chuck salutes uncle sam?

Really? Are you sure that's not just like ROTC or military school or somthing?

I still think I could teach someone the basics of marksmanship faster then the military.

I could definatly teach efficient unarmed combat faster.

I'd start my own insurgent school, but I wouldn't want anyone to go out and kill anyone, so thats out of the question.

Check this out.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/04/iraq.al.zarqawi/index.html

I could train terrorists so much better then that guy. And I'm 20. I don't know how that guy got to be a leader.

 

My dad actually refers to his single term in the USCG as "prison"...

 

its 16 im pretty sure

 

It depends whether hes referring to Zimbabwe or England

 

Okay. :H
The way I see it... so what if we went there based on lies? So what if the administration has other motives? Its the troops who are over there, not the administration... regardless of what the administration really wants the troops are, for the most part, trying to bring peace to Iraq and they have begun to do so with the ousting of Saddam. Anybody who believes that the Iraqis would be better off without him is insane, and anybody who believes that the troops should be pulled out now is more than heartless. If we were to pull out now the state of Iraq would fall to the insurgents who do not want a democratic government to rule the country, which would take the country down a bloody path to the next Saddam (how could a peaceful leader come to power through a bloody revolution?). Yes, American troops are dying, but if they didn't want to fight for freedom why would they have enlisted?
Even if you don't want there to be a war, there is one going on regardless of what you want. I'm not saying everyone should give up their personal feelings and conform to a single belief, but unlike Vietnam this war has a purpose, and unlike Vietnam we have already established a democratic government that needs our protection to survive.

I think that covers it...

You said that you hope I get shot in the face.

i'll have a giant cannon, but thats rather illegal...and i'd like to stay out of prison.

Call me crazy, but I'm fairly certain that because of my MOS (Cannon Crewmember) I will be going, and I'm kind of looking forward to it. I've talked with a few guys who've been to Iraq, they all seem fine and I knew before I talked with them that the situation in Iraq is not how its reported on the news.
I won't be on the frontlines, as Howitzers can fire their cannons and hit targets from 20 to 35 kilometres away. I don't think I'd really mind Infantry, though... more Americans die in car accidents each day than they get killed in Iraq.

I'm looking forward to that. :H
I don't want to sound like a crazy barbarian, but if you don't kill them they will kill you. I'll probably feel different after and if the situation ever occurs, but as of right now, I'm fairly certain I could do it (kill somebody/ies).

The Navy....I don't know if I'd enjoy living on a ship for months at a time. But the translator thing, that's awesome. That's what I originally wanted to do in the Army, but because of a pot conviction I have to serve 3 to 4 years to become eligible for a high-level security clearance. I scored high enough on the ASVAB (89) to get basically anything, but because of the pot I couldn't get anything that required a clearance. I don't mind though, I'm excited and I know this MOS will be very exciting. I plan on going to college after these 4 years and then maybe getting back in if I don't like civilian life. I want to take ROTC so I can get back in as an officer, maybe. But I really want to do the translating thing. Good luck with that.

By the way, you mentioned Special Forces... the age requirement for that is 21, and that's actually what I'm working towards (getting in shape for SF, I mean). I want to study Arabic languages while I'm in, which I would also want to be a translator for, but knowing even just one will help greatly with getting into SF. I just have to gain another 60 or 70 pounds of muscle.......ha.

 

What the troops are trying to do is not the issue, the issue is waht they are doing and being ordered to do. Obviously you didnt go to the links i posted earlier.

"Anybody who believes that the iraqis are better off without him are insane:" I'll ignore that and put that down to typing errors.

Its irrelevant whether or not we pull out noe because we will pull out anyway, the country has gone downhill over the last 3 years and shows no sign of improving.

How could a peaceful leader come to power througha bloody revolution?

Thats exactly true, I mean, your living in a country that was formed by a bloody revoltion and you sure as hell dont have a peaceful leader.:H

The the Majority ( not all by any means) of the troops may think they are fighting for freedom, but the truth is they are not achieving anything and the civilians are scared shitless of them.

Vietnam also had a purpose, to establish democracy and freedom and to stop the flow of Communism into south east asia. Ring a bell? You say we have already established a democratic government in Iraq, true, although most of the candidates pulled out, were killed and/or are religious. The Government in Iraq is basuically a puppet government with no power, much like in Afghanistan.

In vietnan we had established a democratic government in South Vietnam, which is what we were protecting. Your statement that we hadnt is compeltely false. We hadnt in North Vietnam, obviously, because they were the enemy. But we werent trying to conquer North Vietnam, merely protect the democratic government in South Vietnam. Note: The South Vietnamese government that we had installed was ruled by a dictator style leader who put all his family members into positions of power.

I find it weird that your looking forward to blowing people, and sometimes, Yes, it does happen, civilians to pieces, with your cannon. But this isnt going to be a personal attack so ill stay objective.

http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/{E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03}/hiddentoll91404.pdf

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUL20060122&articleId=1777

1/4 US soldiers returning from Gulf War one had Gulf War Sydrome!

Look at those pictures. Thats whats is being done. Those deformities are from this war. This Depelted uranium goes into the stratosphere aand travels are around the world.



You cant compare car accidents deaths to deaths in Iraq. http://www.slate.com/id/2111432/

I use that link to show the average figures of troops in Iraq as being
142 000. So saying infantry wouldnt bad froma d eaths point of view is ridiculous because there are 300 million people in the USA. Unless there are 300 times more deaths from car crashes you are more likely to die in iraq.

You say they will kill you if you dont kill them. That pure speculation. As the US led invasion has been shown to have created tons mor "terrorists" and you basically created the Insurgency. Think for a moment that you as "christians" have invaded their homeland and that theya re applying the same strategies to you. They think you will kill them if they dont kil lyou. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Think for a moment why these people hate you so much.

 

"So what?" Well, think about it. If the administration has other motives, what do you think they are? And if you know what they are, how can you be sure that a truly peaceful and democratic Iraq is in their interest? What makes you think that the Bush Admin isn't ENCOURAGING violence? How do you know that things aren't simply going according to plan? It's the same old CIA gameplan: destabilize, propagandize, overthrow, install... it's been done time and time again. Look, it's really simple to understand. Government superpowers don't take gigantic risks, spend loads and loads of cash, and sacrifice thousands of troops because they're bleeding hearts who just want everyone to be happy and free. Bullshit. It just doesn't work that way. Even the average idiot American is starting to understand this, and I thought you surely would have, Chuck. But I don't want to fight about it... but feel free to post more White House talking points.

 

There is no age requirment to be SF. There used to be a prerequisite of three years of military service, but they got rid of that because special forces are now becoming more usefull.

You do have to be infantry to get apply to go to special forces training school. To even get to go, you have to score in the maximum of regular boot camp PT scores.

You will have to run 2 miles in about 12 minutes, do 100 *proper* pushups in two minutes, and 100 situps in 2 minutes.

that's just to qualify to get into SF school mind you.

In special forces schools you'll get pretty rapidly increased to running 5 miles a day. The goal will probably be 25 minutes.

You'll swim about 2km which is over a mile about 3 days a week.

you'll do 300 pushups and maybe 400 situps in the morning PT.

About 100 pullups a day.

Arabic is one of the hardest languages to learn. You're not going to have time to learn it forward deployed. Nor will it help your chances much.

I was originally intending to go in as special forces medic. One of the many requirments is parachuting out of a plane under live under mortar fire, landing in pitch black in life fire, low crawling to a body (dummy) reparring it perfectly in less then ten minutes, and low crawling out of their with him which was like an 8th of a mile.

The requirments for special forces are unbelivably above average of a normal person. I'm not saying you can't do it, but you better prepare now.

I qualified highly enough on my to take the entry special forces Q test while I had bronchitis and a sprained ankle. My CO came over and asked me if I was on profile, and I said 'yes Sir'. he asked if I knew I could get an article 15 for breaking my medical profle. 'Yes Sir'. and he congradulated me for doing so well with bronchitis, and then my drill seargent came over and said I had also sprained my ankle. Then he made me a lot of pushups for breaking my profile. MY CO said he would reccomend me for Fort Bragg. (SF)

Learning a foreign language will not help your chances.

If things had worked out, I might have gone with that life style, But I'm not a killer. I love sport fighting, but I will never kill. I'm not swearing it, because I could see myself in a sitaution where there might be no alternative, but I won't take that lightly.

Are you getting in shape now? Like really in shape? 7 days a week cardio and anaerobics.

Focus on pushups sit ups and pullups, and running. Swimmings not bad if you find yours legs tiring to dast at first at first, but you've gotta at least start out running a mile in 7 minutes every day, and gradually increasing your distance and decreasing your time. By the time you leave for boot camp, you need to be able to due two in 14.

My advice is to focus mainly on arobics. Fuck weight lifting. Weight lifting will make you very strong and explosive if you do it properly, but if you do it wrong, like most body builders do, You'll put on a lot of mass and not much strength. This will make you slower. Speed is your ultimate asset as a warrior. Areboic exercises will also make you much more resilient which will be essential for even trying out for SF.

All you have to do to get in SF is complete basic as infantry, and then go to your SF testing. Sometimes they due airborne certification before that. You'll also neeed to score very well on the ASVAB, which you did, but you'll also need to be able to deal with a lot, and I mean a lot of pressure.

They're going to treat you like shit during your first few weeks at boot camp, to root out the weaker canidates. You can do everything perfect, and they'll fuck you up (m ake you do some kinda exercise) for doing it too well.

Don't get me wrong though, if you want to give special forces a try, I totally support that. Not only do I appreciate the intense conditioning, and mental discipline it takes to become a SF member, but special forces do missions that are quite different from regular infantry. A lot of infantry are guard members who got called up, have little training from recognising the good guys from the bad (they're mostly arabic in Iraq, and most of them are just people trying to go about their lives) SF have the intense trainining to properly seperate combatents from civilians.

They are also involved in much less morally grey area sorts of missions then regular infantry. Have no doubt that several incidents of large scale nuclear aquisition in soviet break away republics, that would have been sold to highest bidder, have been prevented thanks to the US Special Forces.

Green berets have also prevented nuclear war from spreading out during the Korean war, and the success of the 38th parallel. Now they're often involved into parachuting into areas where taliban based insurgents have taken controlled, neutralising the area of those horrible faciasts, and instituting the rule of law back into the break away territories. None of this makes the news, because every bit of it's classified.

If you're serious about this, I can help you come up with a training regiment tommorow. Don't be embaressed if you can't due that much right away, you're initial condition doesn't matter, persistance matters.

If you lived closer to me, I could help out a lot more.

Good luck with whatever you decide Chuck. But be prepared for it to be like nothing you've ever experienced before. It was less then a year ago that you we're calling me a faciast for saying there were some good reasons for the Iraq war. Nothing wrong with changing your mind, like I said, but if you're serious about SF, it will take more dedication the almost anyone is capable of.

Try your best. Talk to your recruiter about that age limit thing, because if he told you that, his info is outdated by several years.

And please consider it carefully. It's a major commitment, with major ramifications. This isn't something to due at the spur of the moment.

 

But you ignored the point. Hussein Personally killed 2 million Shia and Kurds, and more people were dying under UN sanctions then are dying now.

The country hasn't gone downhill, it's remained stagnant, largely because of the dismantling of the national guard. But hindsight. Things aren't going to improve in a year either. Is a thousand more american lives worth preventing a civil war that could kill hundreds of thousands in Iraq. Maybe so.

They we're scared shitless of Saddam too. At least our troops give out free candy, and rape rooms aren't common punishment for being of Kurdish ancestory.

The governments in Iraq and Afghanistan are completly differnt. Iraq's new government is marred by sectarian strife, and the inability to control borders where terrorists from Syria are crossing and blowing up hotels.

Afganistans government is a still based on brutal Islamic law, although not nearly as bad as the taliban, mainly because of the northern allience we used to help take over the country was supported by Iran and now many theocrats are in charge of the government.

Afghanistans quite a bit more peaceful, because foreign jihadists have made Iraq a staging ground, but in terms of government, Iraq has a much better system in progress, aside from problems with not pooling oil resources.

But I would argue that Iraq, even though much more violent then Afghanistan, may be a much greater success in a decade then Afghanistan. Their government is also much more independant of foreign control then Afghanistans.

And after we left, the Vietkong started violent ethnic cleansings of the south vietnamese, and led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Not exacly black and white.

I agree with you here.

DU has much less radiation then naturally occuring minerals, such as Iron, (which is an essential nutrient) the criteria for gulf war syndrome in these studies you sited, includes PTSD, which is absurd to blame on DU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_Uranium

The jury is very much still out on health defects from DU, and the majority scientific opinion is 'no'.

That is a complte misunderstanding of the insurgency. You can't claim we've created more terrorists. It's just more likely our soldiers have become more vulnerable to them because we're not seperated by a giant ocean.

I'd be willing to bet that most Iraqi's feel much more secure by US presence then Saddams national guard, which we're free to rape and pillage outside of Sunni dominated areas.

Moreover, the insurgency in Iraq is mainly an ethnic issue, between Shia and Sunni, for control of the Country. The Sunni feel very disenfranchised, because they had much more leverage under Saddams gang warlordship, and now they're finding themselves living in areas with relativly little oil reserves compared to the Shia.

Our presence is preventing a civil war, and the Shia and Sunni combatents hate us for preventing this.

Theres more to it then that, But most Muslisms see Christians as Muslims, who need to know more about the last prophet.

The people who really hate us in Iraq, are the remenants of Al Quaida, who have come to Iraq to wage holy war on US soldiers. Most of these types do target american troops, and are largely foreign.

To end this, we need more cooperation with Syria, and better control on the border with Syria and Iran. As for the Sectarian strife, I'm afraid theres not a whole lot we can due about that. But don't act like we're hitting a bee hive here, these are complex ethnic divisions which we're only brought together by hasty post great war intervention by the British.

Again, Hindsight.

I need some sleep.

 

i'm tired of people arguing politics all the time. which is odd since i love politics. i also love chuck. but for gods sake lets stop arguing. its not like anyone can stop chuck.

 

I'm not nessecarily trying to stop him. I was in a really bad place and joined the army. I neither regret or boast about it. I was hoping to help give him some perspective on what he's getting himself into.

Again, not trying to stop, just trying to give as much advice as I can, so maybe he'll look at other options. I'm not anti-military, I just wan't to give the guy the perspective of my experience.

 

if you're thinking of becoming an officer...get your college education, have fun doing that and fuck ROTC. just go to OCS. seriously, fuck ROTC, its a waste of time.

 

I didnt ignore the point. I wasnt exactly sure as to what he was saying because he had a few gramtical or typing errors. And in response to what i think he was trying to say is that, Yes i do believe Iraq is just as bad, or will be worse in the long run from the invasion

I stil lthink Iraq and Afghanistna are very similar situations but on different elvels.

The Us presence has created more "terrorists". Its allowed thousands of foreign extremists into IRaq to recruit. Im sure they have lots of volunteers, from people whos families and friends ahve been killed by US forces.

In my view, the war has led to greater feelings of tension in the West as well , between racial groups> This might not ahve reached the news in the states, but in Sydney Australia, a riot broke out in janurary or December, between Muslims Arabs and White "Pariot" "Aussies'

So it was lke Ali babas vc the Crocodile Hunter in a big punching and beating match with glass bottles and baseball bats.

Wow, i went off on a tangent there

You say rape rooms arent common, but do the words abu ghraib and guantanamo bay ring a bell. Proven cases of toture and abuse. i dont think links are neccesary.

Im rather confused about the wikipedia link about DU you gave. Scroll down to the Health section of it and its basically a backing stement for my arguments. Looks at the statistics and at the graphs.

There wasnt sectarian violence when Sadam was in power. Please dont think im trying to protect him or dumb down the things he did. But you cant really claim that US troops need to be to stop civil war, as a pro war argument. You are basically doing a job that sadam was already doing.

i didnt quite follow you with your reference to the post Great War intervention. All i know about that is that the British ( through Lawrence of Arabia) promised the arabians ( syrians, saudi arabians?)they're independence, but then the British High Command backstabbed him and them and took control of the region for a while...........


This is quite a refreshing discussion