Jump to content

American Military Everywhere


Guest
 Share

Recommended Posts

Specialist, remarkably cogent reply. :up:

 

Also there was a Secret War wherein Laos got the shit bombed out of it.

 

 

And.....

 

 

 

 

 

Coss, read this one. I loaned my copy to a Lao refugee (now an Aussie) and never saw it again. Interesting book by a participant. It tells of his own experiences in the PDJ. (Some of the reviewers slam it for that, since they expected a boring academic study.)

 

http://www.amazon.co...l/dp/155750668X

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks

 

BTW there's so much American metal lying around here, that it's used to make things, like the slimmer bombs are fence posts, dropped fuel tanks become canoes.

 

I even saw a baby cradle made from half a bomb shell, not to mention home made spoons from aluminium that was delivered from the sky.

 

One of the reasons there's so few elephants here anymore, is that they were used extensively in the supply routes, and what do we do with supply routes? Bomb and strafe them. Shame really, the elephants are apolitical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert McNamara, one of the chief architects of the Vietnam war and US foreign policy at the time has a handful of dialogs published on his regret and hindsight. A few of my favorites (which have obviously been ignored - to our detriment - the past decade):

 

- We [the U.S.A.] are the most powerful nation in the world—economically, politically, and militarily—and we are likely to remain so for decades ahead. But we are not omniscient. If we cannot persuade other nations with similar interests and similar values of the merits of the proposed use of that power, we should not proceed unilaterally except in the unlikely requirement to defend directly the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii.

 

- Moral principles are often ambiguous guides to foreign policy and defense policy, but surely we can agree that we should establish as a major goal of U.S. foreign policy and, indeed, of foreign policy across the globe: the avoidance, in this century of the carnage—160 million dead—caused by conflict in the 20th century.

 

- We, the richest nation in the world, have failed in our responsibility to our own poor and to the disadvantaged across the world to help them advance their welfare in the most fundamental terms of nutrition, literacy, health and employment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

McNamara pissed off a lot of VN vets when he eventually admitted he hadn't think the US should have become involved in Vietnam's civil war, but he had to support "his president". So one of the men most responsible for sending us off to fight and die really didn't think we should be sent there. Wonderful. :(

 

 

p.s. Are you familiar with Project 100,000?

 

<< Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 to meet the escalating manpower requirements during American involvement in the Vietnam War and ended in December 1971. Promoted as a response to Johnson's War on Poverty by giving training and opportunity to the uneducated and poor, the recruited men were classified as "New Standards Men" (or pejoratively the Moron Corps) and had scored in Category IV of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, which placed them in the 10-30 percentile range...

 

Project 100,000 soldiers included those unable to speak English, of low aptitude, with physical impairments, and those who were too short or too tall, among other categories. They also included a special category - a control group of acceptable soldiers. Each of the different categories was identified in their official personnel records with a large red letter stamped on the first page of their enlistment contract. ... >>

 

http://en.wikipedia....Project_100,000

 

 

I remember some of them. Most were all right, but a few absolutely had no business in the military. One guy in the motor pool was sharp enough, but he was nearly illiterate. Another guy was downright dangerous. We had to stop him from trying to drive a 5-ton across a bridge that had been half blown away. Their low qualifications meant they almost automatically got combat arms, unless they were made a cook.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"New Standards Men." What the f***....I can imagine. :surprised:

 

Encountered a small handful of guys who were overtly touched/disturbed emotionally or mentally when i was in. Army had just ceased a stop-loss program and was actually downsizing, and those fellas didn't last long. And you know I never saw combat, shudder to think of being in that environment with any of those folks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A guy in my BCT looked a lot like Zero in Beetle Bailey. I saw him at the reception center and just knew he'd be in my company. Glad that he was though, since he took a lot of heat off the rest of us. When marching, you hated to be behind him, since it took him a while to figure out which way column left or column right meant. We had to run about 5 miles in loose sand each way to the beach ranges at Fort Ord, and sooner or later he was likely to stumble and bring down the whole platoon. One day at the rifle range, he was picked to be a demonstrator by the range NCO. As he stood there in front of us with his fully loaded M14, someone said ... "Oh, no, not Sxxxxx!" When he heard his name, the guy turned around, swinging his weapon across everyone in the bleachers. People were diving for cover, in case he accidentally pulled the trigger. Fortunately, he didn't. The range NCO took his rifle, unloaded it and told him to sit down. He said, "When I see people like that here, I know the draft boards are f**king up." The poor thickie got his discharge at the end of our 9 weeks training, and I saw him as he was about to leave. The 1SG told him, "Your brass needs polishing. You can't go home like that. Go shine it." Ten minutes later, he came back with brasso smeared all over his collar. The 1SG sighed, took him by the hand, and led him off to clean him up.

 

Well done, Mr. McNamara. I'm sure at least a few like that did make it to Vietnam and combat. :doah:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...