Recruiters

Soldiers (and I'll wager seamen, airmen and Marines) have an ambivalent attitude toward recruiters.

None of us got the whole truth. Part of that is unavoidable. Basic (and the service after that) isn't something one can explain. One can equip a friend (or recruit) with tools to make it easier (Jerry Pournelle gave me the best piece of advice I got before I left for Basic, not "One day at a time," but rather, "The day comes to an end." There were a couple of days I was chanting that to myself, while doing pushups [as corrective training; group] at about 0430. It helped, a lot).

My recruiter did her best. I don't think SFC Provencher (whom I still think of as Susan, but that's a longer story... and nothing untoward about it), told me any knowing lies, but there were things about my MOS she didn't know (I was the first person she enlisted into it. It was two-years before I could come back to tell her what it was really like).

But I had guys in Basic who had been told their Drill Sergeants would get them into Airborne, Ranger, Scuba, school. You name it and anyone who has been in for more than a couple of years has met someone whose recruiter sold them a bill of goods.

Hell, my father ended up in the Marines because the Navy shafted him out of a school. It's endemic.

And it has been for centuries. The English used to recruit with a pile of sovereigns. Go to a pub, in a flashy uniform, buy a bunch o' drinks, point out the money one gets for enlisting. Get them to sign their names, take the schilling and kiss the book. Before you can say, "Bob's yer uncle," you've got a whole sqaud's worth of guys who've lost their weaving jobs, or don't want to stay on the farm.

After they've been marched to the garrison you tell them 1: if they leave they can be hanged (which rarely happened in Britain, things were different on the Penninsula, but what did they know of that?) and 2: all that money they were promised is going to pay for uniforms, billets and the like.


So I have mixed feelings when I see some of the shenannigans being committed by recruiters. The ones who point, otherwise trivially enlistable, candidates to diploma mills for a GED (thus avoiding the hassle involved in getting a waiver), not a big problem to me (I am assuming, arguendo, these recruits have the IQ, and the ASVAB scores to make decent soldiers, as well as being old enough to make their own decisions).

The idiots in Ohio who enlisted a guy with mental problems, straight out of treatment (I don't want a bi-polar, or manic-depressive, or whatever the nom-de-jour is for that problem to be under stress with me [or anyone else, for that matter] when he has a loaded weapon. Call me silly I guess) they pissed me off.

Ok, that's bad enough. But this... this (Password required. Try Bugmenot.com if you want to avoid registering. KHOU, the site, is really sticky, and it took me several tries to get a good one) takes the cake.

"Sgt. Thomas Kelt left this message on that young man's cell phone: "Hey Chris, this is Sgt. Kelt with the Army man. I think we got disconnected. Okay, I know you were on your cell probably and just had a bad connection or something like that. I know you didn't hang up on me. Anyway, by federal law you got an appointment with me at 2 o'clock this afternoon at Greenspoint Mall, okay? That's the Greenspoint Mall Army Recruiting Station at 2 o'clock. You fail to appear and we'll have a warrant. Okay? So give me a call back."

You read that right. He threatened to have the guy arrested because he hung up on him. Used a turn of phrase which pushes my buttons, "I know you didn't hang up on me." It's threatening, by itself, combined with the outright threat of swearing out a warrant for not showing up (I am curious as to what federal law the kid broke).

Now, there is one way I can see this being a legitimate call, If the kid had sworn in already and was supposed to ship out.

But the Army's response to this makes that look less likely. They've called a stand-down for all recruiting, nationwide. That doesn't happen for much. Calif. did one three or four years ago, because a unit was leaving Camp SLO to go home, and people forgot basic safety (such as seeing to it drivers were awake enough to drive. There are regulations about this. Eight hours of sleep in a night [things are different in combat zones, but not that much. At least fours hours in twenty-four was what we had, and that was in April 2003, by May, when it was local patrols, not unit movement required to perform the battalion's mission, we made it six. Minimum) which led to a rolled HUMMVEE, on Highway 1. A dead soldier is what it took to get the state to do a four-hour stand down for safety briefings. This is an entire day, nationwide, for recruiters).

I have a lot of thoughts on who ought to be signing up (I don't see Jonah Goldberg taking advantage of the raising of the upper age limit, then again, he says the cost; financially, would be too dear), but to threaten people? To coerce them? I don't want that in my army.

One link

I'd save this up and add it to whatever's in the pot for the next "Chain Links" (I keep a notepad file, with urls and notes. When it seems too big (and it usually is, I clip some... only to discover the rest of the world didn't notice them at the time. Like RealID), but I know the vast majority of the Blogoshpere won't read this because it's in a Livejournal.

So, for the couple of hundred of you whom I know to read this.

I've got a Revelation for you [a rant with foootnotes] from patgreene

She says it better than I have, and closes with one of my favorite verses.

More piddly stuff.

The city of Denver has lost it's mind.

It's a crime to be a pit-bull in Denver.

A capital crime.

Johnson: Pit-bull ban may reveal unwarranted prejudice

Johnson quotes a vet "Yes, I tell him, but aren't pit bulls actually the human flesh-ripping monsters they are portrayed to be?

Bill Suro snickers at my naivete.

"I've been a veterinarian for 45 years, and I've never once been attacked or bitten by a pit bull. There are other breeds where I have gone into an examination room and really been on my guard. I will not tell you which, but they scare me."

Cities like Denver, he says, whip up pit bull hysteria. And that is all it is, he said. People now all believe every pit bull "is a coiled and snarling attacker. It's nonsense...."

"Eighty percent all fatal attacks in the U.S. are caused by male dogs. I guess, given this, it would be prudent to now ban all breeds of male dogs."

Denver," he said, "does not at the same time send dogcatchers to cite owners of non-neutered dogs..."

"There appears a racial end of this," Bill Suro says.

"Look at the dogs that have been impounded, and the surnames of their owners. . . . They aren't killing dogs from Cherry Creek. They pick on the easiest people to pick on, the ones who give up easiest," he said, adding that he has forwarded this claim to the American Civil Liberties Union.

What happens, I ask, when all of the Denver pit bulls have been rounded up and put down?

He would not want to be a Malamute, he said.

A male Malamute attacked and killed a 7-year-old girl in Fruita last Saturday night.

"It is not the breed," an unsmiling Bill Suro said."

I don't live in Denver, so I don't know where the seizures are being made, but I do know a bit about dogs. I used to work at a vet. I own a pair of dogs. I have friends who own dogs. I've had friends who bred American Staffordshire Terriers (which is the breed name of "pit bulls".

Friends, who have a pit/sharpei mix (we think) has gone so far as to train her to never bite. They've had to pay vet bills when she scraps at the dog park. Not for the other dog, but to get her stitched up. She has never bitten anyone.

But I've been attacked by dobies, chihuahuas, and a husky. I've been scared by rottweilers, spaniels, dachshunds and pomeranians (little bundles of energy and teeth. Tear your toes off, they will :).

As the doctor says, it isn't the breed. More to the point, this problem is, more than many, a problem of the press. akirlu says most claims of pit-bull attacks are sloppy journalism. Dog attacks someone, the someone claims it was a pit-bull, the reporter accepts it as read. For details on the misreporting of dog attacks see Newspaper and Media Accounts of Dog Attacks

Most people don't know how to tell one breed from another. A basset hound and a beagle might as well be the same dog. Denver says the cops have been responding to, "They might have a pit-bull" calls.

How did we get to this. Where the presumption (and a capital presumption) is of guilt? Where, rather than see if the dog is aggressive to people (and there are some oddments about dogs. Inside a fence they will be ferocious, to anything on the outside. Outide the fence, they tend to be much more mellow. It's why dog parks work) the default is that not only are they, but they are so dangerous as to need to be exterminated.

For the years 2002-2003 there were 39 fatal dog attacks. In 2004 there were 22. So, for three years there were (drum roll maestro) 61 people killed by dogs.

For the past 40 years the number of fatal attacks per year has averaged about a dozen. Colorado, since 1965 has has nine.

Drunk drivers do more damage, and we can't even find the will to put them in jail for a year. But dogs (not all dogs, just those nasty pit-bulls) they have to be killed because they might attack someone.

Angels and Ministers of Grace.