Posted on 06/16/2014 1:20:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As the political firestorm concerning Sergeant Bowe Berghdahl continues, I am hearing people state as fact that enlistment standards dropped far too low after 9/11, allowing either hardened criminals or, as they claim in Bergdahl's case, men with serious mental issues into the Army. It is a recurring notion that I've read often, and it is an idea that, I believe, is a red herring hiding a profounder and harder reality.
After commanding an intelligence company in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, I volunteered for recruiting duty to, hopefully, spend more time with my family. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I served as the Milwaukee Recruiting Company Commander from January 2005 to July 2006 and as the Milwaukee Recruiting Battalion's Executive Officer from July 2006 to July 2008. As a recruiting company commander, I initiated scores of requests for medical and "moral" (crime-related) waivers. As an executive officer, I not only reviewed all waivers, but also I did most of the work concerning investigations of "recruiting improprieties," which occur when recruiters either knowingly or negligently enlist applicants who are not qualified to enlist.
If such waivers were a problem, I never noticed it. They weren't a problem in Wisconsin. I was untroubled by the thought of any of the applicants whom I interviewed for a waiver becoming soldiers. The only felony waiver I ever tried to get my boss to sign off on was for a kid who, as a juvenile, had broken into a store with his friends and stolen $600 worth of ice cream. The police nabbed him with his friends, chowing down on ice cream beneath a tree, surrounded by gallons of the stuff....
(Excerpt) Read more at ricks.foreignpolicy.com ...
He is right, the military pressures recruiters into getting warm bodies to fill recruitment quotas and some of those people have no business wearing a uniform.
Although our population toady is massive, close to 1960 India, which we used to use as an example of overcrowded, and our military is much smaller than it used to be, recruiting has been tough for much or our post 9/11 military.
The old days of huge recruiting numbers seem over in modern America, we took in the girlfriends, sisters, and moms of our young males after we were attacked on 9/11, to help fill our Army and Marine Corps and the rest of the military.
Wisconsin military recruiting tales
FReep Mail me if you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
I’ll tell one thing for sure, despite this soldier’s tales — Wisconsin recruiters DO turn down applicants on their past records. I’ve had some of my former employees fail their offers to join because of their juvenile records. As an employer, I was not permitted to know what was in their juve records, but the military sure didn’t like it. (They weren’t very good employees either. That is why they are EX employees.)
Millennials in the Workplace Training Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz0o9clVQu8
That is the sorriest web site I’ve seen in many a moon because of the pop up ads every time I moved my cursor to try to read the article. Never got to read below the 2nd paragraph and I have an excellent ad blocker.
You got it...
That would be hilarious, except that it is too, too true!
I was recently at a granddaughter’s graduation and she was whining about having to go to work (at a brand new job created just for her) the day before graduation. The other side of the family were all tsk, tsking at her, telling her that if she just showed up the owner of the shop would probably let her go early — if only she asked.
I could barely contain my anger. It’s not like the job was slavery. It was a helper in a tack shop, FGS. The shop owner was just setting up her business and had opened the job specifically for my GD. And now my GD wants to go home early?
I was outnumbered, however, by 2 other grandmothers (real and step), a grandfather, an aunt, and the girl’s mother (my son’s wife) who all thought that it would be perfectly OK for my GD to miss her first day at work.
I showed them. I skipped her graduation ceremony, even thought I had driven 600 miles to get there! I used my knee replacement as an excuse and was told privately by the other grandfather that I was the smartest one of the bunch because the ceremony was 30 miles away, in a bad neighborhood, and BORING. I took a nap and watched TV in my hotel.
But, there are a lot of young people who messed up at 15 and would be an asset in the military. I spoke to a young man who was basically told if he admitted to having smoked pot, he would be declined, so of course, he lied. He had a runaway ticket at 16 and was told to lie and, then, of course, it came out. He was encouraged to lie rather than be upfront. It worked out, but sometimes, the military is just what some need to get their life on the straight and narrow.
Somehow ‘Nasty’ did not seem right, but I could not think of a word to better describe that web site. You nailed it, that web page is the ‘Sorriest’ web site I have ever clicked on in my whole browsing experience. I wanted to read the article too but could not.
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