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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (181385)	1/22/2004 6:32:59 PM
From: hmaly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574096

John Re...Of course, like anyone that joins the military, draftees go through training. You must not have been around for Vietnam, eh? If that is what you meant, then why this statement? On the pragmatic side, if there was a significant chance that you might have to spend the next year of your life in Iraq figuring a way to survive, intact; well it brings home the reality of the sacrifice of the war. Just what makes you think our experienced military commanders and men are out there in Iraq are trying to figure out a way to survive. A good professionally trained soldier,knows very well what to do, and how to survive. It is the rookies, out there on there on their first few missions who fear survival. Seasoned veterans probably very seldom think about it. Let me put it this way. How many NASCAR drivers are out there on any given Sat. or Sunday racing. 50 maybe. And how many NASCAR drivers die from crashes each yr. 1 maybe. If you divide that into 50, their death percentage rate is 2%. In Iraq, we have 120,000 soldiers. Last yr, about 500 died, which is .0042%. That is one fith the rate Nascar drivers die in their profession. Shouldn't the average NASCAR driver be 5 times as concerned about their survivial. Do you really think, survival is all the drivers think about while driving. Ill bet you a hundred bucks, the average smoker losses more yrs off his life, than the average US serviceman loses from combat deaths. Is it tragic that 500 men lost their life in Iraq, yes. It was far more tragic that over 100,000 people died from smoking related causes last yr. It is not that I mean to trivialize 500 deaths. It is that they must be put in perspective. We have over a mil men in arms today. The most capable, professional soldiers in the world. To describe them as being in survival mode is ridiculous. It was Saddam and OBL and their ilk who were in survival mode. As to a "dumbed down" military, you've got to figure that with a cross section of US citizens, you would get a smartened up military on average. Throwing more barbs at the military I see. After reading you ideas about putting draftees in combat, I don't think you should be calling anybody else dumb. What are you talking about, I don't know anything about Michigan entrance exams? Ask Ted and Al. Dumbing down entrance exams is their preferred method of getting African Americans into college. Not the poor, but I agree on the seniors. I think they should pay something for every doctor visit, which isn't true today. But that's a another subject, not remotely related to the draft. It's pretty strange that you brought it up in your post. I bought it up because your theory is that, the more something costs, the more people would avoid it. If a parent is worried about his son dying in combat, he wouldn't vote for Bush. By the same token, the more a person paid for the health services he got, the more he would do to avoid unnecessary medical treatment; and that would lower the budget deficit, far more than taxing the rich, and letting the poor and senior citizens demand all the free health services they can get.