command, of the weaponry, or even the fault of the enemy, who in
parts of both Iraq and Afghanistan have been known to intentionally
place or involve civilians, even children, in their operations. Just
seeing the lifeless body of a little boy or girl is all it takes.

For many soldiers, what follows a killing is a struggle of the mind.
We become aware that what we've seen has changed us. We can't unlearn
it, and we continue to think of those innocent children. It is not
possible to forget.

Killing enemy combatants comes with its own emotional costs. On the
surface, we feel as soldiers that killing the enemy should not affect
us ­ it is our job, after all. But it is still killing, and on a
subconscious level, it changes you. You've killed. You've taken life.
What I found, though, is that you feel the shock and weight of it
only when you kill an enemy for the first time, when you move from
zero to one. Once you've crossed that line, there is little
difference in killing 10 or 20 or 30 more after that.

War erodes one's regard for human life. Soldiers cause or witness so
many deaths and disappearances that it becomes routine. It becomes an
accepted part of existence. After a while, you can begin to lose
regard for your own life as well. So many around you have already
died, why should it matter if you go next? This is why so many
soldiers self-destruct when they return from a deployment.

I know something about this. The deaths that I caused also killed any
regard I had for my own life. I felt that I did not deserve something
that I had taken from them. I fell into a downward spiral, doubting
if I even deserved to be alive. The value, or regard, I once had for
my own life dissipated.

Five weeks ago, my first child, a son, was born. Not surprisingly, my
thoughts often race back to the children I killed. With the birth of
my son, I received the same gift I destroyed.

The fact that soldiers are trained and expected to kill as part of
their job is something that few people wish to talk about. Many men
and women coming back from war don't risk telling the stories that
have so profoundly changed their lives.

In recent months I've been trying to honor the lives I took by
writing and speaking in public about my experience, to show that
those deaths are not tucked neatly away in a foreign land. They may
seem distant, but they are not. Soldiers bring the ghosts home with
them, and it's everyone else's job to hear about them, no matter how
painful it may be.
--

Captain Shannon P. Meehan (Ret.) was a leader of a tank platoon for
the 1st Cavalry Division of the U. S. Army. He is the author of
"Beyond Duty," written with Roger Thompson, a chronicle of his experiences

.

The Myth of Low Military Pay

The Myth of Low Military Pay

http://www.truthout.org/the-myth-low-military-pay57231

Saturday 27 February 2010
by: Carlton Meyer

One great myth in American society is that military personnel are
poorly paid. That was true until the 1980s, when a push to improve
recruit quality boosted military pay each year at twice the inflation
rate. The military was once known for low pay yet great retirement,
but now has great pay as well. This fact is hidden from the public
with absurd propaganda from military associations about the need to
boost pay, and fear in the Pentagon that if Congress catches on, the
days of big pay raises may end.

For example, inflation was flat last year and Social Security
recipients received no increase for 2010. However, military personnel
just got a 3.2 percent pay increase, while civilian wages fell 1.6
percent last year. Some Congress members worry the USA will go
bankrupt unless it cuts spending, so why the pay boost? First, it's a
form of vote buying. Second, federal civilian pay increases follow
military pay increases. Congressional staffers and everyone inside
the beltway benefit, so they profit from this deception.

Look at what the average 20-year-old American earns. The latest data
is from the third quarter of 2009, which shows Americans ages 16-24
on average earn $429 a week, or times 52 = $22,308 a year. The DoD
has a simple online pay calculator. The average age for a recruit is
19, so the typical pay for a 20-year-old sailor is E-2 = $37,637 a
year. If he has a wife and two kids, it's $41,021, nearly twice as
much as he could make in the private sector! This does not include
special pays and bonuses.

If someone joins the military rather than going to college, after
four years he will be at least an E-4, and, with a wife and two kids,
make $48,180 a year! This more than college graduates and at least
$14,000 more than the average salary of any other occupation in the
USA where most workers have decades of experience and seniority.

Finally, it is very rare to find subsidized childcare, free gyms and
tax-free shopping in the civilian world.

It is true that many military people work more than 40 hours a week,
yet so do many civilians. There are many service members who work
less than 40 hours a week, and some work less than 20 if you discount
the hours at "work" they spend surfing the web, exercising in the
gym, getting a haircut or playing softball. Military personnel
receive 30 days paid vacation, enjoy 12 paid federal holidays,
several extra days off as part of "long weekends," unlimited sick
leave, plus the common practice of going home soon after lunch on
Fridays. In contrast, American workers average just 13 paid days off,
and around 40 percent of Americans never get a paid day off and have
no benefits such as health care.

Yes, many servicemen endure stressful occupation duty in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which is why combat pay should be boosted. However, most
career service members rarely spend time in combat zones, and they
usually enjoy the adventure and the extra pay involved. Keep in mind
that Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard personnel are paid the same as
soldiers and marines, and if deployed into a combat zone, it is
normally very safe and comfortable duty aboard a ship or a large base.

Career enlisted men earn ultra-high pay. An E-7 with 20 years of
service with a wife and four kids earns a whopping $78,221 a year!
That's much more than Americans with advanced college degrees, like
an MBA. E-9s can make over $100,000 a year! Enlisted can retire after
just 20 years of service without contributing a cent toward their
generous retirement plan. If the US military advertised these facts,
recruiters would have lines outside their office.

Double Pay for Officers

Officer pay is ultra high as well. The DoD's online pay calculator<>
shows that a new officer starts at $54,800 a year. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) collects data on pay for new college
graduates, broken down by occupation. Several types of engineers
start off at around $70,000, so pay for new officers seems
reasonable. The BLS provides the average pay data for all college
graduates, and its latest data is from the third quarter of 2009.
This shows the median pay for American workers with a bachelor degree
is $1,020 a week, times 52 = $53,040 a year. This shows that an
officer fresh out of college earns more than the average college
graduate with years of seniority and experience.

Let's say the average college graduate works between ages 23 and 63,
so a direct comparison for an average officer would be a 43-year-old
at 20 years of service who is an O-5 (lieutenant colonel or Navy
commander). With a wife and four kids, he earns a massive $136,000 a
year! That is more than twice as much as the comparable American
wage. The excuse is that officers have much more responsibly, but
that is questionable. Officers in charge of units have limited
authority, and since there is an officer for every five enlisted,
many do not command anyone. Many officers are students, co-pilots,
aides or desk clerks who rubber stamp paperwork. The US Army has
trouble keeping captains because of the endless deployments and a
perception of low pay, but it has no problem keeping mid-grade officers.

Some officers have advanced degrees, but most were paid to obtain
one. No company in the private sector pays employees to attend
college for two years to obtain a masters degree. Nevertheless, the
BLS data shows the median pay for American workers with advanced
degrees is $1,309 a week, times 52 = $68,068 a year. So, your average
mid-career military officer earns twice as much! How is this justified?

This explains why career officers love the military and fight to
remain in the force. Keep in mind that these DoD pay figures do not
included special pays and bonuses, which often adds thousands of
dollars a year. It was once common for military pilots to leave after
six years and join an airline. This is rare today since military
officers now earn far more than airline pilots.

Congress seems unaware because, a few years ago, officers in the
Pentagon produced a bogus study showing they were underpaid, so
Congress authorized a special pay boost for mid-ranking officers. It
seems they decided they are comparable to top lawyers at top law
firms, rather than the average pay for Americans with advanced
degrees. Also note that while most Americans have a retirement plan,
nearly all are matching plans where employees must contribute half
and the benefits are limited. People in the military never contribute
one cent and have defined benefits that are never depleted. Since
most retire at around 45 years of age, they earn retirement pay and
heavily subsidized medical care for decades more.

Don't Waste Time With College

High military pay explains support for the recent law that allows
servicemen to pass their VA college benefits along to their children.
Why should enlisted leave the service and struggle through college on
a small stipend only to graduate and earn less money? It is far
better to re-enlist, so that after another four years they are an E-6
with eight years and pocket $63,000 a year, some $10,000 more than
the average college graduate with decades of experience! Keep in mind
that going to college also results in the loss of over $200,000 in
pay during those four years.

High pay causes depression among disabled veterans. The VA pays an
adequate disability rate for them to live comfortably, but it is far
less than their generous active duty pay. Many are outraged when,
partially disabled from combat injuries, they are punished as doctors
say they cannot remain on active duty, so their income falls in half.
This has led to confusion as injured vets awarded a disability rating
attempt to re-enlist after discovering that private sector pay is
less than half as much. The Army recently drew the line at 50 percent
disability, meaning anyone with a disability rating of 50 percent or
more is not allowed to re-enlist.

Let's look at the pay disparity with an example of two brothers. One
graduates from a four-year college, followed by two years of graduate
school at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses and
lost wages. He worked for 12 years and now earns the national average
for his educational level of $68,068 annually. His brother joined the
military, never took a college class and didn't work hard, so he is
just an E-6 after 18 years in the military, yet he earns more than
his hard-working and highly educated brother who spent six unpaid
years and over $100,000 to toil through six years of college.

Drawbacks of High Military Pay

Over the past three decades, private sector pay remained flat, while
Congress routinely provided annual military pay raises higher than
the inflation rate. As a result, military personnel now earn twice as
much as comparable Americans. What wrong with that?

1) Every dollar spent on unneeded pay is a dollar that could have
been spent to develop or procure new items of equipment;

2) Less pay allows for more manpower. If troops were paid the same as
back in the Reagan years, our military could afford twice as many
troops. One solution to reduce deployment time is less pay and more manpower;

3) Meeting re-enlistment goals are no problem today, but that
increases stress as everyone must compete (and brown nose) to remain
in the career force. One mistake or upset officer may end their career;

4) As the nation faces bankruptcy, it is unpatriotic to demand larger
budgets to fund unnecessary pay raises.

The Pentagon reform is simple: freeze pay for a few years. Use some
of the savings for more combat pay and for deployment pay. Also,
Congress should scrutinize re-enlistment bonuses, which have become a
tradition even though most are unjustified. It is true that some
service members are overdeployed, but that is the result of poor
leadership by generals and admirals who use GIs as pawns in their
political games for larger budgets. There was never an urgent need
for more soldiers in Afghanistan. Navy admirals now brag that half
their ships are underway. Congress should ask why. Has the Soviet
fleet reappeared? Does al-Qaeda have a threatening Navy? Keeping the
OPTEMPO (operating/operations tempo) high burns up fuel, wears out
ships and sailors.

Meanwhile, private military organizations, which act like unions,
blatantly deceive Congress and the American people with greedy
demands for ever-higher pay. The Association of the US Army's current
legislative agenda includes its traditional demand to "eliminate the
pay gap." How can military officers, who claim to have high standards
of honor, patriotism and honesty, support that deception? Freezing
military pay will upset some military personnel, but only the selfish
ones. Yet, they should realize that national bankruptcy is a major
threat to their career and retirement plans. If the dollar collapses
and inflation hits 30 percent a year for several years, a newly
elected Congress of "teabaggers" may slash pay and retirement benefits in half.

Other service members consider themselves patriots, and agree that a
nation facing bankruptcy should not continue to grant them
unnecessary pay raises. While some may express outrage, they will
never leave their prosperous military career, even if their pay is
cut. Meanwhile, military recruiters and retention specialists can
distribute this article and await an avalanche of applications.

.

"Dear Veterans," a Q&A

[3 parts]

"Dear Veterans," a Q&A

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15909

by mikel weisser
February 26, 2010

An associate of mine recently asked me to distribute a survey for him
about Veterans. Having served in the military and believing that
joining the armed forces is a way that some people express their love
of country, I agreed to do it, even though i myself have been a
pacifist and strongly anti-military since leaving the Navy in 1981.
--

An associate of mine recently asked me to distribute a survey for him
about Veterans. Having served in the military and believing that
joining the armed forces is a way that some people express their love
of country, I agreed to do it, even though i myself have been a
pacifist and strongly anti-military since leaving the Navy in 1981.
However, i did not realize how strong these feelings were until i
decided to take the survey myself. And at the risk of further PO-ing
even more gun-toters in Kingman. I want to share my answers with you.

First full disclosure: Like so many other people, i joined the
military in a time when i was young and in crisis: in spring of 1981
my apartment burned down while i was listlessly failing my way out of
college. You know the story, that "small town kid now homeless in
bigger city, lost everything he has" kind of thing, including my
glasses. Who do you turn to? You can get friends to feed you and
house you, even give you clothes. But when you look to glasses, that
generally requires self sufficiency or family support. So i went to
my Uncle Sam.

I actually walked into my local armed forces recruitment station
barefoot. Lost those too. First they laughed, then they had me take
an ASVAB and then they offered me advanced placement in the Navy as a
boiler tech. Idiot, that i was, i took it. I had done well in boot
camp--2 letters of commendation--and then, a couple of months into
service school when facing some emotional trouble conveyed through
letters and phone calls with my later-to-be wife back home, i was
sent to a counselor who sent me on a weekend retreat.

The program was called CREDO. I don't know what they had in mind.
What we got was a series of intense marathon group therapy sessions
that climaxed in a "Come to Jesus" sort of thing. The counseler was a
PTSD ridden Vietnam vet hero chaplain, Ray Stubbe (he later wrote a
book his time in Vietnam). I don't know what his intentions were
either, but over the course of the weekend, without actually
suggesting in anyway he himself felt that way, he convinced that the
whole enterprise of the military was a sham and an abomination of
ideals i held important and i was signing on to destroy my soul for
worthless propaganda for war profiteers and make misery around the
world in a lie of freedom. Not that he discussed the military in this
fashion. LCDR Ray Stubbe, was indeed a decorated Viet vet and among
other things is the founder of the Khe Sahn Veterans Inc., whom you
can find online. He is, after almost 30 years, still a hero to me.

And so when i found he was still alive, i stopped and posted this
letter his website to apologize before continuing this column:

"Ray Stubbe was my chaplain in 1981 at GLNTC and a counselor at a
CREDO retreat i took while stationed there. While at the retreat,
through no intention of his own, though after extensive counseling
with LCDR Stubbe, i decided i opposed the military and became a
pacifist, leading to my subsequent honorable discharge in Aug. 1981,
and a lifetime spent promoting peace and social justice causes. I am
now a school teacher and author/artist. I am also still an activist,
the liberal kind, have a blog and publish my political writing
elsewhere as well. I am writing about my personal choice of pacifism
in my liberal political commentary column in the Kingman Daily Miner
in Kingman, AZ, a seriously rightwing city. I will be mentioning Ray
Stubbe, whom i hold in great esteem, though my anti-war,
anti-military sentiment has only increased through the years. I am
writing to thank Chaplain Stubbe for the choice he helped me make,
let him know about the article, and note that i still cherish the
fatigue jacket he once gave me and to this day display it to guests.
Thanks again, sir. "

All that said and done, here my answers to the survey. What are yours?
--

How have veterans helped to make sure that you continue to have
American rights and freedoms?

Excepting the military in WWII, the American military has not helped
protect or ensure my American rights or freedoms. In fact, they've
endangered and degraded them through the violence promoting attitudes
they insist pervade our country and the horrendous violence my
country has wreaked on mankind. Over the course of American history,
there have only been an extremely limited number of engagements where
the US armed forces were instructed to work towards a purpose related
to protecting or securing the rights or the soil of America. Other
than that, the US military has been used as the brute force behind
American business interests--terrorizing the rest of the planet while
impoverishing Americans. Aside from WWII, name me another war,
including the decidedly uncivil one, that wasn't about inflicting our
government's will upon another people at a cost of extreme misery and
devastation and valuing plutocrats' interests over the lives of the public.

And here is the sad, sad part: Though in our past, Vietnam for
example, citizens were once enslaved to do the killing the
politicians call for, the draft ended in 1975. Everyone since then
who have chosen the military have chosen to be wanton killers, or
felt willing to be part of an apparatus whose ultimate purpose is
violence and oppression. Everyone, including the stupid homeless kids
like me, knows that beyond the rhetoric about pride, nationalism,
liberty and freedom, potential murder is part of the package you
agree to perform.

I am, today, so ashamed of what i was willing to do back then.

I am also scared because i was not alone. Because to this day that
means we have a couple of million folks in this country and abroad
who actually support the idea that the murder and destruction of
strangers and their strange lands is just another day at work.
Further we have extra millions of parasite-type vampires walking our
streets who work in industries that profit from this calculated
carnage. And then there's the tens of millions who think the whole
thing is a jolly fine venture and we should wave flags about it ...
as long as somebody else dodges the bullets and slits the throats and
has to sleep in the mud to do it and as long as they don't have to
watch too much of it on TV.

But the saddest and often the most pathetic is what happens to the
veterans, who like myself once allowed professional hucksters to con
them into deluding themselves that patriotism erases the stains of
murder. See war kills all comers, both those who die and those who
survive to have to remember it, to spend the rest of their lives
marching its step.

While there are former military who renounce their bloody deeds and
their willingness to support such values, the people who proclaim
their parts in the American infernal enterprise and then expect we
should celebrate them as "veterans" are not doing my country any good
at all, including those who expect that their former masochism and
sadism should earn them our adulation.

What do you think our country would be like if we didn't have people
who served in the military?

We would have fewer wife-beaters, fewer alcoholics, and fewer
homeless guys; but most important we'd have fewer red-white-&-blue
fashion faux pas on the 4th. No wonder veterans wives' outfits get so
outrageous. They have to get gaudy to drown out doubts. And we have
to be ridiculously hyperbolic in our patriotism to hide our crimes
from ourselves. But as the late great Howard Zinn once wrote, "No
flag is big enough to hide the killing of innocent people."

A country where men did not abandon their families to go destroy the
families of others? We would have fewer traumatized families trying
to figure out how to adjust to the man who came home who wasn't the
guy that went away. We would have fewer prosthetic limbs. We would
have a government that did not act like it had the force to bully its
way around the world because there would be fewer bullies around to
back it up.

Again to give all credit due to the repenters, but with fewer
veterans we would have fewer arrogant people acting like violence is
an acceptable answer, and fewer insisting that they fought for your
freedom, but if you hadn't joined the oppression apparatus yourself
then your opinion doesn't matter next to a person who went and killed
someone somewhere. Or as often happens with former military and even
for numerous combat vets, if a person once supported the military and
had developed a conscious then they too have no right to an opinion
next to someone who went somewhere and killed someone and still
insists on being proud of it.

End Part One

---------

Dear Veterans part two: The Veritable Parable

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15910

by mikel weisser
February 26, 2010

Judging by the array of responses to part one of this column, I admit
I was a bit reluctant to get to part two. Which, of course, means
that the terrorists won.
--

Judging by the array of responses to part one of this column, I admit
I was a bit reluctant to get to part two. Which, of course, means
that the terrorists won. It always amazes me when people who take so
much hubris in being American, act in such decidedly un-American ways
while claiming to defend the country. Any country weak enough to be
threatened by my petty keyboard clattering couldn't have been that
strong in the first place. After all, the concept of free speech is a
meaningless slogan if it only extends to agreeable speech. Those who
claim they fought for our right to free speech and then threaten and
harass those they disagree with are themselves enemies of the very
rights they claim to care so much about.

All that said, let me tell you a story before I really get around to
pissing you off.

Once upon a time there was a loyal citizen who was attacked and
robbed and left by the side of the road for dead. A priest passed by,
ignoring the wounded man and even moved to the opposite side of the
street to avoid contact. Next a proudly religious man came by and
hurried off, leaving his wounded fellow citizen in the dirt. Then a
hated, supposed enemy of the state came upon the wounded citizen and
helped him up. He treated the wounds as best he could and gave the
man a ride to a place he would be safe while he healed.

I know that many of you are unfamiliar with this story since it is a
parable of Jesus telling us how Christians should care for each
other. How do I know that you are unfamiliar with the way Christians
are supposed to act, my fellow Kingmanites? Well, because it is also
the story of the homeless Gulf War veteran I picked up alongside the
road yesterday after he had collapsed while hitchhiking to his
hometown of Kingman. He was my age, 51, Kingman High School class of
'77. The bone thin sun browned grizzle bearded former war hero had
been on the road for 3 days trying to get from Nellis to his camp
under a bridge off highway 93 before heading on to the VA office in
Prescott to continue struggling in his losing battle with government
red tape while trying to get treatment in his continuing losing
battle with Gulf War Syndrome. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of cars
had passed the man, who was so worn down by the time I saw him, he
couldn't even sit up properly and was simply leaning against his GI
issue duffel bag, less than a mile from the bridge out of Laughlin.

ACL, TBI, COPD, PTSD, the man's medical history was a veritable
alphabet of misery. It all started downhill that day in 1991 when his
commander, while wearing his own gasmask, told the men it was safe
for them to take off theirs and they needed to "clean up the shell
casings Saddam's boys left lying around." That commander is now dead
and so are most of the men from that group, or are like him, fast
headed that way.

"One of every four homeless guys you see on the road is a vet, you
know?" he explained. "But they don't want to talk about that. The way
the VA tries to deny and deny and deny you till you give up. What all
we did, they should be helping us, instead of using our own laws as
an excuse to not have to. At Nellis I waited in line 7 hours to get
seen. When the doctor finally looked at me he said, 'Boy, I can't
help you. You got to go to the VA for that down in Prescott.' I said,
'How am I gonna get there?' He said, 'How did you get here?' I told
him 'I walked.' And he laughed at me, laughed at me and said, 'Well,
boy, you better got going.' Half my age and calls me boy. Doesn't
even know what I've been througha nd calls me boy. Look at these
spots," he said and pulled back his sleeve to reveal a baked brown
arm covered with pinhead sized white dots. "There's thousands of
them, all over. Been driving me crazy for like 20 years; but you
can't get help on this. They say it's chemical related, related to
the chemicals we got into over there. They say that now; but for the
first ten years they kept telling folks nothing ever happened."

The black ball cap plainly said US Army, the duffle bag was that
unmistakable olive drab; but that hadn't made much difference .
"Folks don't trust each other anymore, don't help each other. I put
that on the media. Media's America's biggest enemy these days, sets
everyone after each other's jaw. All the time. It's the anger that
sells. Besides, " he stroked his cheek, "they see this suntan and
this lack of shave and a lot of them they figure I'm not their kind.
If it wasn't for faith in the Lord, I don't know how I'd keep going.
It's not like the government's going to help you. It's like anymore
the government tries to make matters worse, not better for the
average man, unless you're rich I guess, then that's not average.
Recession hell, the rich are still doing just fine. Used to be
government tried to do stuff for the people, but now it's just who
gets the next tax cut."

He explained he kept up with the news on his walkman. "I listen to a
bunch of talk radio; but they don't know what they're talking about.
They're always running down Obama, like the mess we are is was his
fault. They never give the man a chance. The man came into a bees'
nest that Bush left it in. You know they don't talk about any of the
trouble that man made, just try to turn us all against Obama, to keep
him from doing anything. You know that Bush he cut Vet benefits. Sure
did; but nobody talks about that. They just wave that flag at you and
tell you how much they need you, then leave you on the side of the road."

He said more, but you get the point. Just as so many of you noted, it
is easy for me to type words against vets, when I had not faced their
fight; it is also easy you to claim you care about veterans, as you
blithely drive by and leave your fellow soldier in the desert to die.

Part Three Next Week.

---------

Dear Vets, part three: You Think I Got a Complex?

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15911

by mikel weisser
February 26, 2010

I swear i am not making this up, but today, again just prior to
tonight's writing, i had another encounter with another vet.
--

I swear i am not making this up, but today, again just prior to
tonight's writing, i had another encounter with another vet. However
this week's encounter with a vet just prior to writing was not nearly
as cinematic as the previous one, but was as equally intense in the
opposite way to the point of seeming a hyperbolically invented
stereotype. I stopped to get gas following a performance heading home
when a truck pulled in with more veteran related signage that most
4th of July parades. Just roared up big and heavy. Among other things
it had that well-worn line about demanding that "If I love my
freedoms" then "i should thank a vet."

And i wanted to say, "why?"

But in all honesty i wondered if i asked if he would want to shoot
me. I mean he was a vet, trained to kill. That is the point of being
a soldier right? Being the kind of person who would kill you if you
piss them off. Many Americans actually think that projecting that
kind of image is a strength, and most of those folks are vets, and
that by itself is a problem in a society that claims to want peace.
When your average citizen wants war with his next average citizen
over issues of taste how civil can that society be? I wanted to ask
him why he expected i should thank him for fighting some recent war
whose only clear purpose was to squander America's resources or her
global good will.

I had been thinking about that question for a couple of weeks now
since i first received the survey. As i had expected when my
colleague initially asked me to help distribute his survey, the
actual point was to get people think about and discuss how much they
appreciate veterans. Since writing part one of this column, i have
had many opportunities to reconsider my initial statements and try as
i might (and i have tried) there are a couple of basic points i can't
get past when it comes to changing my mind.

First, war is murder. It's arson, it's assault multiplied
exponentially, it's vandalism on a massive scale and as somebody once
said, it's "a theft" from the American people. That person by the way
was a Republican president, Dwight David Eisenhower, who later in
1961 as he was leaving office warned the American people that after
two world wars and fifteen years of the "Cold War," the power elite
of this country were coming to dominate our government and were
addicting us to a war economy.

But in 1953, at the beginning of his administration he first framed
the essence of his anti-war message with this famous quote from one
of the most beloved Republican presidents in his time and,
significantly, a soldier/vet: "Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft
from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true
sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of
iron." ("The Chance for Peace." April 16, 1953.)

As he prepared to leave office Eisenhower struck the same chords in
his farewell speech warning that our country's drift to a
militarization of our government and our attitudes will have "grave
implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved.
So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of
government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this
combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should
take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry
can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military
machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that
security and liberty may prosper together." ("Farewell Address," Jan.
17, 1961).

And as Eisenhower predicted, fifty years later our country is
addicted to war and the violence and brutality it creates. And that
is something vets have created. And for these things i do not thank you.

Vietnam, Iraq I or II, Grenada, Panama? Where is the good being done?
An invading American force is like a Haitian earthquake, except it
doesn't expect to be greeted with flowers. Chile? El Salvador?
Guatemala? Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras? Why don't they love us for
our freedom?

Could it be that every one of these wars on every one of these
countries has since been revealed as boondoggles and shams, a
disgrace upon our country and a damage to the planet. What exactly is
it the rest of us are thanking you veterans for? But instead of
trying to ask, i pumped my gas trying to keep a silence.

I lost count in the stickers, master sergeant insignia, Army crest
with gold, American Legion embossed, more proclamations of the
"veteran" and "army. It was the most insecure display i ever have
seen and thought what an over-the-top Looney i must look like with
all my peace signs, Jail Bush/anti-GOP assortment, and quotes from
liberals like Gandhi and Zinn. I mean if i'm overcompensating then he
is too, right?

But before we both finished guzzling our gas, the question spurted
out of me, "So what war were you in?"

And he says, "Vietnam."

There's nothing more to say. We already know the truth: There was,
and still is, little to be thankful for from that war: It was sold on
a lie, based on a loyalty to a 20th Century colonial French
oppressor, then to a country whose government wasn't worth propping
up. Then to a cabal of corruption on both sides of the globe. Our
politicians destroyed any chance our soldiers might have had for
winning. Even though they were wasting our time and our money, and
most of all our children.

And our society didn't care as long as we had our diet Coke we'd
teach the world to sing. Meanwhile, our supposed "Great Society" was
snorted up the barrel of a gun like the war addiction it was. And
still our generals and spiritual leaders wouldn't bring the lives
they were squandering home. Even when the press turned against it,
like any honest person would they still wouldn't bring them home. So
sons and brothers and cousins and fathers were destroyed. Their
enemies were capable of mind-altering evil and our nation's brave
children turned to monsters themselves, whom the hippies sometimes
rightly called baby-killers. But those beautiful hippies turned out
to be druggies and wastoids. They ruined our fashions, trampled our
morals and trashed their own dreams. And then everything got ugly and
by the time that war was done, our black and white and young and old
will never forgive each other again. And we're all still trying to
even the score and that all gets so tiring.

And, thanks to the Gulf of Tonkin, besides the catalog of the damage
we did, the whole world knows of the deception that created the
carnage, just like some "weapon of mass destruction" to the
reputation of America. We all know the sad sorry truth. But no one
explains why our government neither apologizes or changes its ways.
And why the rest of America is supposed to be thankful for that kind
of behavior or how it equates to freedom.

And so the question followed me home to where my copy of the original
survey that started the experience more than a month ago was still
waiting for me to type it or go on. " If i love my freedoms then i
should thank a vet. And i want to ask, "why?"

Lord knows there is continuing awful news every day. Like the two
minute hate of Orwell's '84 the daily news is designed to anger.
Murdock and Fox proved long ago that anger sells which is why there
are so many screaming jerks in Primetime on a supposed news show. The
only way a liberal like me can even deal with is to laugh and work on
our little "for the common good" projects and pray America's not
become Rwanda 1994. The right wing shift some of us predicted when
Obama took office has indeed launched into violence mode with piñatas
of Pelosi at CPAC. And i detest Pelosi too, the sell out, the shill,
just like Gingrich, packaging a different set of talking points while
still being a mouthpiece for the forces that endanger everybody's
health and well being and the essence of America. Yeah, i find plenty
of Democrats out there who suck and compromise away our country in
ways that don't truly advance either the right or the left's ideology
and yet those and the ideas that win again and again.

And that's just one problem: Wall Street now giving themselves
billions as their reward for stealing trillions from us, global
warming deniers and all sorts of other rightwing paranoia propaganda
being passed off as legitimate as the rest of the world, the angry
rest of the world sours on Obama the way we have. Lords knows there
plenty to write about.

But now having opened that can of worms with the veterans and i need
to finish it.

Part Four next week.

.

Army Alcoholics: More Soldiers Hitting the Bottle

Army Alcoholics: More Soldiers Hitting the Bottle

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/army-alcoholics-soldiers-hitting-bottle-hard/story?id=9863321

Army Seeking More Counselors After 56 Percent Increase in Soldiers
Getting Treatment

By SARAH NETTER
Feb. 22, 2010

After Army Sgt. Edison Bayas' car finally came to a rest on its roof,
his jumbled, drunken thoughts immediately turned to the men he left
in Iraq, as if he was still on the battlefield.

But he wasn't in Iraq. He was in an El Paso intersection with a blood
alcohol content more than three times the legal limit, his
19-year-old victim nearly decapitated in her car a few feet away.

Bayas, a decorated career soldier, is now serving a 15-year-prison
sentence for intoxication manslaughter. He's just one of thousands of
soldiers whose problems with alcohol spun out of control in the midst
of two wars, mounting pressure and a continuing stigma that macho
guys don't get help.

After years of increasing alcohol abuse within their ranks, soldiers
are now seeking treatment in record numbers, according to new figures
put out by the Army.

Nearly 9,200 soldiers sought treatment for alcohol abuse in 2009, a
56 percent increase since the war in Iraq started. Another 11,892
were required to undergo "alcohol education" -- a 16 to 20 hour
course for soldiers who were disciplined for an alcohol-related
incident, but not found to have an actual abuse problem.

"There has always been a healthy work-hard, play-hard ethos to the
military," Tom Tarantino, legislative director for the Iraq and
Afghanistan Veterans Association, told ABCNews.com. "It can turn very
quickly over from being recreational to a problem."

Drinking with Army buddies is a legacy that goes back likely as long
as the Army itself. But as military brass worries over increases in
substance abuse, suicides and mental health issues in its active-duty
service members and veterans, alcohol use has come to be seen as a
serious problem, rather than a rite of passage.

Army officials say 85 percent of the soldiers who seek outpatient
substance abuse treatment are there because of alcohol. The Army is
now in the midst of a nationwide search for additional counselors in
an effort to reduce the wait time for help from days down to hours.
There is currently one counselor for every 2,000 soldiers.

But is it too little too late? Maybe, some soldiers and veterans say.

"I don't necessarily think they pay enough attention until it's too
late," said Brian, a three-tour Fort Hood area soldier who did not
want his last name used.

More than two years sober and on temporary disability from the Army
with traumatic brain injury and other extensive combat-related
medical problems, Brian said it was the realization that his career
in the military was over that prompted him to get treatment.

"I realized I wasn't ever going to have a job that was going to
enable me to drink like in the military," Brian said.

Soldier on Alcohol Abuse: 'I'd Drink Until My Body Shut Down'

Brian, a social drinker when he signed up for the Army nearly 12
years ago, said he began drinking in earnest after his first
deployment to Iraq in 2003. Involved in four separate bomb attacks in
that one tour, "I started drinking heavily to mask the pain."

No one, he said, would have respect a commander who whined about his
pain and took sick leave.

"Every night it was a minimum of a 12-pack, up to 24," he said. "I
stayed at home, would sit and drink until 10 'o clock. I'd drink
until my body shut down."

By Brian's third tour in 2005, he was slamming the "near beers" you
could buy on base that smelled like the real thing and had a very low
alcohol content. He'd also get real beer in care packages from
friends and family that didn't realize he was addicted.

His soldiers would sometimes smell the alcohol on him, but Brian said
he'd always have an excuse to brush it off.

When a potential fourth tour raised questions about his physical
ability to lead his command -- he'd had multiple shoulder surgeries
and had mesh implanted in his abdomen -- Brian was put into the
Army's Warrior Transition Unit for injured soldiers. And that's where
he realized he had to stop drinking.

He called his wife and told her he was going to get treatment. He
later found out she'd already been planning to take the children and
leave him.

Tarantino, a retired Army captain, said stories like Brian's drive
home the need for more attention to combat-related mental health issues.

"Alcohol abuse is a symptom of the larger problem. It is not the
larger problem," he said.

Army brass rhetoric has repeatedly sought to assure the public that
treatment for any mental health problems will not negatively affect a
soldier's career, but some say they still fear being seen as weak.

"There is a stigma with saying 'I need help,'" Tarantino said. "We're
all taught to be strong and macho and we can lift the world on our shoulders."

Young Soldiers Disproportionately Affected by Alcohol Abuse

In Bayas' case, his problems with alcohol went back years, even
before he deployed to Iraq.

His attorney, Miguel Villalba, said Bayas, 36, had curbed his
drinking after two DUI arrests in the 1990s, while he was in the Army.

But after pulling his best friend's body out of an exploded tank on
his first tour in Iraq in 2004 and going through a divorce after he
got home, he went back to the bottle. And, his lawyers argued, it was
no secret he had a problem. Looking at his 18-year military record,
"his alcohol issue was never really addressed."

"That he had a drinking problem was known to the world," Villalba
said. "And this was happening at a time when he was being given all
kinds of commendations."

The drunk driving accident that killed the 19-year-old college
student happened just 10 days after Bayas got back from Iraq. He
plowed through her car, which was stopped for a red light, going 60
mph without ever slowing down.

When police on scene asked him where he was headed, Villalba said,
Bayas responded, "I was on my way to get my men. I was in Iraq. I was
on my way to get my men."

Bayas, his lawyer said, was not diagnosed with post traumatic stress
disorder until after his arrest. He pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge.

"He accepted full responsibility for it," Villalba said. "The effects
of what has happened have been ravaging" for Bayas and the victim's family.

The majority of the soldiers seeking counseling for alcohol abuse are
young -- 18 to 25 years old.

Army spokesman Hank Minitrez told ABCNews.com that they are trying to
do better with reaching the young soldiers earlier.

"For many, shipping out for the Army is the first time away from home
for our young soldiers, so they are experimenting with life so to
speak," Minitrez wrote in an e-mail. "We are also dealing with
younger brains that have not fully developed their executive
functions -- that little guy on our shoulder that says, 'Don't do it!'"

Alcohol Abuse in the Army Fuels Legal, Financial, Domestic Problems

Gary Klozenbucher, clinical director of the Army Substance Abuse
Program at Fort Riley in Kansas, told ABCNews.com that most of the
soldiers they see in treatment are in the early stages of their addiction.

Some come in scared after being referred by a commander, he said.
Others are defiant and insist they have their drinking under control.
While many come in with a mix of substance abuse issues, alcohol is
"absolutely" the most prevalent.

But Klozenbucher wasn't convinced that deployments create alcohol problems.

"The majority of the time, the soldiers that we are seeing that have
identified as having alcohol and drug problems after a deployment,
most of those soldiers have had some history prior to the
deployment," he said. "As far as the development of a drug problem,
that can play a major role in the progression of the addiction."

He did concur, however, that alcohol abuse can be a catalyst for a
host of other problems seen in Fort Riley soldiers, including legal,
financial and domestic issues.

"Certainly we're seeing those problems with our soldiers,"
Klozenbucher said. "There are a strong relationships with drug and
alcohol problems."

Experts -- both current Army employees and veterans -- say the
difference between today's soldiers and previous generations is that
alcohol is viewed as more of a problem rather than a bonding experience.

"Back when I was in the Army, back in the 1970s and '80s, we assumed
drinking was mandatory," joked Larry Scott, an Army veteran and
founder of vawatchdog.org, which keeps tabs on programs and news
about the Army and Veterans Affairs. "Really don't recall too many
people who didn't drink."

Scott even remembered a commander in Korea once pleading with his
soldiers to try and keep it to two on-duty drinks at lunch.

"Drinking was as big a problem then as it is now. It just wasn't as
highlighted," he said. "I would say they're moving in the right direction."

.

The Dark Underbelly of Occupation, an Army Medic's Account

"Mass Casualties":
The Dark Underbelly of Occupation, an Army Medic's Account

http://www.truthout.org/mass-casualties-the-dark-underbelly-occupation-army-medics-account56992

Thursday 18 February 2010
by: Dahr Jamail

"Look around," the drill sergeant said. "In a few years, or even a
few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely
wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can't stand the
sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so
emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there."

"It was Week 7 of basic training ... eighteen years old and I was
preparing myself to die," said Michael Anthony in "Mass Casualties: A
Young Medic's True Story of Death, Deception and Dishonor in Iraq."
The book is more than a simple memoir about a difficult experience.
It is an insider's scathing testimony of an ongoing illegal and
unethical military action in a distant, once-sovereign state, by the
US. Perhaps, this fresh account will raise some outcry over an issue
that has all but dropped out of the American public's radar.

Following the family legacy of military service, Anthony enlisted in
the military at 17. The image he had nurtured of the idealism of
military life, however, ran aground upon his arrival in Iraq, where
he served as a medic in an operating room (OR) at a US military base.

"Mass Casualties" is a collection of Anthony's personal journal
entries from his time in Iraq. It includes his introspections on and
insights into the inherently irrational and meaningless nature of
military life. The rawness of the narrative reveals how the
occupation broke down the young soldier's spirit and almost
desensitized him into believing "my job isn't to feel."

The late historian and Author Howard Zinn held the book in high
regard. "Michael Anthony's memoir is not about the politics of Iraq.
Instead it takes us deep inside the war, inside and outside the
operation room, the barracks, the talk of the soldiers, the feeling
of the situation ... unique and powerful," Zinn wrote.

The young author makes no attempt to shield the reader from the
reality of war. In one instance, he gives a graphic description of
working on an Iraqi patient who had received shrapnel from proximity
to a suicide bomber. The shrapnel embedded in the patient's body
happened to be bone fragments of the suicide bomber.

"I've got a belly full of bacon and eggs and I'm about to have my
arms elbow deep in someone's stomach," he wrote of his first days
there, "In the OR we only do three surgeries at a time because that's
the number of beds we have. Even worse is that in one of our rooms we
have two OR beds placed only a few feet apart. This means we'll often
have two surgeries going on at the same time in the same room. Not
the most sterile setup in the world, but we're short on staff and
short on space, just not short on patients."

Here is an account that chronicles the impact of war on the
individual psyche as well as the collective consciousness of those
that participate in it. We are shown the swift process of
dehumanization that all soldiers undergo on the ground, to the extent
that the lines distinguishing "friend" from enemy get blurred.

After hearing about a woman in his unit being "gang-banged" by three
Marines at his base the soldier writes: "I wish I could just forget
everything and go back to thinking that everyone in the military is
an American hero. I wish I still had someone to look up to, although
I know it's impossible. None of it seems to make sense, and I can't
understand how people can do what they do."

The author's morale, like that of his peers, plummets within weeks of
his arrival in Iraq. Nothing had prepared him for the melting of
backgrounds and personalities that the Army is. His associates in the
battle field are not easy people: "What an outfit: people in their
thirties, married with children, all of them having affairs. One was
a heroine addict; the other has slept with eleven men in the past
three months. One guy tired to kill himself and another kidnapped a
drug dealer. Alcoholics, chain smokers, compulsive gamblers - who am
I to judge?"

The reader is exposed to the factors leading to post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD), a serious condition that has been affecting veterans
and active duty soldiers alike, in epidemic proportions since the
beginning of the occupation.

Anthony writes of a suicide prevention class he and his
fellow-soldiers are required to attend:

... they also tell us that people who are suicidal usually become
depressed from big changes happening in their lives. They say that
depressed people become withdrawn and will not enjoy everyday
activities. They'll sleep a lot. I couldn't help but laugh when I
heard this ... because I looked around the room and everyone fit the
criteria. We've all had a huge change in our lives coming to Iraq.
Everyone here is withdrawn and sleeps as much as possible, and our
everyday activities consist of running for our lives and working on
near-death patients. Who wouldn't be depressed and want to spend time
alone? We work long hours at unpredictable times, and we see the same
people twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. What I never
understood from these classes is how are we supposed to spot the real
suicidal people when everyone has suicidal symptoms?

There is a suicide attempt in his unit, but the higher-ups opt not to
write it up because nobody wants the hassle of doing the paperwork.

Matters inevitably worsen under abusive commanders. While he is
resigned to the binding contract that "... says that all my decisions
are to be made by somebody else who is my superior," he does not feel
particularly comfortable about it. "I've seen him yell at a female
soldier while she sobbed uncontrollably. This is the guy who's
supposed to be, I mean is, our leader in Iraq."

When Anthony's unit is moved from Mosul to Al-Anbar province in
central Iraq to set up a new hospital, the unit commander leads the
men to believe that he would be working at another hospital for a
month, but actually he was back in the US taking a class at a war
college because he needed the course in order to be promoted. The
medic finds it unconscionable: "I start to feel nauseous - we are in
the middle of fighting a war and our leader has given himself a
month-long VACATION."

As the book progresses, the shift in Anthony's stance from his
original reverence of the military to a defined mistrust of it,
becomes evident. So much so that he said, "All it took for me to
respect someone in the military was for that person to refuse a direct order."

The irony is not lost on the reader who sees the young soldier
getting apprehensive about returning to civilian life and autonomous
decision making, as his year of service draws to a close.

Grappling with his own guilt, he has difficulty reconciling himself
to the sentiments behind the care packages that come from home.
"These people are sending us everything they have, and most of us
don't deserve it. They aren't sending provisions to the heroes they
think we are. It is going to us doing shit jobs and others who are
criminals; people doing drugs, committing crimes, molesters,
adulterers, people doing anything they can to only help themselves.
The worst part about these old people sending me this package is they
think they're helping."

Mindful of his own boyhood spent idolizing the Army and playing with
GI Joes in the backyard, Anthony is filled with remorse: "Soon the
letters from the third and fourth graders will start to come. Those
are the most depressing of them all. Kids writing letters supporting
something they know nothing about, only that they're told to support
their country and the war."

If for nothing else, "Mass Casualties" gains immense importance in
its honest portrayal of a young soldier's vulnerability as he
struggles hard to cope with his shattered illusion about the Army. It
is not difficult to share his angst as he reflects, "I think about
why I'm fighting this war and my eyes tear up. I think of all the
people we've killed. I think of all the people's families - mothers,
fathers, siblings - and how they'll never see them again ... I think
about the war and I feel nothing. I think about life and death, mine
and everyone else's, and I feel nothing. I think about myself and I
don't care if I live or die. On these nights, mortars go off and I
won't get out of bed. I'll lie in bed as the bombs go off. I tell
myself it doesn't matter if I live or die, nothing matters - I like
it when I feel nothing."

To "take the edge off" being in Iraq, he tries everything from heavy
smoking to excessive pain medication and reported, "Here's what my
days are like, I wake up in the morning and smoke to get rid of my
headache, then I walk to work, in a hundred and twenty degrees of
heat, and then spend all day covered in blood. Then I go home, take
some pills, and fall asleep."

In a frank admission of his fears and lamenting the breaking of his
spirit he said, "We're warriors on the battlefield but cowards in our
own minds and hearts."

Anthony was back from Iraq and driving home from a lecture he had
delivered on PTSD and suicidal veterans when he learned of the Fort
Hood shootings [allegedly] by Nidal Hassan that left dozens dead and wounded.

He told Truthout that the incident came as no surprise to him and,
"Stories like that reminded me that there's absolutely nothing a
soldier can do to not get deployed overseas. The Army has a policy
that if a soldier says they're suicidal or homicidal, they still get
sent overseas. Why? Because if every soldier who said they're
suicidal or homicidal didn't get sent overseas then anyone who
doesn't want to go would just say they're suicidal or homicidal. So
the Army in turn just sends everyone, no matter what.

"I had a friend who didn't want to go to Iraq so he purposely failed
five drug tests in a row (smoking pot and doing coke) he still got
sent to Iraq. There was one guy in my unit who didn't want to go to
Iraq, he told our commanders he was suicidal, they said he still had
to go. The soldier then went and got a swastika tattooed on his
shoulder, he told the commanders that he was racist and hated
everyone except white people; commanders said he still had to go to
Iraq. The next day he takes a bottle of pills and tries to kill
himself - and I'm sure if he were physically capable of it, he still
would have had to go to Iraq. There was a guy in my unit who was on
anti-depressant medication; our commanders said they couldn't deploy
him on that medication that he should stop taking it. The next day he
tries to stab someone and is put in jail, he still went to Iraq with
us. There are more and more of the same stories ... There's literally
nothing you can do to not go to Iraq and I think that's why suicidal
and homicidal patients aren't getting the care they need because
before it's time to go overseas, you're going no matter what, and
after you get back, the government doesn't care."

Rather than feeling happy or proud of his time deployed in Iraq,
Anthony captures a feeling that must be all too common for returning
troops who simply want out.

Recounting to Truthout one particular occasion when he realized that
things had gone very wrong with him, Anthony said, "Everyone comes
home changed. For me I noticed it my first week back. I went to visit
my brother in San Diego and it was the end of October and for
Halloween my brother and I went to this bar ... My only concern was
chain-smoking and chain-drinking ... We go to this bar and I've just
gotten back and I'm still in this mood like, "Nobody knows what it
was like. Nobody knows where I just came from and went through." My
brother and I go to this empty table and we start drinking beers and
I'm chain smoking cigarettes, then three biker guys come up to us,
they look at me and say, 'You guys are at our table' and as the guy
says 'table' I turn around and blow my cigarette smoke in his face
while saying, "Table was empty when we sat down, go find another
one." It all went downhill from there. One of the guys put his hand
on my hand (which was holding my beer) and pushes it away; another
guy turns his back towards me and starts roughly leaning towards me
as if to butt me out, and at this I get angry and in my head. I'm
telling myself 'These guys have no idea where I just came from; these
dumb bikers think they're so tough, I'd like to see them overseas'
etc. And I'm getting madder and madder and we're saying things back
and forth and finally I'm so angry, that I turn my empty beer bottle
over and I lift it up to smash it over this guys head ... From there
I just started laughing; I stubbed my cigarette out, flicked it at
the guy and walked away. It wasn't until a few minutes later when I
calmed down and grasped how crazy it was what I was about to do. Then
I realized that maybe I didn't return home the way I [I was when I] left."

"Mass Casualties" is not the first and is not going to be the last
indictment of the US occupation of Iraq. There have been films,
reports, books, blogs and dozens of testimonies at Winter Soldier
events that have exposed various ugly aspects of the occupation as
witnessed and enforced by the "heroes" in uniform. Each tale comes
with its share of guilt, despair and remorse at having been complicit
in wanton destruction under an obviously false façade of patriotism.

Perhaps, this latest account in its unsophisticated and gut-level
rejection of the lie that the US military has come to represent will
make people sit up and take notice ... and action.

.

Josh and Conor - Home from war in Iraq

Josh and Conor - Home from war in Iraq

http://www.peoplesworld.org/josh-and-conor-home-from-war-in-iraq/

by: Nadya Williams
January 26 2010

Stand up and repeat these words in marching cadence:

"I went down to the market
Where all the people shop
I pulled out my machete
And I began to chop

I went down to the park
Where all the children play
I took out my machine gun
And I began to spray"

This is a chant our young are taught to march to in our military
today, and this is how two young veterans of the Iraq War begin their
presentations to groups across the country.

Late last fall, Josh Stieber and Conor Curran spoke to a gathering of
Veterans For Peace and civilian peace activists in San Francisco, as
part of their six months of walking and biking from the East Coast to
the West to engage in dialogue about war and to become involved in
community service along the way.

Both young men are from small American heartland towns - Josh from
Maryland and Conor from Ohio. They did not know each other until
after they got themselves out of the military. They spoke of their
motivations for joining the Marines, their experiences in Iraq and
the turning points that made them reject violence.

The two called their cross-country odyssey, "The Contagious Love
Experiment" - certainly a retro, '60s "Hippie Haight-Ashbury" moniker
to more mature ears. The tag is both innocent and naive, but on a
deeper level, it is their counterbalance to the brutality and
disillusionment they experienced. Their story and reasoning are worth
listening to.

Josh, a tall, blond, "all-American-type" in his early 20s, was in
junior high school in Maryland when September 11th happened. His
determination to, as he saw it, protect his country was initiated
when his parents took him to see the damage at the Pentagon, and so
he joined the Marines straight out of high school. Raised as a devout
Christian, he pushed aside doubts while in basic training and forced
himself to answer "yes" when asked, "Will you kill a 'hostile' even
if lots of civilians are around who will get hurt?"

Conor, thin and tall with black curly hair, also became a Marine, but
spoke more of being alienated during and after high school, wanting
to fit in and be accepted, using "lots of drugs," getting into debt,
and not having a skill or education to direct him. So at 20 years
old, "The Few and The Proud" seemed to give him all the answers.

At the time, he said, being in the Marines helped him to change his
values and gave him a "mission accomplished" feeling. He became a
good soldier. But Conor's second tour was when 'it got heavy.'

Josh spoke frequently of his Christian upbringing that taught him
principles in complete opposition to the killing, fear and hatred he
learned in Iraq. (To say nothing of the disconnect of being told that
America was "liberating Iraq and bringing Freedom and Democracy" and
the "chop and spray" chant!)

He said fear of and hatred for the Iraqi people would build up in the
troops to the point where ripping apart homes, wrecking gardens and
property, and arresting and abusing prisoners became commonplace. On
the street, going out of the way to run a truck through mud to spray
old people, or, during house searches, taking the dolls of little
girls, twisting their heads off then giving them back became
acceptable behavior. "Why do we make the locals fear the U.S.
military more than the insurgents?" he wanted to know. "We
out-terrorized the terrorists!"

Josh vividly recalled pulling guard duty on a prisoner with another
young American soldier right after coming from a church service. Josh
thought of the moral and religious lessons he learned at home in
Maryland: "blessed are the peace makers;" "turn the other cheek;" and
"love thine enemy," as his buddy talked of how he was going to
brutalize the prisoner. "Jesus wouldn't let himself get punked
around," was his friend's reply when Josh objected on Christian principles.

The insanity of war gradually became apparent to Josh during his
14-month tour of duty, as when he and his squad detained a man with
ample evidence that the Iraqi had been involved in attacks on
American soldiers. This man turned out to be the mayor of the town,
and U.S. military authorities' regular "payments" of school supplies
and cash ensured a halt in attacks on Josh and his men, at least in
that part of town. So much for "we will not negotiate with
terrorists," he thought.

These revelations led this idealistic youth into a "bleak" period, he
said, with feelings of hopelessness, "always looking over my
shoulder," and the realization that he'd always let others tell him
how to think and how to live up to their expectations.

Neither young man spoke of killing anyone, and no one from the
audience asked. But each spoke of turning points when they decided
they could not continue as soldiers. For Josh this was a gradual
process, but for Conor it came during his second tour while
conducting random searches with his squad for weapons caches in
Ramadi, without adequate intelligence. They set upon a home with an
exceptionally beautiful garden and proceeded to tear it apart and dig
it up. "Then the man of the house came out with a tray and served us
all tea!" said Conor. "He spoke English and wanted to be our friend.
He showed love to us and we were terrorizing him."

Thus the seed for "The Contagious Love Experiment" was planted.

Conor and Josh had many encounters along the roads of America since
the spring, but the one that stood out for them was meeting a Vietnam
War veteran who told them, "Instead of uniting against a common
enemy, we should unite for a common goal - peace."
--

For more information, see: www.contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com ,
also www.ivaw.org (Iraq Veterans Against the War) and
www.veteransforpeace.org

.

Are you army strong?

Are you army strong?

http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/337027/newspaperid/511/Are_you_army_strong.aspx

Friday, February 19, 2010
By Shannen Gillespie

High schools are the latest anti-war battleground. Military
recruiters walk around school campuses to talk to students about
their future. But the question is, whether or not they should be allowed.
With war raging and unemployment rates rising, the military seems
like a great choice after high school. Talk of money, exotic places,
and adventurous warfare, easily draws students in. But I don't think
recruiter involvement on campus is a good idea.
The military depends on recruiters to attract an educated force to
defend the nation making visits to high schools and access to school
directory information critical to recruiters because the U.S. Army
requires that soldiers have a high school diploma.
The presence of recruiters in high schools does not force students to
join; it simply alerts them to an option.
Sophomore Jonathon Martinez, 15, said, "I think they should [be
allowed on campus]. The people have a right to know their options."
Right now recruiters are desperate to ship new soldiers off to Iraq.
The teenagers who are recruited are told mostly about positive
aspects of being in the military to ward off misgivings they may have.
There's not much mention of combat. Recruiters don't explain what
it's like to walk the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington, where you'll see a tragic, unending parade of young
soldiers struggling to move despite their paralysis.
Military recruiters search the halls of public schools, where they
are preying on young students who are vulnerable and impressionable.
Sophomore, Kelly Edwards, 15, said, "[Recruiters should be allowed]
because if you're going to go into the military, it's a good place to start."
If students do decide to join the military, they can at off campus
recruiting offices. But they should go to college first; then they
have a higher education so that they receive a higher rank once they
enter. If they go to the military first, they must agree to a
six-year-plan where they promise money for college later.
After coming back from the military, soldiers would be in their early
twenties and waiting for their money for college. In the mean time
they have to look for a job, which is difficult with just a high
school diploma and even more so if you're injured.
It's hard to change a federal law, but it's important students know
their rights and what they are getting themselves into when they join
the army. Ask of questions and don't be pressured into something you
feel uncomfortable with.

.

Local military recruiters say recession aids in meeting goals

Local military recruiters say recession aids in meeting goals

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/article_6f1f9748-ef7b-11de-8fab-001cc4c002e0.html

By MICHELLE LEE
December 22, 2009

NORTHFIELD ­ Jassiel Velez, a former University of Puerto Rico
student, came to Brigantine in February to look for new
opportunities. She found one with the U.S. Army.

Velez, 24, a single mother currently working as a waitress, said she
signed up for the Army National Guard in November because she wanted
a better career. She liked the fact that the Army would provide
funding to help her finish undergraduate studies.

Velez has been preparing herself by going to weekly drills with other
new recruits. She is scheduled to go to Oklahoma and Georgia next
year for 25 weeks of basic training and to learn radio and satellite
communication skills.

"I'm pretty excited. I just can't wait to leave," Velez said in an
interview last week. "Besides, I know when I come back, I'll have my
career. Once I have my degree, I won't be struggling."

Velez is among dozens of local residents turning to the military for
employment. More people have been showing up at the recruitment
office in the past two years, and Army officials believe the economic
recession is playing a factor in that.

The number of people enlisting in Northfield has grown over the past
three years, station commander Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Robbins said.

The Northfield office recruited 54 people for active duty in 2007, 68
last year and 66 people by mid-December this year.

Robbins said the recession has made people see the Army as a way to
get a secure job and training. He estimated that about 20 to 25
people walk into the recruitment office every week ­ in 2007, he
said, he and other recruiters had to cold-call people.

"Nowadays I'm turning more people away than I am bringing in," Robbins said.

The Army recruited 70,045 new people for active duty and 23,684
people for the reserve in 2009, Army Public Affairs Officer Chet
Marcus said. While the total number of enlisted men and women
fluctuates based on the needs of the military, what has changed is
the success in recruiting the personnel. The 2009 numbers easily
exceeded the mission goal of 65,000 people for active Army duty and
22,500 people for the Army Reserve.

The U.S. Navy and New Jersey Air National Guard also reached their
recruitment goals for fiscal 2009.

Recruiters for the 177th Fighter Wing, in Egg Harbor Township,
enlisted 167 people in 2009 and 119 people in 2008, said Master Sgt.
Kathy Freed, the recruiting and retention superintendent for the New
Jersey Air National Guard. Recruiters for the 108th Air Refueling
Wing at McGuire Air Force Base enlisted 113 people in 2009 and 98
people in 2008, Freed said.

The sign-up bonus of about $20,000 stayed the same, Freed said, but
the maximum age changed this year, going up from 34 to 40. Freed said
two recruiters at the 177th Fighter Wing have each had more than 60
people enlist.

"I know at the guard they've been trying to brand us and get (our
name) out there," Freed said. "Maybe they're better at keeping track
on the leads coming in."

The 177th Fighter Wing broke ground for a new operations and training
facility earlier this month, which is expected to be completed in
January 2011. Freed said a new air support operations squadron is
being created there and that could lead to 60 jobs.

The Navy exceeded its goals for the year by recruiting 35,527 people
for active duty and 7,743 people for the reserve, according to a fact
sheet posted on the Navy Recruiting Command's Web site. Last year,
the Navy got 38,485 people for active duty and 9,134 people for the reserve.

The economic decline helped create a spike in new Navy applicants,
said Public Affairs Officer Nick Kaylor, of the Naval Recruitment
District in Philadelphia, which covers southern New Jersey, including
the Northfield and Vineland office.

"We've been able to take from the cream of the crop now," Kaylor
said. "Just like always, we take the best candidate possible. Now,
because of the way the economy has been, we are able to pull from
people who, before, hadn't thought about joining the military."

The average new Army recruit at the Northfield office is about 26
years old, Robbins said. Some have tried college or worked in the
private sector, and some are casino workers looking to change careers.

Capt. Charles Phillips, the Army's recruiting company commander for
southern New Jersey, said the people who have been applying at their
eight recruiting stations ­which include offices in Rio Grande and
Vineland ­ have ranged in age from 17-year-old high school students
to adults past 30.

One person who joined this year was a 36-year-old woman from
Blackwood, Camden County, who left a career in finance to "give back
to the community," and a 26-year-old man who worked for the Atlantic
County Sheriff's Office joined last year and now is in special forces
training, Robbins said.

The Army decreased its signup bonus from an average of $18,300 per
person in 2008 to $13,300 per person in 2009, Phillips said. The
qualification standards have become stricter and having more
applicants made the selection process more competitive, Robbins said.

Army recruiters say they have been fighting a misconception that
recruits immediately deploy to Iraq or other combat zones after
training. Phillips said the possibility of deployment is always
there, but assignments usually are based on the skills each recruit
has and the demand for that job.

Some recruits, like Michael Iside, of Egg Harbor Township, said they
have always wanted to join the Army.

Iside, a 17-year-old high school senior, said he has been fascinated
with the Army since he was 5 and he has "always been a patriotic
kid." He signed up to be an infantryman, and he would like to become
an Army Ranger in the future.

"I love it," he said of his experience so far. "I see it as the first
step in starting my life."

Others, like Velez and Shannon Engelman, another Egg Harbor Township
high school senior, sign up for education and family reasons.

Engelman, 17, said her older brother, James Giroud, was a Marine and
she became interested in the military after she heard about his
experiences working abroad in Japan, Germany and the Persian Gulf.

Engelman said she plans to train in health care because she likes
helping others and the Army will enable her to afford college and
medical school and get work experience.

"I know I want to be a surgeon, and I didn't want to be in debt all
my life," she said. "And I wanted to do something not (many) females do."

Velez, the Brigantine mom, said it will be difficult leaving her
3-year-old daughter, Camila, when she goes for Army training. Velez's
mother, Asmilda Morales, will take care of Camila. Velez said she
will be reunited with her daughter afterward and expects to be
stationed at Fort Dix.

"That's going to be the hard part ­ being away that long," Velez
said. "I'm trying to think I'm doing the sacrifice so in the future
she'll be fine."
--

Contact Michelle Lee:
609-272-7256
MLee@pressofac.com
--

Changes in military recruitment

2009 Army recruiting goal: 65,000

2009 Army recruiting: 70,045

2008 Army recruiting goal: 80,000

2008 Army recruiting: 80,517

Average Army sign-up bonus 2008: $18,300

Average Army sign-up bonus 2009: $13,300

(The Army's fiscal year runs from October through September.)

Northfield Army recruitment station

2007: 54 people active duty, 31 reserve

2008: 68 people active duty, 29 reserve

2009: 66 people active duty, 22 reserve (as of mid-December)

177th Fighter Wing, New Jersey Air Guard

2008: 167 people

2009: 119 people

Source: Army Public Affairs Office

.

Waltham principal, recruiters make peace

Waltham principal, recruiters make peace

http://www.dailynewstribune.com/highlight/x1999160315/Waltham-principal-recruiters-make-peace

By Joyce Kelly
Feb 17, 2010

Military recruiters hope to make their first visit this year to
Waltham High soon, following a "very positive" meeting with Principal
John Graceffa last Thursday, said Army Sgt. First Class William D. Maldonado.

"All parties have reached an agreement," Maldonado said yesterday.

In late January, recruiters from the Army, Navy and Marines, based
out of 633 Main St., met with Ward 7 Councilor Joe Giordano, a
Vietnam veteran and head of the Veterans Services Committee, and some
of his colleagues to complain about some of the obstacles they face
in meeting with students at Waltham High School.

Recruiters complained Graceffa and staff denied them access to
students, one even saying they felt as if they were being treated
"like criminals" and with no respect.

Graceffa said he was just protecting students, particularly after
receiving five phone calls in one day from parents outraged that
recruiters had been talking to their children, who were as young as 14.

Maldonado insists there is "no law against talking to kids under 18,"
and that it's the younger students who approach recruiters, not vice versa.

Recruiters aren't going to ignore students or "be rude" just because
they are younger, he said.

An early morning meeting Thursday between recruiters, Graceffa, and
Giordano "opened the lines of communication," Graceffa said.

"It went very well. I spoke my peace, I told (one of the recruiters)
he was a little off-base in the way he used the word 'criminal.' We
kind of cleared the air," Graceffa said.

"Capt. (Glenn) Cardoza was very nice, and we said we'd work together.
Joe Giordano was very helpful. It was a very, very positive thing,"
said Graceffa.

Graceffa said the new arrangement is essentially the same one he had
in place all year, but now both parties understand it.

"The big thing is, they were upset because they had to meet with
guidance counselors. That's what we do," Graceffa said.

Nobody is allowed to walk in the cafeteria without supervision, Graceffa said.

Graceffa said he has a lot of respect for recruiters and the
military, but simply has to make sure he has control and knows what's
happening in the building at all times.

Parents "freak out" when adults talk to their children without their
knowledge - even if the adult is a police officer, Graceffa said,
adding, "and I don't blame them."

"When they send their kids to high school, they expect them to be
safe, and legally, I become the parent" in charge of safety, Graceffa said.

"I take a conservative approach, and it's nothing against the
military at all. The more policy we have with outsiders coming in -
even though they're good people, they're still outsiders in our
domain - the better, and that goes for everyone," he said.

He remains firm in his stance of not allowing recruiters to talk to
the younger students, who are very impressionable.

"There's a big difference between a freshman and a senior," Graceffa said.

From here, Graceffa said whenever a student or parent wants to meet
with recruiters, he will lend a hand, as he would for any college
recruiter or coach.

Recruiters will be welcome to visit the high school, in the lecture
hall, several times a year, and administrators will post signs on
bulletin boards in every classroom, Graceffa said.

He cannot make announcements during the day, he said, "because they
are extremely disruptive."

Maldonado said he wants to keep everything positive between the
recruiters and high school administration, adding that he is happy
that Waltham High has "a ton of teachers who are positive" about the
military and welcome recruiters.
--

Joyce Kelly can be reached at 781-398-8005 or jkelly@cnc.com

.

Reserve struggles to find right mix of soldiers

Reserve struggles to find right mix of soldiers

http://militarytimes.com/news/2010/02/army_reserve_021310w/

Chief wants specific recruiting, more NCOs, midlevel officers

By Michelle Tan - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Feb 14, 2010

The Army Reserve has too many young, new soldiers and not enough
sergeants and staff sergeants; too many lieutenants and colonels, but
not enough captains and majors. The Reserve is authorized 25 or 30
chaplain assistants, but it has 125.

In all, the Reserve has 207,000 soldiers in its ranks ­ the most it
has had since 2004.

"But it's not the right 207,000," said Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz, chief of
the Army Reserve. "It's not the right rank, it's not the right
[military occupational specialty], it's not the right geographic location."

"We've got to take that 207,000 and get them in the right place, get
them in the right MOS and get them in the right rank," Stultz said.

Getting the right mix, he said, is expected to take two or three
years, and it follows one of the most dramatic and thorough
transformations of the Army Reserve.

For the last three to four years, the Reserve has taken down what
Stultz calls "legacy structure" and turned it into operational,
deployable units. That included taking down some of the Reserve's
regional readiness commands and transforming them into deployable
sustainment brigades. It also has created about 16,000 spaces in such
high-demand MOSs as transportation, military police, civil affairs
and engineers.

The next challenge of reshaping the human side of the Army Reserve
will be no easier, Stultz said.

"Unlike the active Army, [which] has the luxury of [moving] people
around to rebalance, we have civilian jobs," he said.

So leaders are focusing their attention on the recruiting effort.

"We're going to have to be very precise with Recruiting Command and
say we're under-strength in certain MOSs and certain areas, we're
over-strength in certain MOSs and certain areas," Stultz said.

That could come down to being as specific as telling recruiters in a
particular city ­ Orlando, Fla., for example ­ to stop recruiting
unit supply specialists but bring in more truck drivers.

Some of the MOSs most sought after by Reserve recruiters include
construction equipment operator, human intelligence collector,
psychological operations specialist, civil affairs specialist,
petroleum supply specialist and preventive medicine specialist.

Stultz also wants to target active Army soldiers who are preparing to
leave active duty, in an effort to fill his NCO and midlevel officer ranks.

Stultz believes that he has a secret weapon to bring in more former
active-duty soldiers ­ the Employer Partnership Initiative, in which
the Reserve partners with civilian employers to recruit people
interested in serving in the military and working for a particular company.

More than 800 employers have signed on to the program, Stultz said.

"Now I can talk to a soldier leaving active duty at Fort Hood not
just about coming into a Reserve unit but about a civilian job," he
said. "It's a win-win for me."

Another area Stultz believes he needs to work on is moving people out
of the Reserve.

"We're going to have to do qualitative and selective retention," he
said. "We'll take a look at some of these guys and say, 'Do we want
to keep these people in the force?' or is it time for them to move
out, thank them for their service, but we've got some younger
soldiers that need a place to move up.

"If I've got 150 percent at the E-3 and E-4 level, these guys are
looking at each other and saying, 'We're not getting promoted because
there's nowhere to go.' "

The entire process will be deliberate, it could be painful for some
and it will take time, Stultz said.

"I'm not trying to run out to a unit and say, 'OK, you're at 150
percent strength, you standing over here leave, you over here stay,'
" he said. "We've got to work it deliberately."

.