Soldiers Speaking Out

Originally posted by nenothtu

I'm capable of independent thought, and able to determine who I see as a threat to "America" in general, but more specifically my family and friends. the rest of you are just along for the ride. You get the same benefits they do, just because those benefits exist - not because I did it for "you".

You are cabable of independent thought - is a good thing. But the selection process of soldiers, I suspect, is no different in the US, than it is here. What the psychologists select, is a mindless morons who are ready to go kill someone.

War isn't about killing people, but this is still how the selection process goes ... I've been there, and the question "are you ready to kill", or close to it ... is an absurd one, in my opinion. It's more about someone capable of handling the gun, and shooting it in the right direction, than having a person capable of independ thought.

But in my opinion, it's that man with his own independent opinion I want to see ... one who is capable of saying "no", because he thinks it's wrong.

Originally posted by bjarneorn

You are cabable of independent thought - is a good thing. But the selection process of soldiers, I suspect, is no different in the US, than it is here. What the psychologists select, is a mindless morons who are ready to go kill someone.

Here, the recruiters tend to prey on the young, kids fresh out of high school who haven't really developed opinions on the ways of the world beyond girls and cars. It's not that they are "mindless", but more that they haven't yet made their minds up. They are still malleable. I was luckier than most, perhaps, as my dad had warned me about how recruiters work through most of my teenage years, so I already knew what was coming, and what to expect from them.

Sure, I went in the same general direction, but I did it from a more informed position, and didn't take the exact same path to get there. I kept my options more open to get out if the getting was necessary or advisable.

One day when I was in high school, recruiters came by offering a free ride and a day out of school to travel 30 miles or so to take the ASVAB - Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a sort of aptitude test for military service. Already knowing what they were up to, I went anyhow, just to get out of school for the day. I scored a 96 on it, and the recruiters went into overdrive at that, trying all sorts of enticements that had not much to do with military service, or the way things work in the real world. Knowing what they were doing, I successfully evaded and escaped them, but it was iffy for a while. Recruiters from 7 different branches of service tried to snag me before all was said and done. evidently the ASVAB scores had gone out through channels to all of them.

I'll never forget a Navy recruiter who was as tenacious as a bulldog. The last conversation I had with him went like this:

Recruiter: "Why are you so resistant? What do I have to do to get you to sign the papers today?"

Me: "Nothin' you CAN do, nothin' you can say. I just don't like shiny shoes - they make good targets. I ain't goin', period. Have a nice day."

Click.

less than 8 months after that, I was in a war zone - but I was there on my own terms, not for the government, and as a matter of fact decidedly against what Jimmy Carter would have preferred.

War isn't about killing people, but this is still how the selection process goes ... I've been there, and the question "are you ready to kill", or close to it ... is an absurd one, in my opinion. It's more about someone capable of handling the gun, and shooting it in the right direction, than having a person capable of independ thought.

War IS about killing people and tearing things up, but there's more to it than just that. It has to have a point, a focus, and has to stop when the objective is accomplished. You don't kill perfectly serviceable humans just to be killing them. They've got things to do, and ought not to be hindered except in the gravest extreme.

Funny you should mention gun handling as a requisite. I knew a guy who traveled all the way to Rhodesia to join the RLI when he was in his early 30's. He'd never served a day of military service, because he was blind in his left eye - he'd been rejected in the physical. The Rhodesian recruiter just said "blind in the left eye? No worries. we shoot with our right eye, don't we? trigger finger OK?" and he was in.

But in my opinion, it's that man with his own independent opinion I want to see ... one who is capable of saying "no", because he thinks it's wrong.

The corollary to that is one who says "yes" because he thinks it's right. Often found in the same individual. The key, in my mind, is that the individual make up his own mind in the matter, regardless of whether the government says "yea" or "nay". Unfortunately, most governments take a dim view of the individual pursuit of foreign policy. Military in general, of the national variety, are expected to act as a bloc in pursuit of national foreign policy, and they do. That leaves them open to use or abuse by those in charge, and that is where the ire needs to be directed to.

Just as I've always told my kids, there really ARE monsters in the world, but you won't often find them under your bed or in your closet. They have to be dealt with, whichever direction they come from.

Originally posted by nenothtu

Funny you should mention gun handling as a requisite. I knew a guy who traveled all the way to Rhodesia to join the RLI when he was in his early 30's. He'd never served a day of military service, because he was blind in his left eye - he'd been rejected in the physical. The Rhodesian recruiter just said "blind in the left eye? No worries. we shoot with our right eye, don't we? trigger finger OK?" and he was in.

The physical, and the psychological is a screening process. It's not about shooting with the right, it's that the process is ill adviced. I remember a serviceman saying, you can have your left eye open and your right in the sights, that way you have a 3D view of the target. Point is, if you'd shoot that way, you'd end up shooting beside the target ... unless you have a laser sight, but even with that you'd end up being a little light in the head. Because the muscles in the eye, also control your balance. I know this little piece, is overrated in the physical ... and that the selection in process, is not because your body isn't fit. It's because if you've had some physical maiming in your life, you have also developed a view of life ... different from the mainstream. You are no longer "formable" ... this part I know.

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by bjarneorn


One day when I was in high school, recruiters came by offering a free ride and a day out of school to travel 30 miles or so to take the ASVAB - Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a sort of aptitude test for military service. Already knowing what they were up to, I went anyhow, just to get out of school for the day. I scored a 96 on it, and the recruiters went into overdrive at that, trying all sorts of enticements that had not much to do with military service, or the way things work in the real world. Knowing what they were doing, I successfully evaded and escaped them, but it was iffy for a while. Recruiters from 7 different branches of service tried to snag me before all was said and done. evidently the ASVAB scores had gone out through channels to all of them.

I'll never forget a Navy recruiter who was as tenacious as a bulldog. The last conversation I had with him went like this:

Recruiter: "Why are you so resistant? What do I have to do to get you to sign the papers today?"

Me: "Nothin' you CAN do, nothin' you can say. I just don't like shiny shoes - they make good targets. I ain't goin', period. Have a nice day."


Your story is similar to mine about the military. I went behind my father back about 90 days before my 18th birthday and talked to an AirForce recruiter about joining. I graduated high school a year early, so this recruiter who by the way, I called the Bulldog too

was highly interested in me and offered the ASVAB. I took it and had the exact same score you did 96%. She promised me all kinds of opportunities she said things of this nature:

You can do whatever you want.
You can be stationed/based where ever you choose.
We'll pay for your education.
You want to attend officers school?

My responses to the above statements went something like this:

Really

Really...Wow

That's my MO

Yes

So finally, I got the courage to mention my ambitions to my father. This conversation didn't go so well

either. He was furious and refused to give me permission as I had not turned 18 yet. I started ignoring the calls from the recuriter. This went on for about a week until one day she and another recruiter decided to pop up at our house. Boy was that a mistake! My Dad refused to let me speak to them and did everything but kicked their a$$es to get them to leave. It was not nice and he embarrassed the hell outta me

They kept up with me throughout college and were very persistent on trying to get me to sign up. By this time, I was well on my way with studies at Temple University. However, I have had some very weird things happen to me since my father passed away in 2007. I have been visited by someone from the Army more than three times since 2007. I always missed them as I was not home and they just left a card with a recruiters name on it. It's safe to say that I am way too old to join the military. I have two kids in college. I tried calling the numbers to speak with this individual and they acted like they didn't know what I was talking about. Here's the one strange incident though, back in November of last year, I was sitting on my couch when on my day off, someone rang the doorbell. I peaked out of the peephole to see who it was and it was someone from the Army. I ran into the room to get my husband so he could go to the door to find out what they wanted. Same dam story...a recruiter again. Except this time I was standing behind the door listening to what this man was telling my husband. He stood there and told my husband that he had received an application and that I was attending a local community college and showed some interest in joining the Army, it was all a bunch of B.S.. My husband said to him "my wife is forty something...lol, isn't she a lil too old for you guys? Besides She didn't fill out any application". Just after my husband said this the recruiter tried to look into the house past my husband as if he was checking to see if he could spot me. In the end, he offered my husband a card and asked him if he's sure I wasn't home and if he could give me his card and contact him. Once again, I called the number which was the local recruitment office and once again...no answers...no application on file...nothing

I've been confused about these events for years now. I have wondered if it has anything to do with me asking the VA about my dad's 11 missing pages to his DD214? There's all kinds of stuff missing. When I finally received my fathers DD214 it was 6 months after he passed. We had been trying to obtain his DD214 since a year prior so my father could get his disability due to his Prostate Cancer and the Agent Orange clinics evaluation of his service while in Nam as a so called "Advisor". I don't know WTF is going on with these folks showing up at my house all the time, but now I'm becoming annoyed.

I'll continue with another post, I'm running out of room...con't

edit on 9/8/11 by ThePublicEnemyNo1 because: (no reason given)

reply to post by nenothtu


Con't...

I contacted a former serviceman named Edwin Crosby III about these things and to see if he could assist me in decoding the DD214 and get answers on why so many pages were missing. Here are some of his responses:

HOWDY, " sea duty " stands for southeast asia duty, which means generally, Vietnam. As I said, your Congressman can get this info really quick for you. Once you know the road map to get this stuff, you can move along quickly. EHC 3

HOWDY, have not heard from you, therefore, this missive follows. Did you contact your CONGRESSMAN and ask for your fathers military records, OR, some confirmation he was in Vietnam assigned with Special Forces ?? As a child you have a right to a copy of the records, or the wife does. You first want to establish he was in fact in Vietnam, a simple request to your Congressman will get that info. Easy, simple steps to gather data. Ed Crosby

HOWDY, first, you should have spoken to the so called recruiter who came to your home. Maybe, just maybe they are there to brief you on what your father did in the military.. On the DD-214 right side, down about half-way, there is a block that says SEA DUTY, and it would have time in it, i.e. 1 yr. 3 mo. Sea, southeast asia. Your father could have applied for VA benefits at anytime, if he submitted a claim for disability and died while it was pending, his spouse would still be entitled to the benefits he would have received. Your paid from the date of the claim, so, if he opened claim January, and died November, he would have been owed 11 months or 10. If he waited years, still, that money would go to the spouse or someone he wanted it to go to. Your father was ENTITLED to benefits from V.A. not a hand out. If he had a BAD SPN CODE, be assured those within VA took his VA CLAIM NO: and gave it a phony name, and stole the money your father would have been allocated. A VA Claim # is a U.S. Treasury code, and Sen. Sam Ervin of Watergate Comm. discovered the codes when investigating where republician party was getting all those hundreds of millions of dollars from, the VA and money stolen from Veterans. Go to my website; veterancourtcodes.com... the codes are there. You should find out what code he had, moreover, you can send a letter to your Congressman with a copy of his DD-214 and ask what his SPN CODE is, and what it means, as well as, did he serve in Vietnam. Congressman will send it over to DOD for answer, and in about 30-45 days you will have an answer. You should have found out what the recruiter wanted. Ed Crosby watch the 90min DVD at my website.

Also, he was honorably discharged and the VA closed his claim the day he died. I have one document given to me at the Roudebush VA hospital in Indianapolis that states he was in Vietnam from 1960-1962 during wartime. There was no war yet! But the DD214...nothing that says he was in Vietnam...nothing. Although it does list Seaduty of 24 months I believe. He also went missing for a month while over in Vietnam and when he cane back he was missing some teeth and this document I have proves it. Yet, the same document states where it asks of POW status...unknown? Let my Dad tell it, he was never in Vietnam, but S. Korea near the DMZ line. He was indeed in Vietnam though. Sometimes he would tell me some of the things he did...other times he acted like his memory was erased. Maybe he just didn't want to talk about it much. I was so curious though.

So, there you have it. I don't know what to think BTW, those email responses are not in chronological order.

Originally posted by godWhisperer


i truly admire the ideals america was founded on and it's too bad to see all of these alleged principles fall to the wayside in favor of filthy money or oppressive manipulation.

I too really admire the ideals upon which your country was founded,just as I admire the ideals upon which the soviet union was founded,unfortunately,in both cases these noble ideas have been twisted and malformed to suit the agendas of those who have only their own interests at heart.

reply to post by ThePublicEnemyNo1


Yeah, the recruiters used all those pretty words on me like "write your own ticket", "do what you want, go where you want", etc., but I already knew they'd put me where they wanted me, doing what they needed done. A recruiter will tell you anything to get that signature on the dotted line, then you're government property for the duration. All you can really do is have it put into the contract that you'll be given a chance at attending this school or that, Ranger School, OCS, or what have you. They can wash you out at will if they think they need you elsewhere. They were trying real hard to talk me into nuke school, so I knew where I'd end up regardless of what I wanted.

I dunno what to tell you about the recent recruiter visits. Could be a combination of factors, or something I never even thought of. I know government guys in suits still try to track me down every now and then, but I don't know why, and I never get back in contact with 'em - there's nothing I need to discuss with them. Some of them aren't very good at what they do - one pair contacted my ex wife (after we'd already been divorced 15 years) a year or two ago trying to find me. it just so happened that I WAS in the same town she was in at the time, but I've not been in contact with her at all since the divorce. I had fallen off the radar for a little while, and no one really knew where I was - no job, no utilities, no Driver's License, no paper trail. No way to track me. She told her mom about it, who told my mom about it, who told me about it, wanting to know what was up. I dunno what it was, and have no interest at all in finding out.

One time, right after we'd got together, I got a letter with no return address, just a cash down payment for a plane ticket to another country, to go to a "meeting".. She opened it by mistake, and I can tell you that caused a lively discussion! she wasn't any stranger to the strangeness, but to her credit she never asked too many questions after that first discussion. really, she is a pretty decent sort.

So in your case, I have no idea why they'd be trying to contact you in person. It doesn't seem like recruiters would require a personal visit to explain a DD-214, or that recruiters would be the proper personnel at all for that, but they might be short-handed, too. Since your dad was Special Forces, a visitor from Bragg would be more likely. That network has men all over the place, and it would likely fall to one closer to you. I can see why they might not want to put some stuff in writing, but SF is generally pretty good about looking after their own. I live not too far from Bragg - a couple hours. Went down to Camp McCall year before last to apply on a training contract for the Robin Sage exercises. They're good people.

I can't really help much with the DD-214. I never had to deal with them. They're DoD forms, and I was never DoD. My dad's DD-214 is laid up somewhere, but I paid more attention to what he said than what the separation paperwork said. Officially, he was in a "Constabulary Squadron" in the 7th Army, Europe. Sounds nice, like he was a cop or something, eh? Nope. He was a "border guard" who sometimes had stuff to do on the wrong side of the border, on loan to this or that outfit.

I believe "trainers" or "advisors" draw hazardous duty pay for being in-country during wartime there, which WAS the case in Vietnam, 1960-62, even though we hadn't sent in the combat troops yet. It was a "war", just not ours at the time, and there's probably a record of the hazardous duty pay, likely in a coded form.

"Unknown" in re POW status means there's something to be hidden - either the army doesn't want to admit it (for a variety of reasons) OR it didn't happen, and it was a cover set forth for something else. One possible reason that the army won't admit it is that it's bad juju to have an advisor taken POW when they're allegedly not in combat at all. The same kinds of things went on in El Salvador in the 80's.

As to his reluctance to talk about some things, in his case there was likely a "non-disclosure order" on him. Some of those last 20 years, some 30 or 50, and the really entertaining ones are on for 70 years or more, on the theory that the actor will be dead before he can talk. He may have said something one day, then thought better of it and tried to recant the next, trying to play it off as memory loss or confusion.

reply to post by nenothtu


I can see why you would be contacted by the Military. I'm still confused by their visits to me, but oh well. I'm sure I haven't seen the last of them.

Yeah, those recruiters are quite cunning and convincing...luckily, I had my Dad to shoe them away or else I may have been in for quite the 4 year ride.

About the POW status, I never thought of the embarrassment factor and/or connecting the dots to a war that wasn't supposed to be...yet. I'm still gonna dig for the 11 missing pages of my Dad's DD-214, he's gone now and I'm entitled to them. Tired of not getting any answers from the VA. I realize any special ops will not be in his DD214 file and said files are kept only at the Pentagon, if I'm correct and that's okay, but denying his family information we're entitled to is a slap in the face and I've never been like slapped until I started questioning the VA....

It seemed as if he started talking more towards his last couple of weeks...but, then he told me in the middle of a conversation on day, that he just didn't wan to discuss it anymore. I left it at that. He did tell me somethings that kind of freaked me out...but he also made me understand those situations. This was an awesome human and an even better father. I see now why I gave him the nickname Superman when I was a little girl. Initially, it was because he could run faster than me...lol. Later on it was because he was just super!

These discussions have been very insightful indeed and I appreciate every word. Take care of yourself, thank you again and I'll see ya around Nenothtu

OP....