Posted on 12/05/2002 2:04:54 PM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
My ears might have deceived me. Did I hear correctly on the Sean Hannity Show? Did Hackworth call Cheney a draft dodger?
LOL! I have a Survivor of Val Porter and Pre-Registration Degree in debate. Does that count for anything? A lot of formerly brave vets were run off this forum back then. FReegards....
Semper fi!
Try again. He did get called up.
Slightly off topic... but this is such a misleading statement. No military in the history of the world has had as few comparative fatalities as the US. Even when we have 'lost' kill ratio's were what - 5:1?
His pretending to be the saviour of the poor, mistreated, 'cannon fodder' is phony and well.. stupid.
Hackworth's agenda is he wants the best for the troops before we go into the shit.
He would rather we wait a year or two getting better NBC protective equipment for our guys or better yet find a way to topple Saddam without using force; thus his quoting of Sun Tzu to that effect.
Others like myself think/realize the time has been set and if you put it off another year or more the international and U.S. gen. public support for action against Saddam will be too low to get the job done.
That being said nothing Hackworth says is incorrect when he says we are rushing in, not well enough prepared for the NBC attacks our troops might face, and our borders are so porous that we need to concentrate on protecting our flanks (i.e. shipping/ports). I don't think we can't do both but he thinks we should do the latter first and only attack Iraq if we can't get some Iraqi Col. to put a bullet in Saddam's head for us.
Everbody who knows how to hit their knees and beg God for favors, myself included, better start the Novenas asking that our Psyops folks can get the on-scene generals and commanders in the Iraqi army to sit on their hands when they are told to launch NBC weapons at our troops because if they do launch them at us we will lose a significant portion of our forces to fatigue from use of protective devices, injury from poor equipment, and death from both.
p.s. Col. Hackworth needs to realize Saddam was behind the Anthrax attacks and that is why we are going after him no matter what (IMHO). The effect will be a form of Democratic Government in Iraq, then Iran and when the other populations living under the Emirs, Kings, and despots see Iraq and Iran living free they won't be far behind.
When they are free they will be too busy going to school and making money to take care of their families to launch suicide attacks. That is the vision of the future the President has and it can come true. After all almost nobody thought we could topple the USSR in 10 years of solid leadership.
I agree with you.
He probably did have better things to do. He was in college during the early sixties and I believe he married in college. Both college and marriage gave him deferment from military service. Is everyone who didnt volunteer to go fight in Vietnam a draft dodger? If so, then a very sizeable perecentage of the baby boomer generation were draft dodgers.
Even if he hadnt had a deferment, his chance of getting drafted while in prime draft age was pretty miniscule. He was already 23 years old by the time of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. By TET when the build up was near max he was 26 years old. My recollection is that the draft boards rarely drafted men of that age.
As for qualified people, I'd say that James Webb would probably be one of the best persons to lead the DoD whem Rumsfeld leaves.
That story about Hackworth has been proven by him and later the military to be false and it was a hit piece on him because the troops use him as a whistleblower.
Interesting point. I think morality is the key, however. A moral people generate moral soldiers. An immoral people generate immoral soldiers. I'll take moral volunteers over immoral draftees any day of the week. And if a military can survive 8 years of Clinton without a coup resulting, I'd say we are pretty safe. But if we keep electing Clintons, and society continues to erode, draftees or no draftees, we are doomed.
Clinton's loathing of our military is well-documented - by his own hand in that now famous letter during his Oxford year, through his anti-American protest in the Soviet Union during the Vietnam era, through eye-witness accounts of servicemen as well as his own administration's actions re. the military - and through his choice of brides. The man who threatened our national security and his 'co-President' - socialist wife Hillary - refused to sing the National Anthem at the outdoor prayer ceremony for the NY rescue workers following 911, but they did sing the "black National Anthem." What country they serve is a mystery to many of us...but it isn't the past or present United States of America.
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