IRAQ IS A DISASTER

[villain]

Originally posted by CILONE/SK

That conscientious objector shit does work, the only reason it doesn't work is when you pull it a few days before you deploy. In fact kabar said he did it back in the day and they put him in some hospital unit.

 

I don't mind talking about this, but villian doesn't know what he is talking about. If he doesn't like the Army, then maybe he is one of those guys who needs to get kicked in the head for joining the military for a fucked up reason.

 

Villian, I am a SFC and have been in 10 Years and the only reason I am in this unit is because I was in 2nd Brigade, 82d Airborne Division for so many years. This is my break from that and it is not TRADOC(they send people here for a break from hard duty, my replacement just got here and he was deployed over there for over a year) and in 3 months I am going overseas to another Airborne unit. I am very lucky that I got sent here before the war and only an iddiot would want to go to war. So stay in your hospital and give shots and whatever else you poogs do there and I will go to an Airborne unit and do what I told the Army I would do when I signed my contract.

 

As for people who go AWOL because they don't want to go to war, They are cowards. I will repeat:

 

"No matter if someone thinks that the government is doing the wrong thing and that they don't trust the president, It really doesn't matter, because one great thing about this war is that there is not one person in the military that was drafted and they all volunteered to be right where they are at. If they were so stupid to join the military and not realize that the whole purpose of the military is to fight a war, then they need a kick in their head."

 

With that said, since you are at walter reed and see the people who have problems, I have more respect for them because at least they didn't run and they attempted to do their job and fufill their commitment. The cowards that run and hide are not even comparable to those guys, they are cowards that want the Army to give them college money or whatever else and when the Army wants their part of the deal they run and hide, fucking bitches.

 

Kabar, I usually agree with you, but the military is a different place from when you were in and your are out of touch with todays military to include marines. It is a completely different place from when I joined ten years ago.

 

Well I'm very sorry to hear that you'll be sent over to that shithole, especially at a time like this. I might see you there. And I'm not a pogue. I went to airbourne school. I was willing to do all this for my country. I just didn't expect to be taken advantage of like this. I was on profile. I've been injured. I'm in psyche. I'm cleared for a return to duty. I can admire you guy's commitment and loyalty and sense of duty and all that but really I honestly don't think this administration deserves that. They are taking full advantage over our very lives...

 

I'm sure there are conscientious objectors who actually got it to work. I meant it's probably just a very special case... or maybe it's exemplary. What I'm saying is that it doesn't work very often... because if it did half our troops would be doing it no doubt.

 

I didn't join the military to fight just any war. Or war for special interests. I guess there's no such thing as a good war, but for sure we haven't had a good war since WWII. I guess that's why they called it "The Good War" and "The Greatest Generation". Because after that america decided to get involved in international affairs and everything got all kinds of fucked up. We haven't had a good war since I don't think. Perhaps Bosnia but that was only a police action. Which is also what afghanistan and even iraq could have been. But noooo... bush wanted all out fucking war. He wanted to prove to the world that he is a badass idiot. And now we are up shits creek. We've got al queda whom we've driven underground and failed to cooperate and coodinate with the warlords and bring peace and stability to the region. We've got iraq where we did shock and awe and proceeded to blow the living shit out of the infrastructure of iraq and stormed in our entire fucking army just to remove ONE FUCKING MAN!?! Oh and now they are fucking liberated iraqis but they are fucking starving and without power and security and so we've made ourselves more and more enemies because they realized we are full of shit and our leader is a fucking pogue! I have for one actually read the guerilla tactics FM and countless supplementaries and I can tell you for sure, and I reiterate, that you will not ever stop an insurgency force within your host nation unless you have popular support by providing for the basic needs, security and means of advancement for the average person. It says this in our handbook, the culmination of years of research and real world experience written by the best authors on the subject matter. And we have broken about every rule in there for a successful counter-insurgency operation. It's no wonder things are getting more fucked up! And I've thought of many ways the iraqis could now bring decisive defeat over us but I'm not even going to say it because they have kidnapped aid workers and stuff and that sucks goat balls. And there might be an al queda terrorist hiding under my bed so I'm afraid to even say it aloud. Why do people always kidnap priests and aid workers? Happens all over the world all the time. Noone ever does anything for them. It's just a really sad story in a small section in the back of the newspapers. This war fucking sucks in so many ways. And our leader is an idiot.

 

I WILL REITERATE! QUIT RADICALIZING IRAQIS. REESTABLISH RELATIONS OF TRUST AND COOPERATION.

 

Those four civilians who were killed were mercenaries for Blackwater Security according to reports I've read. Just about everyone has it twisted. So much propaganda.

[metallix]

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[metallix]

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[!@#$%]

the u.s. is apparently also employing ex-apartheid era south african mercenaries to train th enew iraqi security force..

that is also in violation of south africa's laws about mercenaries for hire.

 

wtf.

 

 

 

...and from www.thenation.com

 

'a deserter speaks'

 

 

The young man across the table looks sad, but not as stressed as one might expect from a US Army deserter. Camilo Mejia served with a unit that crossed into Iraq just after the invasion and then, for five months, fought in the counterinsurgency war in the Sunni Triangle, where he says he was in firefights, killed people, almost got killed, helped torture prisoners and finally had his life saved by a small-scale mutiny. Now he is a declared conscientious objector who spent five months absent without leave, facing the wrath of US military justice.

 

In October, when he was home on furlough, Mejia decided to ditch the killing and chaos of Iraq. Although the military never officially charged Mejia with desertion, he spent the rest of the autumn and winter living like a fugitive, never using cell phones, credit cards or the Internet for fear of being busted. He was frequently on the move and survived on the good will of friends.

 

There are dozens of other soldiers who have refused to show up for their deployments, but the military doesn't pursue most of them and usually releases them from service without too much fuss. Most AWOL soldiers don't even get tracked down. However, if a soldier goes public to make a political point, the military response can be severe.

 

"This is an immoral, unjust and illegal war," says Mejia. "The whole thing is based on lies. There are no weapons of mass destruction, and there was no link with terrorism. It's about oil, reconstruction contracts and controlling the Middle East." Like many US troops, Mejia is a recent immigrant, but unlike many he is from a left-leaning bohemian family; his father is an internationally famous Nicaraguan musician, Carlos Mejia Godoy, and his mother was active with radical movements in the 1980s. Mejia, however, says he used to be apolitical. When he moved to the United States as a young adult, he joined the military "to become an American and know the culture."

 

Just before Mejia's eight years of service were up, he found himself in Iraq. "After the war people were cheering, but within a week or two they were asking when we were going to leave and getting angry. And then it became clear that nothing was getting reconstructed, people's lives weren't getting better. We had all these deadlines, for setting up the police, getting the power back on, whatever, and nothing ever got done, nothing changed or got better," Mejia explains. "And then the resistance started."

 

To make matters worse, Mejia found his officers to be glory-obsessed and intentionally reckless with the safety of their men. In particular, he says, they wanted the Army's much-coveted Combat Infantry Badge--an award bestowed only on those who have met and engaged the enemy. "To be a twenty-year career infantry officer and not have your CIB is like being a chef and having never cooked or being a fireman and never having put out a fire," Mejia says. "These guys were really hungry, and we were the bait."

 

In one attempt to draw enemy fire, Mejia's company--about 120 guys divided evenly into four platoons--was ordered to occupy key intersections in Ramadi, a notoriously violent Iraqi city, for several days running. "All the guys were really nervous. This was a total violation of standard operating procedure. They train you to keep moving, not sit in the open." Finally the enemy attacked, and a platoon in Mejia's company took casualties.

 

When the troops were ordered to perform the exact same maneuvers again, Mejia refused. "I told them, I quit." Luckily for him the four staff sergeants of the platoon that had taken casualties also refused to go out. Technically, refusing an order in a combat situation can be charged as mutiny. But in a tense meeting with their commanding officer, the staff sergeants negotiated a new plan of action that allowed the GIs to vary the timing and movement of their patrols. After these changes, Mejia agreed to go. "We went out two hours earlier than usual, and because of that we caught these young guys setting an IED (improvised explosive device) of three mortars wrapped together." If Mejia's squad had set out according the Commanding Officers' original plan, he believes that some of the guys in his squad would have been killed. For its part, the Florida National Guard claims that Mejia was a bad sergeant and that he was not aggressive enough in engaging what all admit is a highly elusive enemy.

 

Spc. Oliver Perez, who served with Mejia, disagrees. "I fought next to him in many battles. He is not a coward," said Perez, who has also said he will testify on Mejia's behalf if the Army proceeds with a court-martial.

 

During another assignment, Mejia's company ran a detention camp. "They didn't call it a POW camp because it didn't meet Red Cross standards," he explains. There, intelligence officers ordered Mejia's squad to psychologically torture three suspected resistance fighters. The hooded and bound prisoners were placed in isolation, intimidated with mock executions and forced to stay awake for days at a time. "We had one guy lose his mind. He was locked in a little metal closet that we'd bang with a sledgehammer every five minutes to keep him up. He started crying and begging to lie down." When asked how the prisoners were fed and given water, Mejia stares off into space for a moment, and then says, "I don't remember how we fed them."

 

This soft-spoken young man has plenty of other bad stories to tell. There's the time his squad killed a civilian who ran a checkpoint; the time they shot a demonstrator. There's the officer who forged orders so he could get his unit into combat, and the other officer who broke his own ankle to get out of combat. There is the father who wasn't allowed temporary leave even though his young daughter had been raped. And there is the GI who took shrapnel in the head and now can't talk, can't recognize his family and wakes up in the middle of the night confused and sobbing.

 

Given the politics of the military, it is unlikely that Mejia's serious allegations about the conduct of his superiors will be investigated, let alone prosecuted, while his own decision of conscience could be treated as a criminal matter. "I'd rather do the five to ten years in prison for desertion than kill a child by mistake," says Mejia. "When you are getting shot at, you shoot back. It doesn't matter if there are civilians around. Prison ends, but you never get over killing a kid."

 

So far this war has produced only a few AWOL convictions and one high-profile asylum case in Canada. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman of the 82nd Airborne is seeking refuge north of the border on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector. Marine Reserve Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk also went AWOL and claimed conscientious objector status this past April. Funk was convicted of being away without leave, demoted, forfeited two-thirds of his pay, received a bad-conduct discharge and sent to the brig for six months. Mejia, who turned himself in at a press conference on March 15, faces five to ten years in prison. Currently Mejia is in Florida with the National Guard, awaiting administrative dismissal as a recognized conscientious objector or criminal prosecution as a deserter.

[metallix]

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[metallix]

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[metallix]

http://63.247.85.218/~uncover/escalade.jpg'>

[!@#$%]

the u.s. army has always taken full advantage

 

have you guys forgotten?

this is the same army who admitted a few years ago to testing nuclear waepons on OUR OWN TROOPS..

fucking unreal..

they have released documents about this due to the 'freedom of information act'

 

it was a really big scandal about ten years ago..

 

this is the same army that won't support it's vietnam vets (how many of these guys are deperate or homeless?!)

 

or even the first gulf war vets...

they deny that there is even such a thing as gulf-war-syndrome

 

the army doesn't give a fuck about anyone.

it is an institution designed for self-preservation at any expense.

 

desert!

desert!

dessert!

yumm!

[villain]

Originally posted by CILONE/SK

I just can't understand why you are still in the Army, didn't you join in 2001 and you are already this bitter. Why are you in the psych ward?

 

 

Blackwater security is a cover for CIA shit.

 

I've always aged fast... I don't really want to talk about why I'm here because it was very traumatic and personal.

 

 

 

A cover... well it doesn't surprise me.

[villain]

Originally posted by !@#$%

the u.s. is apparently also employing ex-apartheid era south african mercenaries to train th enew iraqi security force..

that is also in violation of south africa's laws about mercenaries for hire.

 

I've heard something about this....somewhere....

 

So far this war has produced only a few AWOL convictions and one high-profile asylum case in Canada. Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman of the 82nd Airborne is seeking refuge north of the border on the grounds that he is a conscientious objector. Marine Reserve Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk also went AWOL and claimed conscientious objector status this past April. Funk was convicted of being away without leave, demoted, forfeited two-thirds of his pay, received a bad-conduct discharge and sent to the brig for six months. Mejia, who turned himself in at a press conference on March 15, faces five to ten years in prison. Currently Mejia is in Florida with the National Guard, awaiting administrative dismissal as a recognized conscientious objector or criminal prosecution as a deserter.

 

 

I KNOW this is a crock of shit.... I spent two months in a Personell Control Facility in Fort Sill, the same time we were shredding those halliburton reciepts for the man that I mentioned in a past thread. While I was there we got at least 10 people for AWOL a week. It's true they don't really pursue you though.

[villain]

Originally posted by CILONE/SK

email me

 

Okay yo... just gimme a moment...

[villain]

Re: the u.s. army has always taken full advantage

 

Originally posted by !@#$%

have you guys forgotten?

this is the same army who admitted a few years ago to testing nuclear waepons on OUR OWN TROOPS..

fucking unreal..

they have released documents about this due to the 'freedom of information act'

 

it was a really big scandal about ten years ago..

 

this is the same army that won't support it's vietnam vets (how many of these guys are deperate or homeless?!)

 

or even the first gulf war vets...

they deny that there is even such a thing as gulf-war-syndrome

 

the army doesn't give a fuck about anyone.

it is an institution designed for self-preservation at any expense.

 

desert!

desert!

dessert!

yumm!

 

I also heard about some experiment they carried out on a ship... wtf? The troops didn't find out until like 20 years later.

 

They finally came out with what gulf war syndrome is about a week after gulf war 2 started. When the airforce bombed bunkers there they destroyed stockpiles of chemical weapons. When the troops marched in they were marched by these smoking bunkers unwittingly inhaling the chemicals. I have an almost complete list of all the locations that were bombed where chemical weapons were stored if anyone here is interested in that. I don't know if anyone here was in desert storm though.

 

And of course we've all heard of agent orange...

[villain]

Yeah that's what I meant, I was in a PCF with Deserters, not AWOL soldiers. AWOLers get sent back to their units.

 

Cilone: It's not like you can take a course in being awol... how are you supposed to research it?!

[villain]

http://img27.photobucket.com/albums/v82/agentarcana/copingfinalpt1.jpg'>

 

 

This is part of the article in the army times about stress in the combat zone. Suicides as well. I know when I was at the hospital I broke up at least two fights and prevented one suicide.

[villain]

Originally posted by CILONE/SK

Alright sucka, there isn't a course, but it took me less then 5 minutes to comes up with all the Army's gudelines for both conscientious obejection, AWOL, and desertion.

 

Check out the following regs:

AR 600-43 Conscientious Objection

AR 630-10 AWOL and Desertion

 

If these dumbass did a little research and didn't just run and hide like little bitches, they would be better off.

 

Where can I find the regs online? Do you know? I'm not a drill sergeant so I don't go carrying ARs around with me. I've been wondering about this for some time.

 

I heard that deserters can be executed in a time of war.

 

 

Ok if I can figure out how to check email on here....

 

Hmm... it says I have no private messages. I sent you an email a while ago. Did you get it?

[villain]

Damn that would be phat.... Well I tried to email you... I clicked that button that says "email" on the bottom of the posts and the "click here to email cilone/sk"... Ok I'll give it a try again.

[Guest BROWNer]

obviously i won't see eye to eye with you on this guy

buggin' out. i can understand the principle to an extent,

my problem is where you can stand back and lash out

at somebody you don't know much about, in a situation

you don't know much about, and all the varying degrees

of complexity that situation entails. i would never

purport to understand how one becomes suicidal and

kills themselves, then turn around and call them a selfish

sucker or some shit. maybe a bad analogy, but both are

large, complex situations where your fighting for you

mind. for all you know, dude was

at his wits end...so should he just lose his own fucking

mind? without that you're a goner.

 

i'm also curious..

i'm aware of alot of people joining the army and whatnot,

who are very young and impressionable, some older still,

and realizing that the promises made to them by recruiters

was a crock of shit. some of them are even willing to get

shipped out to the front lines and that's what they signed

up for, and for some reason it doesn't happen and life

in the army becomes a depressing limbo that they are

not allowed to get out of...how does this work? how are

you not allowed to leave if you are truly miserable?

what are the circumstances for these scenarios?

also, cilone, you've been in for 10years, so you obviously

have a different view of things now, but how informed

were you when you joined? was it something you had

been surrounded by your whole life, or were you always

going to join???

i think your take on people getting recruited and not knowing

enough about it is perfect hindsight. most 18yr olds are not

mentally on point enough to have your perspective, usually

they would be at a point where they are not sure what to do,

and the army is an option for advancing themselves. i don't

know how many people join the army primarily to fight.

i'd be interested to see stats on that, i would think most

people join for the benefits. at the same time, you would

think people would be able to see that joining

the most active military in the world would almost certainly

entail combat during their time..

[Guest BROWNer]

40% of presidency a vacation

 

the daily outrage from the nation:

 

A "war-time president" wouldn't skip town just as the combat situation soured.

 

Which must by why George W. Bush has skipped town.

 

Yes, he's taken another unearned vacation down in Texas, where he's been showing off his expansive ranch to representatives of the National Rifle Association and other "sporting aficionados and conservation groups."

 

Now, why true sportsmen would have any interest in the anti-Teddy Roosevelt -- the President who's weakened protections on as much land as Roosevelt set aside, and whose shootin'-fish-in-a-barrel sidekick is Dick Cheney -- is beyond me.

 

But it's good to know that George W. Bush has found time for a 500th vacation day, even as the ever-rising American death toll in Iraq reaches 628. (For all of you shrill semantic hair-splitters out there who divide war zone sacrifices into those that count and those that don't, the toll of Americans killed in full-on combat action stands, at this writing, at 455. It's no doubt rising even as I type this.)

 

And yet Bring 'Em On Bush is taking it manfully in stride. As The Washington Post reports, "This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office ... Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency."

 

That includes a month-long kick-back in August 2001 that was the longest presidential vacation in 32 years.

 

Forty percent of his presidency! That's the equivalent of taking paid leave off from Jan. 1 to May 24. Must be nice. But it sure does cast a harsh new light on this Administration's anti-weekend drive to scale back overtime pay.

[WhiteOx]

HOW IS IRAQ A DISASTER??

BECAUSE LIVES AND FUNDS ARE STILL BEING POURED INTO IT WITH NO CLEAR RETURN AFTER THE WAR HAD ENDED?

THATS WHAT WARS ARE, NO ONE WOULD HAVE EXPECTED DIFFERENT, ITS THE IRREVERSIBLE PRICE YOU PAY FOR RIDDING A COUNTRY OF AN AUTHORITIRIAN REGIME, TO PULL OUT NOW WOULD MAKE THE SURVIVING IRAQIES HATE THE WEST EVEN MORE

[WhiteOx]

Re: seeks ..

 

Originally posted by !@#$%

yeah, exactly what i was thinking.

if it was fundamentalist muslims running the world

instead of fundamentalist christians

and iraq invaded the u.s. because they weren't down with the way our leadership rolled..

 

 

A) westerern governments are not run by fundementalist christians

B) the american govt. has no problems with countless non-cristian countries.

B) American invaded iraq to rid it of the rule of a war mongering, pysocitic, murderous, atrocity-committing dictator. not because they were fucking muslims

 

GROW UP YOU NARROW MIND SELFISH CHILDREN

[villain]

Well BROWNer alot of people enlist at the ripe young age of 18 or even younger and are very impressionable and not sure what they are getting into. So you are right on that count.

 

Probably why alot of these kids who are anxious to go to a warzone is because there is the machismo factor. The only ones who are excited to go to a warzone are the ones who are most unfamiliar with war. Then again some of these kids are just nutbars... But hey that's great for the army. So the funny result is that the most experienced soldiers are the least excited to go. They have been there and realized that there is nothing glamorous in death and they don't have the adolescent attitude of having something to prove. Then again we have old soldiers who have become very efficient killers. Probably one of the most impressive displays of skill I have witnessed is this one time i was on a training exercise and me and my battle buddy were in the prone position facing the edge of a road as guards.... so this old sergeant comes up to check up with us and we give him the green... So we are doing our thing and then we look back like maybe a minute later and he is gone! Well the wierd thing is that there was 100m of deep water all behind us. We should have heard him sloshing around. He is a fucking ninja.

Now that is REAL AWESOME POWER! :dazed:

[villain]

Re: Re: seeks ..

 

Originally posted by WhiteOx

A) westerern governments are not run by fundementalist christians

B) the american govt. has no problems with countless non-cristian countries.

B) American invaded iraq to rid it of the rule of a war mongering, pysocitic, murderous, atrocity-committing dictator. not because they were fucking muslims

 

GROW UP YOU NARROW MIND SELFISH CHILDREN

 

A) You obviously know nothing of the bush administration.

B) Because it is strategically or financially beneficial to us.

B?) Well thanks for the information oh wise one!

 

Aren't you from australia? Then what do you know about america? Or anything for that matter? Have you read anything in this thread or the countless other threads on these subjects at all?

 

SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LAME LAYMAN HOLIER THAN THOU YOU KNOW JACK SHIT!

[WhiteOx]

-no i wasnt bothered to read the whole thread, 100% one-sided preaching

[villain]

One sided my ass... I never shut down anyone presenting facts. You have nothing to back your bold statements and on top of that you were rude and offensive which is another sign of not having a valid argument, thus resorting to violence. So I would suggest to you is that instead of picking fights with the wrong people where you (should) know you will lose why don't you go and find the truth for youself. These threads are riddled with facts. Your words flag and faulter... One sided preaching. I guess your one fucking post in here of absolute ignorant bullshit is supposed to outweigh hundreds of well thought out ideas. Just shut up.

[TheoHuxtable]

Originally posted by CILONE/SK

I found out something really interesting that I should have known yesterday. The civilians that got killed and hung from that bridge were CIA. It makes me wonder that if these guys were doing missions over there, are they still technically civilians? It is easy for the media to say civilians were killed and make america think that innocent people died, but these guys were more then likely fucking up alot of shit over there.

 

Civilians are simply anybody that is non-military. Even if they work for the government. Postal workers, CIA, FBI, police officers, etc... Bush is in charge of the military but he's technically a civilian.

[TheoHuxtable]

Re: the u.s. army has always taken full advantage

 

Originally posted by !@#$%

have you guys forgotten?

this is the same army who admitted a few years ago to testing nuclear waepons on OUR OWN TROOPS..

 

Nuclear or biological?

[Poop Man Bob]

Originally posted by villain

One sided my ass... I never shut down anyone presenting facts. You have nothing to back your bold statements and on top of that you were rude and offensive which is another sign of not having a valid argument, thus resorting to violence. So I would suggest to you is that instead of picking fights with the wrong people where you (should) know you will lose why don't you go and find the truth for youself. These threads are riddled with facts. Your words flag and faulter... One sided preaching. I guess your one fucking post in here of absolute ignorant bullshit is supposed to outweigh hundreds of well thought out ideas. Just shut up.

 

I second this.

[metallix]

Originally posted by WhiteOx

-no i wasnt bothered to read the whole thread, 100% one-sided preaching

http://www.design-concepts.co.uk/trails/images/ignorant.jpg'>

[KaBar2]

CICLONE

 

The Sixties were a very polarized period in American history, somewhat like the period before the Civil War. The Vietnam War was the elephant in the living room, and everybody had to pick a side. I knew very, very few people my age who had not chosen one side or the other. By and large, everybody I knew was adamantly against the war, and I was too.

 

The first time I attempted to apply for conscientious objector status, I was 18, but still in high school. They turned me down, because a 2-S deferment outranked a C.O. deferment. I was very young, and passionately believed that war was morally wrong, etc., etc. I would have made an incredibly poor soldier at age 18. After I graduated from high school (1969) the anti-war movement was in full swing. Massive demonstrations, student strikes at colleges and universities, etc. Everywhere I looked I was getting messages from people my age that I was right. I became so radicalized, I became an anarchist.

 

When I was summoned to the Draft Board, I felt sure I would be sent to prison. Not knowing anything about prison, somehow I imagined being locked up all by myself in a cage, sort of like solitary confinement. The Draft Board people were all adults, of course, and knew a lot more about what I was doing than I did. I had written out my petition for C.O. status, bolstered it with arguments cribbed from my church, the Unitarian-Universalist Association (this is a real church--Emerson was a Unitarian and so was Thomas Jefferson) and had resolved to tell them that they could send me to Federal prison, but that I would NOT go to Vietnam.

Since I was a civilian, this was less of a problem than I imagined (the Draft Board wasn't any happier about sending young men off to Vietnam than I was about possibly being sent off) and they sent me to work for twenty-four consectutive months in a civilian rehabilitation hospital. We had some military patients, but they were mostly civilians, injured in car and motorcycle wrecks, victims of armed robbery gunshot wounds, etc.

Actually, I was very relieved that they sent me to the hospital. At age 18.

 

But when I got finished with my "alternative service" I was increasingly unhappy about it. Everybody had to choose a side. I started feeling like maybe I had chosen wrong.

 

So--before my 26th birthday (the cut-off age) I enlisted in the Marine Corps and insisted upon infantry. They sent me to Boot Camp, then to the U.S. Army Chemical & Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD, to be trained as a weapons repairman. I served in an infantry battalion as a company armorer and then a battalion armorer. I served in the Marine Reserves when I got out, then in the National Guard.

And then, in the Texas militia.

 

I guess I've done my military service, but somehow it still doesn't make up for choosing wrongly when it really counted. If they would let me, I'd go to Iraq.

 

I have several friends that are Vietnam veterans, and a neighbor that was a Vietnam War POW for six years. He was a Marine too, wounded and captured on a ground patrol outside the wire at Khe Sanh, at age eighteen. His high school sweetheart waited for him the whole six years, and they were married when he returned. Still are. They live down the street, nicest guy you ever met, except he's a Democrat, LOL.

[TheoHuxtable]

Re: CICLONE

 

Originally posted by KaBar2

The Sixties were a very polarized period in American history, somewhat like the period before the Civil War. The Vietnam War was the elephant in the living room, and everybody had to pick a side. I knew very, very few people my age who had not chosen one side or the other. By and large, everybody I knew was adamantly against the war, and I was too.

 

The first time I attempted to apply for conscientious objector status, I was 18, but still in high school. They turned me down, because a 2-S deferment outranked a C.O. deferment. I was very young, and passionately believed that war was morally wrong, etc., etc. I would have made an incredibly poor soldier at age 18. After I graduated from high school (1969) the anti-war movement was in full swing. Massive demonstrations, student strikes at colleges and universities, etc. Everywhere I looked I was getting messages from people my age that I was right. I became so radicalized, I became an anarchist.

 

When I was summoned to the Draft Board, I felt sure I would be sent to prison. Not knowing anything about prison, somehow I imagined being locked up all by myself in a cage, sort of like solitary confinement. The Draft Board people were all adults, of course, and knew a lot more about what I was doing than I did. I had written out my petition for C.O. status, bolstered it with arguments cribbed from my church, the Unitarian-Universalist Association (this is a real church--Emerson was a Unitarian and so was Thomas Jefferson) and has resolved to tell them that they could send me to Federal prison, but that I would NOT go to Vietnam.

Since I was a civilian, this was less of a problem than I imagined (the Draft Board wasn't any happier about sending young men off to Vietnam than I was about possibly being sent off) and they sent me to work for twenty-four consectutive months in a civilian rehabilitation hospital. We had some military patients, but they were mostly civilians, injured in car and motorcycle wrecks, victims of armed robbery gunshot wounds, etc.

Actually, I was very relieved that they sent me to the hospital. At age 18.

 

But when I got finished with my "alternative service" I was increasingly unhappy about it. Everybody had to choose a side. I started feeling like maybe I had chosen wrong.

 

So--before my 26th birthday (the cut-off age) I enlisted in the Marine Corps and insisted upon infantry. They sent me to Boot Camp, then to the U.S. Army Chemical & Ordnance School at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD, to be trained as a weapons repairman. I served in an infantry battalion as a company armorer and then a battalion armorer. I served in the Marine Reserves when I got out, then in the National Guard.

And then, in the Texas militia.

 

I guess I've done my military service, but somehow it still doesn't make up for choosing wrongly when it really counted. If they would let me, I'd go to Iraq.

 

I have several friends that are Vietnam veterans, and a neighbor that was a Vietnam War POW for six years. He was a Marine too, wounded and captured on a ground patrol outside the wire at Khe Sanh, at age eighteen. His high school sweetheart waited for him the whole six years, and they were married when he returned. Still are. They live down the street, nicest guy you ever met, except he's a Democrat, LOL.

 

Damn, interesting story KaBar. Also I can't believe you're only a few years younger than my dad. Which brings me to the question; what is your relation to graffiti culture? It seems like the culture would've just missed your generation, especially since you're from Houston since it took a while from graff to move from NY to other cities.