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Green Beret Training Standards Now Lower than Army ROTC Camp in the 80’s
US Defense Watch ^ | December 19, 2017 | Ray Starmann

Posted on 12/19/2017 6:46:23 PM PST by pboyington

It was only a matter of time…

Since 2015, no woman has successfully made it through SFQC, or the Special Forces Qualification Course since Ash Carter, with a stroke of a pen, created the single greatest disaster in US military history, the authorization for women to serve in the combat arms and special operations units.

But, that is about to change…

The army’s leaders, which in 2017, consist mainly of social justice warriors, flaming liberals and back-stabbing ticket-punching, perfumed princes, have consistently demonstrated that they possess neither the warrior ethos nor the moral courage to challenge the social engineering insanity invading the lean green machine.

Our country’s national security is being damaged every day and the army’s senior leadership is more focused on political correctness and diversity than war fighting.

Making young, male ROTC cadets parade around in red high heels to show empathy for some asinine feminist cause is bad enough. Forcing male soldiers from the famous Big Red One or 1st Infantry Division, a unit that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, to wear pregnancy simulators to show empathy for some asinine feminist cause is bad enough. The Secretary of the Army ordering officers and troopers worldwide to balance lactation support and readiness is bad enough…

But, when the Green Berets, one of the greatest fighting forces of all time, completely abandon all physical standards for soldiers hoping to serve in Special Forces, you know that the Hour of the Clusterf**k is not approaching, but has indeed arrived.

A couple weeks ago, an anonymous letter, written by one or several training personnel from the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School wrote a scathing letter, indicting senior Green Beret officers and enlisted men for essentially erasing any physical standards for those who seek the Green Beret, in order to successfully pass females through the program, while placating feminists in the Pentagon.

Below are several passages from the 14 page anonymous letter:

To our fellow Active Duty and Veteran Green Berets,

Our Regiment has a cancer, and it is destroying the SF legacy, its capability, and its credibility. SWCS has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior Officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlistedleaders. They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces more prolific, but dangerously less capable than ever before. Shameless and immodest careerism has, in no uncertain terms, effectively destroyed our ability to assess, train, and prepare students, or to identify those students that pose very real risk to Operational Detachments.

We consistently and concretely identify dozens of graduates every year who are incapable of ever being ‘value-added’ to ODA’s yet are pushed forward to you. THAT NUMBER IS SET TO RISE DRAMATICALLY in the very near future.

The actions of SWCS leadership have created a new era of Special Forces that are; increasingly incapable of actualizing SOF attributes; markedly and demonstrably weaker; and quantifiably projecting measurable risk and liability onto the teammates with which they serve.

The recent systematic dismissal of course standards and continuous violation of regulations at the Training Group and SWCS echelons makes student failure nigh impossible.

In the last 24 months, Commanders and/or Sergeants Major at the Group and SWCS level have systematically removed numerous fundamental SF standards, lowered and undermined the grading metrics for others, all while simultaneously ensuring that a gagged cadre population was expressly prohibited from holding students accountable for their academic, physical, and character performance.

The letter continues:

Regardless of one’s opinion on the topic, a universally accepted truth recognized by all parties is that if women yearn to join the force, they should meet the same standards achieved by those men they wish to serve with. Yet the current leadership has taken it upon themselves to inject an end state no one wants, to achieve personal endeavors that benefit no one. They have stated through continuous action and policy implementation that they do not want women to meet the standard. What they want is to markedly lower the standards enough to ensure that any woman attempting this path will have absolutely no issue achieving it. Consider the time-line of events:

What follows is a summary of the time line in the letter:

July 2017: MG Sonntag dismisses all SFOC (Special Forces Orientation Course) testable events. Students will take the physical tests, but they can no longer be relieved for them as they are considered diagnostics. Students can no longer fail SFOC except for Voluntarily Withdrawing or getting injured.

So, your only way out of the orientation course is feet first on a gurney. So what if you can do only a couple pushups, it’s the new army.

September 2017: All graded SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course or the Q Course) PT events including the SFPA, APFT, diagnostic APFT’s, and Diagnostic SFPA’s still banned from being conducted. -Revision introduced that there will be ZERO graded physical tests.

Why in the name of God would the Special Forces Q Course not be administering physical fitness tests? Hmm..I wonder why?

The author(s) continue and what they say is frankly frightening for the future of the Green Berets and our country’s national security:

November 2017: The culmination: It has just been announced that graduation for students will be held immediately after they graduate Robin Sage (culminating field exercise). Language phase is no longer a requirement for graduation. Aside from passing selection, there are LITERALLY no physical gates or standards required of students in order for them to graduate the Special Forces Qualification Course. This is the state of the entire SFQC as it stands today.

Students do not need to be able to pass a 2-mile run at an 80% standard. They do not need to pass a 5-mile run in under 40 minutes. They do not need to be able to pass a 12-mile ruck march in under 3 hours. They are not required to find ANY points during their land nav training and assessment.

They do not need to be able to perform 8 pull-ups. Translation, women don’t have the upper body strength to do pull ups, so forget that little requirement. Say goodbye to the old days where you couldn’t eat unless you knocked out ten pull ups.

They do not need to be able to perform 57 push-ups, or 66 sit-ups. They no longer need to be able to climb a 15 foot rope with weight on. Students are no longer administered any form of physical or administrative punishment. After passing a 19-ish day selection process, there are no physical barriers to earning the coveted Green Beret.

These all were standards for EVERY Green Beret in modern history prior to this month. To say that standards have not been eliminated would be laughable, were it not so tragic.

As long as one shows up for training, there is virtually no way to fail this training. Major General Sonntag said it best: “Once they’ve been selected, there is no reason they should fail a single portion of the Q-course.”

So, the Green Berets are like traffic school online. Everyone will qualify…

Finally, the author(s) conclude the letter with a desperate plea from desperate men who are watching one of the country’s and the world’s premier fighting and training forces literally be flushed down the toilet by politically correct martinets bowing to pressure from feminists.

This is the next generation of Special Forces. In just a few years, most of our regiment will be a product of this foundation. We will become a brotherhood of parasites: devoid of any real character, feeding off of the achievements those before us earned, and consuming the heritage as a whole. We can cure it, but it needs to happen now. We need to take back ownership of our profession. Help us fix this mess. The Regiment’s legacy depends on it.

In 1985, I joined Army ROTC’s two-year program at Southern Methodist University. The army sent me that summer to Army ROTC Basic Camp at Fort Knox. The six week training was designed to immerse you in the basics of ROTC and the army in general. I can honestly say that the standards for college kids who wanted to be officers and knew nothing about the military, were tougher than the current ‘standards’ or no standards for Green Beret trainees in 2017.

Think about that and what it says for our national security.

At Fort Knox in the summer of 1985, you had to do 8 pull ups to be allowed into the chow hall. Anyone who didn’t was ostracized as some kind of totally worthless weakling. To max the PT test you had to do a lot more than 57 push ups and 66 sit ups as a 20 year old man. Yes, you actually had to find points during land navigation, day and night, to pass the course! Imagine that. And, yes, there were punishments, physical and mental for failing to measure up. And, no, cadets didn’t try to blackmail a drill sergeant. I can’t even imagine something like that.

Remember, this was just ROTC Basic Camp.

Later on, at SMU, you couldn’t be on the ROTC Ranger Team unless you could run 5 miles in 40 minutes or less and pass an orienteering course while running with a 55 pound ruck and weapon…for the ROTC Ranger Team, all make believe in actuality.

We’re talking about college kids here, not Green Beret trainees.

At Knox in the summer of 1985, all of the instructors were drill sergeants and they were all Vietnam veterans. There was Sergeant First Class Contreras, a Philippino who spoke in three round bursts. ‘Drop for 20 sh*tbird.’ ‘What the f**k is that?’ ‘Get your sh*t together.’ He taught us a little song called ‘She wore a Yellow Ribbon’ and spun tall tales about the US Cavalry in Southeast Asia.

When Contreras wasn’t around, he passed the baton to a grizzled hillbilly drill called Wilkins. Wilkins was about 100 pounds ringing wet. He proudly displayed a 101st Airborne combat patch on his right arm. Wilkins was in phenomenal shape. He could run backwards, uphill, with a full ruck and a rifle, while simultaneously singing cadence and yelling at slackers. And, he would do it all with a cig in his mouth and chew in his cheeks. ‘Two old ladies were lyin’ in bed,’ Wilkins would sing, ‘One rolled over to the other and said…’ Wilkins would stop to chastise some poor bastard. ‘Hey, scumbag, you better start double timin’ or I’m gonna kick your f**kin ass. Wilkins would go back to singing cadence. ‘M-16 and a .45, those are tools that we live by.” He would see another fat body gasping for air. ‘You better fall back in, you fat piece of sh*t. Fall back in sh*tbird! Hey, Mother Russia you better behave…’

There were other drills like the Hawaiian, a big, burly man who was a beefcake hybrid of Don Ho and Dick Butkus who sported a 25th Infantry Division combat patch. The Hawaiian always seemed to appear when I was screwing up. He once dumped a whole tray of half-filled juice glasses over my head because I was missing my white t-shirt with my OD’s. On the M-16 range, he saw that I had failed to put my rifle on safe after firing. He beat me in the head about ten times with a wooden range paddle until he was satisfied I had learned my mistake. The next day on the rifle range, Wilkins laughed his butt off while watching every third piece of hot brass scald my right forearm while I engaged targets as a left handed shooter. By 1600 hours, my forearm looked like Wilkins had extinguished 300 Lucky Strikes on it. I had burns everywhere. Walking up to me, he looked at my arm and said, “good sh*t, cadet.’ He rewarded me by handing me five 30 round magazines to shoot up during the mad minute at the end of the day. In his eyes, I had taken the pain and was A-OK.

On the grenade assault course the Hawaiian kicked me in the butt so hard he practically punted me to Fort Campbell. I had committed a grave crime in his eyes. After throwing a grenade, I had looked up to see where it landed. After giving me the Kiwi Express, he glared at me and with a sick smile that made him look like Wolf Fat in Hawaii Five O, as he muttered, ‘Good throw a**hole; but, you’re f**king dead now!’

Contreras, Wilkins and the Hawaiian had a select team of daily screwups who were forced to run around the barracks with a rifle or M-60 over their heads until they were on the verge of collapsing. I remember them taunting a guy who had swallowed his chewing tobacco and who was vomiting while running around a building. The drills were like sharks. If one drill noticed another drill crucifying a cadet, they would also move in for the kill. The drills loved to harass an Iranian guy we had in our platoon. Mustafa was a cool dude who had escaped from Iran to Pakistan on a motorcycle. Unfortunately, his timing was way off. A week before basic began hijackers had commandeered a TWA 747 and forced it to land in Beirut. To the drills he was simply ‘the terrorist,’ ‘terrorist mother f**ker,’ or ‘terrorist SOB.’ He would drive the drills crazy, because no matter how many times they tossed his bed out of a two story window or kicked an empty garbage can at his head at 3 in the morning, he just smiled and said, “I love it here, drill sergeant.’ How can you argue with that kind of enthusiasm? After living through the Iranian Revolution, bear crawling in the company area for a couple hours was a blast.

Men like Contreras, Wilkins and the Hawaiian would now be classified as dinosaurs. They would be considered pariahs in the new, softer, gentler, PC army. Contreras, Wilkins and the Hawaiian would be the first of many men I would meet in the army who were walking macro-aggressions. These men had all graduated, aka survived, the school of hard knocks in Vietnam. I never saw them as abusers, but as soldiers who were just doing their best to keep us alive someday. If a young man and a future officer can’t handle a little yelling and butt kicking, how can he handle a combat zone?

Remember this was only ROTC Basic Camp. It was nothing, absolutely NOTHING compared to what that generation and earlier generations of soldiers and marines endured at enlisted basic training, Airborne School, Ranger School and the SF Q Course.

The army’s response down on Smoke and Mirrors Hill at Bragg was typical and full of what soldiers like to call bravo sierra. Major General Sonntag, in a memorandum stated:

“Many of you have seen the anonymous letter calling into question the integrity of our training standards and the quality of the Soldiers being produced. Let me be clear, I would be proud to serve with each and every one of our Special Forces Qualification Course graduates, and I stand behind the quality of every Soldier we send to the operational force.”

The general went on to say that “no fundamental SF standard has been removed. No academic or character performance standards have been adjusted.”

Sonntag is a graduate of the Major General Scott Miller School of Bravo Sierra. Miller was the guy running Benning when the conspiracy to graduate three females from Ranger School took place.

We come to the final point. Why is this all happening? Why would the Green Berets basically s-can decades of training standards? It’s simple – the army knows that Kaylee and Chelsea and Brianna can’t make it through. Instead of just committing fraud like the army did at Ranger School by graduating three women dishonestly, the Green Berets have decided to erase all standards, allowing everyone from your 100 year old grandma to the fat slob in high school to become ‘one of America’s best.’

The military now exists to make Kirsten Gillibrand and Clair McCaskill and the rest of the feminist lobby in the Beltway happy.

So, get ready for a parade of women modeling their new Green Berets and the subsequent praise from idiots like Gillibrand on how this demonstrates that women are physically as capable as men, even if humanity knows that is a total crock.

The die has been cast. Our national security is now being run on a fantasy.

And, you thought General Mattis was going to do something.

Think again…


TOPICS: Government; Military/Veterans; Politics
KEYWORDS: diversity; feminism; greenberets; socom; specialoperations; specops; usarmy; womenincombat
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1 posted on 12/19/2017 6:46:23 PM PST by pboyington
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To: pboyington

This needs to be seen by POTUS.


2 posted on 12/19/2017 6:51:51 PM PST by The_Republic_Of_Maine (RINO politicians beware your time is coming ... SOON)
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To: pboyington

Mad Dog ain’t so much a mad dog is he? Couldn’t our COMMANDER IN CHIEF undo this stupidity with one fell swoop of his pen????


3 posted on 12/19/2017 6:54:01 PM PST by Dawgreg (Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.)
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To: pboyington

A lot of people are going to end up getting killed over this idiocy.

“Well that’s a helluva price to pay for being stylish!!”

Harry Callahan


4 posted on 12/19/2017 6:55:05 PM PST by headstamp 2 (My "White Privilege" is my work ethic.)
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To: pboyington

This is the gynocentric society we exist in today.

Men see the obvious problems.

Women are oblivious to the problems.


5 posted on 12/19/2017 7:00:44 PM PST by Secret Agent Man ( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: pboyington

Hey! Keeping pantyhose clean in the mud isn’t exactly easy ok!?! Now shutup and hand me an MRE. Mama’s gotta eat.


6 posted on 12/19/2017 7:01:08 PM PST by catbertz
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To: headstamp 2

I’m nearing 60 with a few health concerns. If they keep lowering standards, I would look good in a beret!


7 posted on 12/19/2017 7:02:44 PM PST by LYDIAONTARIO
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To: Dawgreg

why are they still going with a judges order to accept cross dressing , mentally ill men , or women into the military.


8 posted on 12/19/2017 7:03:58 PM PST by manc ( If they want so called marriage equality then they should support polygamy too.)
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To: Dawgreg

Once again Twinkle Toes Mattis is asleep at the wheel. This has happened way too many times since he has been SecDef to blame it all on “Obama generals.” Rather, it seems clear that Mattis is just fine with the PC rot in the military and has no intention of doing the heavy lifting required to root it out.


9 posted on 12/19/2017 7:04:57 PM PST by lodi90
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To: lodi90

every pervert, every weirdo, every affirmative action freak should have been removed or reassigned by now. Mattis has had enough time to stop this crap.


10 posted on 12/19/2017 7:08:46 PM PST by manc ( If they want so called marriage equality then they should support polygamy too.)
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To: pboyington

Very few men—and no women, ever—are good enough to become Green Berets.


11 posted on 12/19/2017 7:12:42 PM PST by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: pboyington

Please tell me that this is a joke.


12 posted on 12/19/2017 7:15:03 PM PST by Army Air Corps (Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)
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To: pboyington

13 posted on 12/19/2017 7:17:29 PM PST by Paladin2
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To: pboyington

If this poorly written article did not have over-the-top histrionic rants typical of conservative blogs, it would be taken more seriously.


14 posted on 12/19/2017 7:19:45 PM PST by nwrep
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To: manc

every pervert, every weirdo, every affirmative action freak should have been removed or reassigned by now. Mattis has had enough time to stop this crap.


Mattis knows if he did something bold like that all those cushy defense industry board of directors million dollar payola retirement “jobs” he has lined up would disappear. We’ve gone from the greatest generation to the greediest generation, IMO.


15 posted on 12/19/2017 7:20:09 PM PST by lodi90
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To: nwrep

Say hi to Morning Joe and Mika will you...


16 posted on 12/19/2017 7:23:57 PM PST by pboyington
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To: nwrep

If you dispute this then do so by facts laid out for all of us. However if you just disagree since it against your view, or agenda then please just say so.


17 posted on 12/19/2017 7:27:11 PM PST by manc ( If they want so called marriage equality then they should support polygamy too.)
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To: pboyington

..........reading this I keep thinking that any day now we could need some guys to go “Fight” and this crop of so called “Green Beret’s” are going to embarrass themselves and the nation....................!


18 posted on 12/19/2017 7:29:19 PM PST by Cen-Tejas
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To: pboyington
>>Miller was the guy running Benning when the conspiracy to graduate three females from Ranger School took place.

When that went down, I had some discussions with my niece's then boyfriend, now fiance.

I've posted his comments before, but will post again. This from Fall 2015.

Comments from my niece’s boyfriend on the women Rangers and the convenient loss of their training records a week or so ago. Applies here too.

He was a Marine 240 gunner, spent time in Afghanistan, this guy is serious business, we probably wish he’d gone to SEAL school, he’d have had a much better than average shot at it. Here’s his commentary on the Ranger school records debacle:

“Oh trust me, I’m aware. S*** makes my blood boil. I’m not even phased by the fact that they’re deliberately hiding the records of the females’ performance. I can only imagine how heavily that course was catered to the females, not to mention the fact that they probably outranked the entire instructor cadre.

We had a female interpreter in afghan, she was at the Company COP so I never saw her. She ended up having an affair with our Co 1st Sgt (surprise).

We also worked with the Brits for a while, since they had a patrol base not far from my squads pb. They also happened to bring in a female interpreter...pregnant in under 2 months, and sent home. Probably got an award for it.

Even if there were females that could meet the minimum physical requirements for the infantry, that s*** will never work. It’ll be detrimental to the combat effectiveness of whatever unit they end up in. Let’s not forget the American “victim” mentality as of late. I can’t even fathom how many sexual harassment cases that would be filed. Then the rape accusations, pregnancies, relationships affecting roles and promotions, oh and the fact that no woman on the planet could firemans carry my 240lb a** with 100+lbs of gear out of a kill zone.

Rant over.

< next email, a few minutes later>

Ok I lied, rant wasn’t finished.

At the schoolhouse I taught at, we brought in non infantry units (POGs) and put them through several infantry centric courses. We had a strict standard of training and had no issues failing females or Marines that outranked us as instructors. This brought us some attention from higher ups on one occasion. A female warrant officer brought pizza for all 50 of “her” marines in our course. During their final exercise. We stopped her and reminded her of the fact that no outside food was permitted in our course. She returned with, “The four females I have in the class are going to feel sexually harassed by you if you don’t let them eat this pizza”.


I'm afraid we won't get our act together until an event worse than Chosin.
19 posted on 12/19/2017 7:30:16 PM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: nwrep

“If this poorly written article did not have over-the-top histrionic rants typical of conservative blogs, it would be taken more seriously.”

Amen. If only Starmann could have stayed in long enough and achieved enough rank, he could have saved us all!!. Reminds me of the old saying that “”Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”-George Burns


20 posted on 12/19/2017 7:34:07 PM PST by Dr. Pritchett
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