I'm a liberal pagan living in West, Texas. Yes. That West, Texas.

Monday, July 14, 2008

RECRUTEMENT STANDARDS LOWERED

The Sacramento Bee has a great article on the trouble that has been brought about by the lowering of the standards of military recruitment.
The Sacramento Bee, during a yearlong examination, studied the civilian and military backgrounds of 250 military personal, and found that 120 of them had questionable backgrounds, including felonies and serious drug, alcohol on mental health problems.(yup, those are the ones you want to hand a rifle to and let loose in another country.)(and that's just the tip of the ice berg)
Those identified by the Bee are among the tens of thousands of military personnel recruited or retained as the armed services-entering the 6th year of the Iraq war- lowered educational, age and moral standards and granted a growing number of waivers to applicants whose backgrounds would otherwise have barred them from serving.
The percentage of Army recruits receiving so-called moral conduct waivers more than doubled, from 4.6 percent in 2003 to 11.2 percent in 2007. They were able to enlist because they had no official criminal record of arrests or convictions, their records were overlooked or prosecutors suspended charges in lieu of military service-akin to a no-defunct Vietnam-era practice in which judges gave defendants a choice between prison and the military.
"How in the hell can the legally possess a gun?" asked Sheriff D.T. Marshall On Montgomery County, Ala. when questioned about a soldier in his county. That soldier, Eli Gregory, was convicted in an attempted home invasion and of felony theft in Alabama, making him ineligible to legally possess a firearm there. Yet in the military gave him a rifle and sent him to Iraq, where he was convicted by the Army of assault and battery on a fellow soldier and discharged. (I suppose we should be glad he didn't shoot him)
The military defended its recruiting policies, including granting more waivers for past conduct.
"Standards in our society have changed over the year: we are a reflection of those changes," said Douglas Smith, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command. "(since when did our standards lower to the point that men convicted of rape, assault, home invasion, etc. can be recruited into the military?)Considering offering a waiver to otherwise qualified recruits is the right thing to do for those Americans who want to answer the call to duty."(call to duty?....call to fucking duty?...you dumb shit..)
This month the Department of Defense announced a new system to categorize waivers by the severity of prior offenses to allow the services to analyze the link between waivers and future military behavior.
Judas fucking priest...if that's not enough to piss off, even the Pope, I'll kiss your ass..Lets see, he offered reefer to a 14-year old for a blow job, oh yea, he gets a waiver. He beats the shit out of his wife, yup, give him a waiver. Now give those assholes a gun, turn them loose and tell them to shoot the bad guys..Hell...everyone he saw would be a bad guy. They are social misfits, they hate everyone including themselves..they shouldn't be trusted with a paring knife and yet they give them a gun and send them to Iraq. Fuck no wonder those people hate us...We're sending criminals over there to keep them in check..
Now before everyone gets pissed at me..no all soldiers aren't misfits, but these guys are and they have no business over there or even in the military. They give the good, honorable and brave soldiers a bad name. Thanks Uncle Sam....we owe you one...

Randal Ruby
DOB: 5/2/67.

JOINED: Army, in 1985.
BEFORE DEPLOYMENT TO IRAQ: Wanted in Maine for criminal speeding, evading officers and drunken driving related to a 1997 high-speed chase ending in a crash. Accused in three attacks on his wife in two states. Officers respond in fourth case to a 911 call and find Ruby drunk and bleeding from his mouth. Files for bankruptcy protection in 1997.
IN IRAQ: Charged with several 2006 offenses related to detainee beatings and holding captured weapons to plant on bodies of innocent civilians. Found guilty only of disrespect of
superior officer.

DELANO V. HOLMES, DOB 9/5/85.
Joined Marine Corps Reserves 2004. PRE-SERVICE: Ambulance called 2002 after high school teacher heard him threaten suicide. Arrested 2003 disorderly conduct/banned from mall and later arrested same day for trespassing. Accused 2004 punching man who sold him car.
IN SERVICE/PRE-IRAQ: Found with others in vehicle smelling of marijuana smoke and containing drug paraphernalia and drug residue in 2006. Same year failed drug test for Marines preparing to deploy to Iraq. IN IRAQ: Charged unpremeditated murder/ stabbing Iraqi soldier 17 times. Guilty of negligent homicide at court-martial in California.

DOB: 4/24/77. JOINED: Michigan National Guard, in 2003; Army Reserve, in 2005.
PRE-MILITARY: Discharged from Air Force for drunken driving. He is convicted twice and arrested four times on felony charges, once for allegedly giving a 13-year-old girl marijuana in exchange for oral sex. Serves time in state and federal prisons.
IN IRAQ: Found guilty at court-martial of stealing pistol from translator working at Abu Ghraib and of fraudulent enlistment.

16 comments:

Nan said...

CNN just did a report on this -- linked the rise in the numbers of military personnel being charged with crimes in Iraq with the lowered recruiting standards.

Saw another report recently (and I'm blanking on exactly where) on gang activity in the military. More and more street thugs are enlisting and bringing their gang culture with them.

billy pilgrim said...

randal ruby seems like an ok guy if you keep him away from the firewater.

i guess they'll have to lower the standards again if they invade iran.

yellowdoggranny said...

if they lower the standards any more...Bush will be able to get in..

Robin said...

Oh...scary. And I have a perfectly nice cousin who can't join because of adolescent asthma? He tried everything to do "his duty"....

Let's face it though, our military has long been a place for misfits (heard a rumor the marine corps loved and LOOKED for them...easier to tear down and rebuild...) I honor each and every veteran and each and every GI that I can, without them we wouldn't be ranting, for the most part.

But it is very scary, they can't drink until they are 21..but they can fight and die for our country. They wouldn't qualify to own a gun...but we'll give them one that's not even legal to for a civvie to buy in the first place?

Let's teach someone with a propensity to kill, to kill well. And then discharge him back into our society with more rage, and more knowledge.

I think their criminal background should be round 1, psychological testing, round 2.....and then a sorry, no thank you. BUT: could the military "possibly" have turned some of these kids around and given them purpose and curttailed those tendencies? That's the flip side I guess.

We had a creepy guy from my hometown who joined the marines. He's in the brig with a fellow marine for raping and killing a woman marine in Okinawa...they shouldv'e just asked us...we weren't suprised.

Geez, y'all make my blogs look like mindless drivel and not socially concious at all!

Great post as usual!

Nan said...

There is some evidence the military can successfully turn people around, take kids who wouldn't have had much of a chance for a decent life out in the civilian world and provide training and opportunities, but I think the odds of that happening grow longer the lower the recruiting standards go.

Recruiters have always lied and tried to pad their quotas with borderline enlistees. I was in the USWAC during the Vietnam era and can remember a fair number of recruits washing out in basic training simply because they were too damn stupid. These were girls who were obviously learning disabled. The recruiters had to know the poor kids would be sent home pretty quickly, but the recruiters didn't care.

I also recall a woman who got kicked out due to fraudulent enlistment: she had lied about her age. Turned out she was 31, and back then the cut-off was 30. Times have changed -- they keep raising the age limit out of desperation for cannon fodder. Pretty soon the recruiters will be trolling nursing homes.

AngelConradie said...

hhmmm... sounds like the south african politician recruitment policy... lol

McRaven said...

I like your answer about Bush getting in...:)))

yellowdoggranny said...

robin:i know that the army/marines etc. can make a man out of you..but they can also take a bad one and make him worse too...just sad..
billy:yup, pretty soon they'll be recruiting right from prisons..bastids.
nan:the military isn't supposed to be a place where criminals can go and improve there bad habits..they're supposed to make a man out of you..but some of those 'men' were already animals..and makes it rougher on the other guys than it supposed to be..I was raised in the air force,only child of a m/sgt. and I saw all sorts and types of gi's..males and females..some smart and brave, some 'goldbricks', some just dumb and no good..hard to watch them sometimes..
angel:well, that's scary too..ha..
rox:yup, every time something bad happens in our government, they run some hollywood story out about brittney, or angelina, or madonna..to side track us..
mcraven:tanks...ha

tsduff said...

What the heck is wrong with our nation? This is not acceptable wake up America! Those little news blurbs out of tinsel town don't distract me, but I sure do see a lot of it on the supposed news...

Mouthy Girl said...

I'm not surprised. Just disappointed. As usual.

No idea how to fix this problem.

Some people are truly wired wrong - they're not victims of circumstance or environment. They're simply screwed by their own DNA. However, speaking as a 14 year veteran in the public school system, the majority of these screw-ups, felons,and predators are products of homes where parents didn't hold them responsible for their actions, didn't model acceptable behavior, didn't care for their kids.

Don't get me on my soapbox about ignorant, shitty parents. I hate the losers who think that being a parent means throwing some sperm and eggs together just to see what happens.

Allan said...

Welcome to The Revolution of Lowered Expectations...I used to fantasize about settling other planets...now it seems as if we'll need interplanetary penal colonies- that ALWAYS works out GREAT in sci-fi.

unokhan said...

it also indicates that the pentagon senses the nation would reject a draft

yellowdoggranny said...

yupper..its a sad state our country is in..and no we would't have a draft, but if we go into iran..we'll have to..

old enough to moan said...

Thankfully they are in Iraq, albeit wrongly, and not in the UK. I hope!

Anonymous said...

Figures, huh?

joy said...

When I was in the Air Force, we had categories from 1-4, based on background and test scores. These people would probably have been Cat 4s. We were supposed to get no more than 2% Cat 4s and they were supposed to be carefully supervised. Sounds like things have changed.

I got a really cool backpack from the Army last week. They sent me a postcard trying to recruit me. I think I got it because I'm enrolled in a class at OU. I filled it out and mailed it in as a joke. I got the free backpack! Guess they didn't notice that I'm retired from the Air Force and that I'll be 60 this year!