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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (8114)	11/30/2000 6:22:15 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

how much of "this paranoia" is instinctive I left after 14 years total service, active and reserve. What spooked me most was the substandard quality of new recruits who were being pampered by a civilianized training regimen. When I was at the Defense Language school picking up Spanish, many of the students were new recruits who had just finished 8 weeks of basic training. They were some of the sloppiest troops I'd ever seen (and I'm no neat freak, nor a crewcut military lifer, mind you). The largest majority of them informed that they had NOT been required to shine their boots, press their uniforms, or know all of their basic soldiering skills like saluting, general orders, etc, etc... But what shocked me most was when one female recruit informed me that all recruits had been handed "stress cards" which they were permitted to give to their drill sergeants when they couldn't "take it" anymore. If they handed the card to their instructor, he was forbidden to harass or yell at the recruit, or employ any form of negative reinforcement for 10-20 minutes. I started wondering what would happen if some of these troopies started handing me a stress card while we're in a combat situation and on the receiving end of an enemy attack. "Can I be excused from this battle for 10 minutes please?" Yeah.. I got out.. and a lot of good people I served with did the very same thing because the BS factor was just getting far too high. And it's all because of this administration. I don't say that due to partisanship, nor do I say it lightly... It is DIRECTLY DUE to the policies that have been forced upon the armed services in some kind of social engineering attempt to turn combat soldiers into some form of uniformed government employees. Regards, Ron