Message to the Media

I was going to continue my piece about Recruiters being under fire but SFC B has done a much better job than I can. Follow his story over at his blog.

What I wanted to write about today is 11 things that I would like to say to the collective MSM:

1. Nobody cares about Anna Nichole Smith!
Every morning I wake up, I know that she's still dead - you don't have to keep reminding me. I don't care about the fact that she died. It's sad, but it happens every day. My neighbor died the other day of a suspected overdose and not one television cameras showed up - what makes Anna Nichole Smith so much more important than this guy to have her death all over every network for the last 2 weeks? I don't care what they do with her body, I don't care what happens to her fortune, and I don't care who gets custody of her daughter as long as she's taken care of. Frankly, none of this is ANYBODY's business other than the families. Maybe if you leave these people alone they wouldn't OD on drugs all the time!

2. I don't care about Britney Spears.
I don't care how many times she's been in and out of rehab. I don't care if she shaves her head. I don't care if she doesn't wear panties when out at the clubs - although it does turn me on a little. I don't care if K-Fed gets the kids - and frankly, none of this is ANYBODY'S business other than hers, K-Fed's, and their families. Again, this crap doesn't need to be on every network 24/7.

3. I don't care about mountain climbers who get stuck on a mountain.
These people made the decision to go up on that mountain, knowing the risks. They should take responsibility for their actions and I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't feel sorry for them nor am I the only one who's sick of the news telling me I should feel sorry for them. If they're stuck, go rescue them because we're the only country in the world who helps idiots like these but keep this crap off the TV. There's much more important things going on in the world besides some morons who want to go mountain climbing for "the thrill" just to cry like babies when things go wrong. It is sad when these mountain climbers never make it off the mountain but we shouldn't feel sorry for them when they knowingly took the risk to get "the thrill".

4. Hollywood celebs and recording artists are not military experts.
Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Jane Fonda, The Dixie Chicks, John Mellencamp, and the rest of the "stars" who oppose the war are NOT military experts so they should not be be on the TV saying what we should do in Iraq. Just because Martin Sheen played the President on TV does not mean he is qualified to be the REAL Commander-In-Chief. Just because Mike Farrell played BJ Hunnicut on M.A.S.H. doesn't mean he really knows how to be a commander at war. These people need to leave military decisions to the real experts who have the proper training and knowledge to make such decisions. If General Pace tried to give these moonbats advice on how to shoot a movie or produce an album they would laugh in his face. Yet they think they're "elite" enough that they can tell General Pace how to do his job. If they're against the war, that's fine, let them say they're against it - but leave the military planning to the people who's jobs it is to do so.

5. People who do suicide attacks in Israel are not "freedom fighters"
As a matter of fact the proper term is actually Terrorists. If these Islamic extremists were only attacking valid Israeli military targets I might agree that maybe they're "freedom fighters". But when these psychopathic sickos cross the boarder and blow up school buses filled with children they show that they aren't for freedom at all - they're terrorists plain and simple. Calling them anything else is an insult to our intelligence and only boosts the terrorists' morale.

6. If I wanted to know about the Oscars I would watch them on Sunday.
I. Don't. Care. About. The. Oscars. If I REALLY wanted to hear about them I would actually turn the friggin channel and watch them. There's much more important things going on in the world than the stupid Oscars. I don't understand how the Oscars get more coverage than the 13-year-old boy who was kidnapped at gunpoint and escaped unharmed - the latter story is MUCH more newsworthy. Keep all the Oscar crap for shows like Entertainment Tonight.

7. Every time you reveal classified information or operations you hurt America.
This is a pretty serious issue. Every time you release classified information or classified operations you hurt America, your own country. These actions are morally wrong and borderline treasonous. Don't you realize that you are potentially putting lives at risk here? Even if there aren't lives at risk, you are ruining our tools to actually WIN the Global War on Terror. If you actually WANT us to lose this war, keep doing business as usual. If you actually WANT us to WIN this war, then you'd better get your head out of your asses and stop selling out your own country for a story and a buck.

8. Stop the one-sided coverage of Iraq.
There are actually GOOD things happening in Iraq - your constant refusal to report anything but the bad things shows you for the traitors you probably are. You don't really have to look very hard to find these stories. CENTCOM has done a lot of the homework for you. Hell, my brother and a guy named Jim have done some of the homework for you as well. I'm not saying don't report the bad things - there ARE bad things happening in Iraq and it SHOULD be reported. What I'm saying is lets have a little balance here. What you are doing by only reporting the bad things is furthering your agenda of America losing the war in Iraq - that isn't your job. Your job is to report the facts and not try to sway the public opinion.

9. There are 2 sides to the global warming story.
Stop reporting just the democratic talking points on the issue. Sean Hannity shouldn't be the only one in the world actually reporting that many scientists don't believe the global warming hype. Besides, 15 years ago you told me we were heading into the next ice age - now the world is warming up? Maybe we should do a little more research before we scream "fire" in a crowded movie theatre.

10. Lets have a little TRUTH in reporting shall we?
Finally, you all need to tell the TRUTH in your stories, both on the air and in print. Every time I watch the news or read something in the paper I constantly find things that are either half-truths or down right lies and it's getting out of control. We have a free press in this country because our four-fathers believed you can't trust the government to tell the truth. Now we can't even trust our free press to tell the truth any more! If we can't trust the government to tell the truth (and I don't) and we can't trust the media to tell the truth (which I don't either) than who can we trust? The odd thing is that I find myself believing the government more than the media even though the government has more to gain by lying! I think I speak for more than just myself when I say we're sick and tired of lies in the media. You can't say Saddam NEVER had WMDs when he used them to kill hundreds of thousands. As SFC B said Chris Dugan was never a recruiter. U.S. Soldiers never flushed Korans down the toilet at Gitmo to antagonize prisoners. The scary part is that you don't realize the kind of damage you can and have done with your false reporting. Take a look at the case of the Times report of U.S. soldiers flushing Korans down the toilet at Gitmo to antagonize prisoners. That story caused riots across the Muslim world and several soldiers DIED because of the riots that story caused. The VERY NEXT WEEK the Times printed admitted that the only incidents of Korans being flushed was done by the prisoners themselves to try and clog up the toilets to piss off the guards! Who took responsibility for those soldiers who lost their lives because of your false reporting? Frankly, it needs to stop for every one's sake.

11. The election is too far away - lets hold off for now.
The election is over a year and a half away. Hell, the primaries are a year away! Can we please get this off the TV. At the rate you're going now, EVERYBODY is going to be sick and tired of the election and our horribly low voting rate will drop even lower.

I'm glad I got all that off my chest. Feel free to comment even if you think I'm a right-wing crack-pot.

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I finished this month's mission (HAHA!!! I go off a calendar month - suck it USAREC recruiters!) back on the 9th and haven't done much actual recruiting the rest of the month. Frankly, after enlisting 6 soldiers into the Army National Guard in 34 days I think I deserved a little break. I think it's time to get back to work, don't you?

Finally, I have a couple of big announcements to make - and these are huge.
#1. With my ETS (End of Term of Service) fast approaching I have decided to NOT extend my tour in Recruiting. This job has been by far the best job I've ever had. At the same time this has been by far the worst job I've ever had. I'm glad I've had this opportunity to do this job, but in the end I believe it is time to move on. I will have a crazy amount of leave to burn up before I ETS so I will be ending my recruiting tour much earlier than expected. As of the information I have right now, I will out process from my BN on the morning of May 15th and start my terminal leave at 1200hrs of that same day. There's lots to do before that time so the two and a half months I have till I'm done will be busy - but a welcomed busy.

#2. I WILL BE ON VACATION ALL SUMMER!!!!!! I just wish my brother would be home to enjoy it with me.

#3. I only have SIX enlistments left! My replacement is already in my office and I've begun wrapping up my recruiting life. If all goes well, I'll have my 6 enlistments sooner rather than later and be able to have a very easy transition to the non-recruiting world.

#4. I'm going to go back to college full time next fall to FINALLY get my degree. I'll be majoring in Secondary Education with a focus in Broad field Social Studies. Troy, if you don't have your Masters by the time I graduate, I will never stop teasing you. By the way, you're 8 and a half years older than me so you should have your masters before I have my bachelors.....

I've included a poll at the bottom of this post that I encourage you all to participate in.

Recruiters Under Fire

In the last 2 days we've seen a lot of stuff about recruiting mostly focusing on the Army. Some of what is being put out by the media and lefty blogs is a lot of half truths, misleading information, and false information and I just can't not talk about it.

First up on the docket is Military Accepting More Ex-Cons:

Here's the cold hard facts: Did the Army grant more waivers in FY 2006 than it did in FY 2003? Yes, they did.

Some may argue that this is due to an increase in the missions from 2003 to 2006, but the increase in mission cannot account for the increase in waivers as the difference is only about 10,000 soldiers. It's just a simple fact that they granted more waivers than they did in the past.

Where I get confused is where they start to only mention moral waivers without even mentioning what kind of moral waivers they're talking about. Anybody who has been involved in recruiting for more than an hour would understand that there are many kinds of moral waivers. Lets say that you have a prior service guy who got a little overweight while on Active Duty and was kicked out of the Army because of it. After a while he gets in shape, loses the weight, and wants to enlist. Since his DD214 has a RE-3 he requires.... you guessed it a MORAL WAIVER. If you have a kid who has a tattoo on his hand, during FY 2006 he would have required a MORAL WAIVER. Lets say you have a kid who admits to smoking pot on more than one occasion, or "recreational use", he's going to require a MORAL WAIVER. Surely these hardened criminals should not be in this kinder-gentler Army right?

I also have a problem with what some of the people quoted in the article are saying:

"The fact that the military has allowed more than 100,000 people with such troubled pasts to join its ranks over the past three years illustrates the problem we're having meeting our military needs in this time of war," said Aaron Belkin, director of the center.

100,000?! HOLY CRAP!

How exactly did he get these numbers I wonder? From earlier in the story:

The number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year. Other misdemeanors - from petty theft or writing a bad check to some assaults - jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006, representing more than three-quarters of moral waivers granted by the Army.

Lets do math!

Lets say that there has been a steady increase in waivers each year starting in 2003 (I'm too lazy to look up the exact numbers but an estimation should do fine for our little fact finding mission). So for felony waivers we had 411 in 2003, 520 in 2004, 745, in 2005 and 901 in 2006. So in the last 4 years we've had 2,577 people enlist with a felony on their record.

For misdemeanor waivers we had 2700 in 2003, 3600 in 2004, 4900 in 2005 and 6000 in 2006. So that means in the last 4 years we've had 17,200 people enlist with a misdemeanor on their record.

If you add those numbers up, you've got 19,777 people who required moral waivers for law violations who've enlisted in the last 4 years. Lets just round my random numbers up to 20,000 to make things easier.

Where in the WORLD did Aaron Belkin from the California-based Michael D. Palm Center come up with 100,000?! Sorry, but when you put out a number that is 5 TIMES HIGHER than the actual (estimated) numbers that is not an "error in reporting", that is an OUTRIGHT LIE!

Noticed how he said it's 100,000 people with "such troubled pasts"? The story even admits that you need a waiver for writing a bad check - surely these are very troubled people. What if the person has a lead foot and requires a waiver for 4 or more speeding tickets - again, we should let people with "such troubled pasts" into our military......

What's worse is that the lefty bloggers are having a field day with this.

One blogger had this to say:

The waiver removes the standard measure of "morality" for people who have been convicted of such crimes as aggravated assault (including rape), burglary, robbery, and vehicular homicide.

Including rape? Wow, that's news to me - I was unaware that rape was a waivable offense.

Let me just look that one up in the ECM...... wow, says here that rape is a non-waivable felony.....

Aggravated assault? That one is a little tougher since the military classifies things differently. But let me look that one up too..... wow, here's the definition:

Assault, Aggravated (such as assault with dangerous weapon,
assault intentionally inflicting great bodily harm, or assault with
intent to commit a felony)

And you guessed it, non-waivable.

I'll give him burglary, as that is a felony waivor.

What about robbery? If it was armed robbery than that's non-waivable, but robbery without a weapon is waivable.

What's more interesting is he had this to say:

This policy was instituted gradually beginning around 2003, because the
recruiters' source pool, inner city youth and hapless rural youth,... wisely
withheld their hands from the contracts. And they were the ones without the
records.

Instituted gradually beginning in 2003? That's strange, when my brother was a recruiter in 1999 I remember helping him with some waivers when I worked ADSW. Maybe my brother was ahead of the curve, knowing we'd be stuck in this "quagmire."

Frankly, these bloggers need to stop lying about things they know nothing about. The scary thing is that every one of their ilk that reads this filth is going to believe it as the gospel.

You know what I find most hypocritical about this who thing? The left's talking points.

The left is the first group of people to talk about rehabilitation of our criminals and giving them a second chance - yet when the military does what they want and they're up in arms about it!Robbie at UrbanGrounds said it much better than I can.

That's all I'm going to write tonite - watch this weekend for the next thing on my docket - Undercover reporters catching recruiters lying.

Once Helluva Month

This last month has been absolutely crazy! I didn't really believe it myself when I looked, but it's true. In the last 34 days I've enlisted 6 new people into the National Guard! How crazy is that? Very crazy indeed.

It's crazy how much work enlisting 6 people in a month's time is - it seemed like time just flew by.

You want to know what all that hard work got me? A lot really. It got me back at missing for the month of January. It finished my mission for February (We go off a calendar month, not that crazy USAREC "month") in only 9 days. And best of all - it got me bronchitis!

Man! Am I a lucky guy or what?!

Since my last post there have been some things to change when it comes to drill. Back in December my NCOIC told me that I would be at least a Squad Leader in a platoon of the Recruit Sustainment Program (RSP). I thought "this is interesting - they usually don't like us to become part of a drilling unit" so I asked what brought this on. Turned out it was being command directed because they believed that it would make the RSP more successful as well as provide great leadership opportunities for the recruiters. Sounded like a win-win so I was all for it. January drill was fast approaching when I was told by my NCOIC that I would not be a Squad Leader - I was now going to be a Platoon Sergeant for the white phase soldiers! This should be fun..... an E-5 thrown into this position. I knew I'd make it work though.

January drill came up and I apparently did a good job - my NCOIC and the Commander and 1SG for the supporting unit had nothing but good things to say about my performance. In the end they told me I would be the PLT SGT for white phase for the remainder of the training year. Sounded great to me - I love training troops and I appreciated the opportunity. Little did I know things would soon change again.

As January was coming to an end I received another phone call from my NCOIC telling me that February would be the last month I would be the white phase PLT SGT. I was very surprised by this and asked why. It seemed that many recruiters who were behind mission were blaming RSP on their mission failure so the command took away the scapegoat because it "was not beneficial to either RSP or the recruiters." That sucked so I decided to do something about it. I worked my way up the chain to fight to stay with RSP. Eventually I won the battle just before February drill.

While I was working my ass off to enlist 6 people I also had a lot of prep work to do before drill. I suffered a nasty cold the week before drill, so I suffered through 3 days of Career Direction at one of my high schools, taught 3 other classes at 3 other of my high schools, went to MEPS with 2 new recruits all while being sick as a dog. Then after getting back from MEPS real late Friday night, staying up till 0230 working on stuff for drill I had to be at the Armory at 0630 to start drill. What at start!

Drill was AWESOME. Lots of good training for the soldiers and lots of fun. I finished Saturday exhausted but happy and went to spend some time with the family (my parents live in the town we travel to drill for). I enjoyed my time with my family and went to bed early, excited to get the next day started.

When I woke up Sunday morning I felt a little funny but didn't think anything of it. I started coughing and hawked up a bunch of flem but when I spit it into the sink I saw it was filled with bright red blood! Exciting. I didn't have time to dilly dally so I continued getting ready while coughing up blood so I could get to drill on time. I got to the armory and figured I'd see if the state surgeon would be in this weekend (he lives in the area), at which he wasn't. The medic asked me why but I really didn't want to talk to him about it - but he kept pressing on. Eventually I said "I've been coughing up bloody mucus all morning, it's no big deal, don't worry about it." The medic told me I should go to the hospital and I told him I would after drill - I've got to much to do for drill. If I was gone there would be no NCO to train my soldiers so I could not miss. He insisted that I go to the hospital and I said something to the order of "Look private, I'm a big boy and I'll go after drill when I get back to my home unit. I've got too much shit going on to leave drill." I figured it would be over with that, but apparently not.

The little bastard had to brief the commander on medical issues, which includes how many people had come to see the medics and why. As I was the only one who had seen the medics he told them that I was coughing up blood. When asked what was done he told them he told me to go to the hospital - at which I "refused" because I had to much going on at drill to leave. Apparently the commander thought coughing up blood was a bad thing.

Next thing I know, another recruiter is taking my platoon for me and I'm on the way to the hospital. I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. The doctor told me I have bronchitis, gave me my prescription, told me to take a couple of days off, and sent me on the way.

When I got to drill I was told to go home - which would be great if I didn't have to drive all my enlistees back home an hour and a half away. So stay at drill I did - which was great even though I felt like walking death by the end of the day.

The funniest thing that happened at drill? I asked my plt to figure out a plt name. There were many different suggestions, some appropriate, some not, some funny, some not, and some just plain weird. The winning name? The Jump Suit Jockeys!

You're probably wondering why we'd choose such a weird name, but anybody who has seen the "RSP Uniform" would understand.

Seems some months back, somebody at the National Guard Bureau had this great idea to create a special uniform for the RSP soldiers - you know, to give RSP that "espri de corps" feeling. I'm sure that somebody worked long and hard to design such an impressive uniform. Needless to say I have my reservations about this - these kids joined the Army National Guard, not the RSP - give them a set of ACUs for Pete's sake! As we were issuing the uniforms out nobody really knew what to call them. Some people started to call them the RSP PT uniform. That didn't work since they weren't just for PT. Some people started to call them the RSP Track Suit. That still didn't work since the soldiers are doing more than just running in them. At one point the 1SG heard me call it the "RSP Jump Suit" and he picked up the phrase - after that point it stuck. Everybody hates them, seems like a waste of money to most of us when the kids should have been issued ACUs.

Anyway, when we were trying to figure out the PLT name somebody suggested "The Jump Suit Jockeys" and we all loved it. You should have heard the supporting unit laugh when I stood in front of the PLT and screamed "Jump Suit Jockeys.... Attention!"