November 30, 2004
Scenes From The "All-Volunteer" Military
A serviceman, apparently distraught over the prospect of being sent back to the war in Iraq, threatened to kill himself as he stood naked and screaming outside his house. [...]
After struggling with officers, the man told police that he was scheduled to be sent back to Iraq in January, but didn't want to because he would be forced to kill more people, police said.
No doubt such lard-assed chicken-hawks as Limbaugh et al. will deride him as a "fucking coward", or some such...
Posted by Eddie Tews at November 30, 2004 09:15 AM
Comments
ok, so one man out of how many? Is it any coincidence that 80+ percent of the troops voted FOR Bush?
And he didn't want to go to Iraq for fear of killing people? what did he think he was SIGNING UP FOR when he VOLUNTARILY JOINED the military? Just curious....
Ed. Response: He's far from the only one, as you very well know. Apparently, about 30% of those in the IRR called back to duty have failed to report. The numbers of COs are soaring. Veterans (and their families) are among the most outspoken and eloquent critics of the Bushwars. Grunts on the ground have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, time and again questioned the viability of the "mission", and now have refused to carry out orders. If you've got a citation for that 80% figure, please do provide it. As for what he expected when he joined up, maybe it was something like the following:
I originally enlisted in the Army National Guard back around 1993. A lot of the people in my family had been in, and I knew it was the only way for me to get money for college. The reserve GI Bill as well as the tuition waiver for state schools that is offered through the National Guard in New Jersey was an offer that was hard to refuse. When I joined I don't think I, or anybody at the time, would have imagined that we would be involved in an occupation where nearly half of the deployed force was reservists and national guard (OIF3 rotation will be 43%). So I figured, for one weekend a month, it's not a bad deal. [...]
In the winter of 2002, I transferred from the Army National Guard into the Navy Reserves, where I am still serving as a Corpsman. I switched over to get out of my former position as an 'Infantryman' because I could not do that job anymore. I had grown too much personally and politically in the time since I had first enlisted, I could not see myself carrying a rifle and being an occupier. I did not want to guard checkpoints, search homes and shoot at people. My plan did not work out. Since I was an EMT and had been through the Army's Medic course as well, I was able to come into the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman. But, perhaps because of my Infantry background and other training, I was immediately assigned to work with the Marines. In the end, I found myself not in a hospital somewhere, but on the frontlines of an occupation doing exactly what I had tried to avoid.
-- Posted by: Dave on November 30, 2004 09:52 PM
KILL THEM FUCKERS -- Posted by: SGT. HARDASS on December 29, 2005 01:54 PM