National Guard recruiting methods raise eyebrows

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Associated Press

A National Guard recruiting drive at several high schools in the Columbia Gorge of Oregon has sparked anger from some community members, who are upset that a simulated combat video was shown and a sign was displayed that read "only blood can buy you freedom."

At Wahtonka High School in The Dalles, guardsmen also let student fire automatic weapons loaded with blanks.

... But Sgt. First Class William Smith, the military recruiter who organized the event, said the drive was just his way of saying that times are changing in the National Guard.

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[PaDUer]

1. Disgraceful!

Trying to brainwash the young kids. Time for the parents to gather in front of the recruiting station big time.

[dArKeR]

31. Criminal and immoral; that's what Republicans are!

[saigon68]

49. There's a whole generation of TIMOTHY MCVEYS to recruit

The more things change the more they stay the same.

[bluestateguy]

2. If they don't sign up they will be on a collision course wiht the draft

The draft will take 20 year olds first, so kids born in 1985 are going to be right in the thick of it.

[Endangered Specie]

3. Thanks for reminding me.... btw, that will be 1984 kids.

[hang a left]

23. The kids that turn 20 in that calendar year.

http://www.sss.gov/fslottery.htm


snip

The lottery would establish the priority of call based on the birth dates of registrants. The first men drafted would be those turning age 20 during the calendar year of the lottery. For example, if a draft were held in 1998, those men born in 1978 would be considered first. If a young man turns 21 in the year of the draft, he would be in the second priority, in turning 22 he would be in the third priority, and so forth until the year in which he turns 26 at which time he is over the age of liability. Younger men would not be called in that year until men in the 20-25 age group are called.

snip

[hippywife]

24. Yes...

and as long as we maintain an occupation force in Iraq, there will likely be a draft...Dem or Repub president...either way.

[asjr]

4. this type of recruiting

method is outrageous. I suppose this is the first step in becoming a police state.

[Zhade]

5. UTTER BULLSHIT.

Freedom is an inalienable, inherent right - NOT a gift granted by the military.

No offense to our veterans who served honorably. My father is one. However, it is a dangerous lie that our freedoms are due to the military. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

[King of New Orleans]

6. Times are changing

Used to be you could join the National Guard to avoid a war. Heck you didn't even have to show up. Now, it's like getting on the fast track to a war zone.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. And do you know why?

Because the government does not have to pay them retirement until they are 65.
It is all money.

[PaDUer]

9. Send chimpy back...

he still has time he owes since he obviously enjoys wearing a uniform along w/ the rest of his buddies who skipped out!

[bpilgrim]

14. pfft... 'retirement' money?! ... whaddaya a commie!

boats ;->

:hi: sr. chief

peace

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

26. Yeah, funny how some of us commie pinkos still insist on that

silly old outdated thing about getting security for your old age for working your ass off when you are young, ain't it?

[bpilgrim]

30. don't worry... the NEW faith based programs got ya covered...

just start praying for money, you'll/we'll be all set ;->

peace

[mn9driver]

8. Doesn't seem too different from the TV commercials

for the Army or Marines that get shown during NASCAR races or football games. Doing it at school seems a bit over the line, though.

Their recruiting numbers must be dismal if they're resorting to this; I'm beginning to feel a Draft.

[Zech Marquis]

22. I happen to pass by the recruiting offices here

and they sure did look awful empty and quiet. So now there's 2 games they will use --the "America's Army" FPS/simulator in which you actualy go into boot camp AND able to "advance" into Special Forces and such. Very sneaky if you ask me), and the upcoming Full Spectrum Warrior, in which you lead asquad of GIs into battle (the images look ALOT like Iraq).

I don't like the way the DoD are using video games to make war seen so "enjoyable" :argh:

[dArKeR]

40. Janet Jackson - AWOL, Powell and a list of Whores gave their opinions on

her immediately. Why doesn't a MEDIA WHORE question the REPUKE WHORES on this one?

PS. My girlfriend has a swimming suit which shows more breast than was seen of Jackson's.

[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]

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http://money.cnn.com/services/speakup /
http://www.cnn.com/feedback /

[e-mail], [e-mail]

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[e-mail], [e-mail]" target="_blank">[e-mail]

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[e-mail]

[e-mail], [e-mail] http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/co/index.htm district of CO.

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http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-comment-oped.story
http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-comment-dcbureau.story


[e-mail] -To Dr. Nile Gardiner - To Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.
[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]

[e-mail], [e-mail]
http://www.hastertforcongress.org/contact.html

[PA Democrat]

10. Read the Fine Print of No Child Left Behind

High schools are required by NCLB to provide upon request, to military recruiters, your child's name, address, and phone number. Unless parents specifically forbid the school to give out information, the military is free to contact your child for recruiting purposes even if he/ she is under the age of 18.

Most parents are unaware of this little secret slipped into Bush's No Child Left Behind bill. Gives the name a darker meaning doesn't it?

[feistydem]

13. On Bring Them Home Now parents were complaining ...

... that the recruiters were intentionally calling their kids when they were home alone, trying to circumvent parental influences.

One father was so pissed because his daughter signed up while he was at work. The recruiter came by and promised her all kinds of things --education, great locales. And she told her dad that the recruiter said she would not be going to Iraq because of the field she wanted to study.

Now she's there.

Only the government and big corporations can get away with this kind of bait & switch tactic.

(http://www.bringthemhomenow.org)

[Columbia]

17. Not exactly

Minors under the age of 18 (actually only 17) must get parental permission to enlist in the Armed Services. If the daughter was 18 or older, she is not a kid, but an adult and legally able to make her own decisions without parental involvement.

[juajen]

19. What a laugh!

I've raised five children, and none of them were able to make any decisions that were logical until they were over 25 years of age. Well, maybe one of them was ready a year or two younger. This is simply ludicrous. Stop killing our children. Hell, we won't even encourage they marry until they're over 21, but we put guns in their hands and expect them to kill. It's plain sick. Why can't they at least take adults.

[Columbia]

20. Reply

"Why can't they at least take adults."

Guess we should raise the voting age to 25 then? Maybe have anyone under the age of 25 to not be responsible for anything they do as well. Maybe make them pass a test until they can "officially" become an adult too.

[PA Democrat]

27. The Problem is

that No Child Left Behind allows military recruiters access to your child, without your permission, when they are JUNIORS in high school. Most kids are what 16 years old when a junior in high school?

I don't want anyone calling MY teenage son behind my back trying to entice him to join the military. Sadly, when I've mentioned this provision of NCLB to the parents of my sons' friends, not ONE of them were aware of this.

[Columbia]

29. When they are 16

They are unable to enlist anyway and they would need your permission if they were 17. That is ample time for you to talk to them about your concerns and all you would have to do is refuse to sign off of their enlistment. Of course, once they become 18, it is out of your control.

[PA Democrat]

33. Sorry I Disagree

The military is doing this behind the backs of unknowing parents.

To sneak this into the No Child Left Behind bill without any public debate on the topic is morally reprehensible. Parents are NOT being informed that this is happening and that is just how the military wants it.

I have a teenage son. He is a MINOR, and as such, I have the right to tell the military to leave him the F*** alone.

But if the majority of parents aren't even AWARE that the military is doing this, and that they have the right to stop it, it is an unconscionable intrusion of government into parental rights.

[Columbia]

34. Well actually

You can request that your child's information not be released without prior written consent, as you do with the same information that is released to colleges and employers.

In the end, if your child wants to enlist, you simply have to refuse to sign off on it. As for when the child turns 18... well, he's not a child anymore and can make his own decisions.

[PA Democrat]

35. You have missed my point ENTIRELY

Parents DON'T KNOW the military is doing this! They aren't aware of the fact that their child's school now has the legal obligation to provide this information let alone the fact that they have the right to stop the release of such information.

Of all my son's friends, not ONE of their parents was aware of this. Parents are being intentionally left out of the loop, and that's just plain wrong.

[Columbia]

36. Tell that to the schools

It is their responsibility to let parents know about this and it is the parents responsibility as well to know what is going with their child. If a recruiter slips belong the radar so to speak and snatches your kid without your knowledge, you should probably have been paying a bit more attention.

[PA Democrat]

38. *I* am Paying Attention

But hey, blame other parents who are busy working 3 and 4 jobs to make ends meet, blame schools who now have to be record keepers for the US military, on top of everything else.

Let's NOT place blame where blame is due: with an imperialistic government that needs fresh cannon fodder to support the "war president's" agenda. People in the military are not reenlisting, so let's allow them to go after the young and gullible.

Tell me a 16 year old has a realistic idea of war. And if their parents aren't paying attention, well the kid is just flat out of luck?

[Columbia]

39. Like I said before

No one is going to be able to recruit your 16 or 17 yo son without your permission. I'm no big fan of recruiters either, but I'd hope that a parent would be held in a slightly higher esteem in the eyes of a youth than a recruiter.

[saigon68]

51. It is a jobs program

CHIMPANZEE McSHRUB ™ wants full employment for the lower classes

[feistydem]

41. I believe the students in question were 18

But in their last year in high school and thus still living at home.

It is true that an 18 year old can get married and have a baby too, but should the government have a right to talk them into it in your own home and without your being there?

I'm just saying... it's sneaky and underhanded. Especially since the kid will be shipped off to Iraq. This isn't like someone being recruited to go to college or play pro sports. It's a freakin war!

[Columbia]

43. Ok

"should the government have a right to talk them into it in your own home and without your being there?"

Well, if they are invited in the home by a resident, then of course they do. Regardless, even if you forbade recruiters to set foot on your property, your son or daughter could easily talk to them at a recruiting office or anywhere at all if they wished.

"I'm just saying... it's sneaky and underhanded. Especially since the kid will be shipped off to Iraq. This isn't like someone being recruited to go to college or play pro sports. It's a freakin war!"

I see it more as equal access to communicating to potential recruits. Being able to cold call HS students is a far cry from dragging them to boot camp and shoving them in a C-130 to a far away land. In the end, that young man or woman is the one who ultimately makes the decision to enlist or not.

[feistydem]

44. Have you ever served? For that matter, are you a parent?

I grew up in a military town and I had military friends. As a matter of fact, my neighbor was a Navy recruiter for several years and he used to laugh at the crap he was allowed to pull to get kids into the Navy. There wasn't even a war going on for which the government was desperate to keep the recruit numbers moving.

"I see it more as equal access to communicating to potential recruits."

Tell that to my friends whose 18 year old son signed up to become a Marine after 9/11 --thinking it was his duty to fight terrorism --and is instead about to be shipped off to Iraq to do house to house searches.

This war is a lie. And I know an 18 year boy who has no idea why he's going to Iraq to fight the terror war he thought he signed up to fight.

Lying us into a war and using military recruiters to do the Bush's dirty work is unconscionable.

[Columbia]

45. Yes

I served in Iraq in fact.

I'm not agreeing with the tactics of the recruiter above at all (nor do I much like them), but their job is not easy. They often pull 80 hour weeks to enlist one person a month. IMHO, allowing them access to student records is not that big of a deal.

As for the war, I have a lot of opinions about it, for and against, but this is not the thread to discuss it.

[feistydem]

47. Agreed. Glad you are home (?) safely.

My neighbor, by the way, loved recruiting --but then I think it was much easier to recruit in the 80s during the Cold War than it is now --during active engagement. He said Navy recruiting was an easier sell than other branches of service --until the new recruits saw the nuclear submarines.

[Columbia]

48. Thanks, glad to be back

Not quite sure why Navy was such an easy sale. I spent a month on a ship, and it was not fun. I can't imagine doing it for six months at a time or longer.

[feistydem]

52. I guess a perception of safety despite the boredom and isolation.

I knew guys on Navy subs that were completely bonkers after a few months doing sea maneuvers. Friends on the Nimitz were only slightly less nutty. I guess fresh air and sunshine matters.

Any advice I can give my friend's 18 year old son set to go to Iraq in a week?

I'll let you be now.

[Columbia]

53. Sure

Don't let your guard down, take lots of pictures, and learn the language. B-)

[feistydem]

54. Thanks Columbia, I'll pass it along...

His mom is in San Diego right now saying goodbye.

[Zhade]

18. They should properly rename it "No Future Draftee Left Behind".

Predators. That's all they are. :grr:

[pinniped]

11. We have seen blood traded for oil.

[Fovea]

12. Wilfred Owen --- Dulcet et Decorum Est, must be my response.

...
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

[Spider Jerusalem]

16. How about Pound's "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley: Life and Contacts"?

IV.

These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case ..

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later ...
some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor" ..

walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

[Fovea]

37. Or Owen's parable of the young man and the old...

But the old man would not and slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one.

[maggrwaggr]

15. well get ready to bleed then

cause we may have to fight these guys on these terms to keep our freedom.

[renegade000]

21. ummm

exactly whose blood are they implying? because that sounds utterly wrong if you do not interpret it in the self-sacrifice context...

[Mari333]

25. It happens in my small town too

But I wrote a letter to the paper telling the parents to watch out for it...the recruiters come in and promise the kids monies to sign up their friends..its disgusting...even the Methodist minister in town, who is vehemently anti war, went on vacation with his wife and someone talked his 19 yr old son into signing up...the minister is devastated...he was crying when I talked to him...it was horrible to see him cry , then I started crying..these recruiters have been told to be ruthless in their recruiting, it seems. King George doesnt have enough cannon fodder for his PNAC wars. He already took my army reservist kid, now they want all the other kids out there .
well, stand up, parents and fight.

http://www.bringthemhomenow.com
http://www.mfso.org

[kodi]

28. military recruiters are the used car salesmen of death

never met a single honest one of them, especially the predatory ones stalking high school hallways looking for cheap cannon fodder.

they are such deceitful bastards when it comes to their attempts to recruit in ths schools. the kids have little or no information to counter the bs thrown at them by these predators.

i put them on par with drug dealers.

[leesa]

32. Isn't this the standard con job to get people to "die for freedom"?

It is total BS, of course, since it virtually never is about gaining freedom. I see those bumper stickers all the time, such as 'value your freedom, thank a vet' and I saddens me because they were conned into on the lie of the threat of communism, or the threat of terrorism.
It's nearly always about stealing other countries resources and justifying it with these types of meaningless slogans. Nothing new here.

[saigon68]

42. I saw no Freedom produced from Viet-Nam

My friends who died in Viet-Nam did not die for "FREEDOM"

They died like Dogs for a corrupt capitalist military industrial complex.

The disabled veteran's today are treated like used toilet paper

IE "Used up and thrown away"

[freeforall]

46. Only Blood Can Buy You Freedom...

Charming. I suppose their next trick will be to revive the old press gangs.

[llmart]

50. This is nothing new....

to those of us who lived through the VietNam conflict. Recruiters lie, lie, and lie some more. They are NEVER to be trusted. They lied to my husband when he joined the Army National Guard. I was brought up by parents to question everything and my husband was brought up in the whole, be a good Catholic, boy scout, do-what- you're-told type of family, so he was just flabbergasted that the military would lie to him. But lie they did. Parents should start when their children are young to teach them how to think independently and determine what is propaganda and what is truth. I did it with my children and they are healthy skeptics now.