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Army Is Broken And In Need Of Repair
based on a report by Joseph L. Galloway. October 12, 2005
The Army has already relaxed its once-sacred standards so that twice as many recruits who score in the lowest category on mental aptitude tests can enlist, along with many more high school dropouts and other borderline candidates. Now Secretary Harvey has laid out how, without increasing the Army's strength, he'll beef up what he calls "the operational Army," the Army that kills people and blows things up, without increasing the long-term permanent strength of the Army by even one soldier above the hopelessly low total of 482,400.
It's a brilliant capitalist stroke worthy of a cold-blooded CEO. We'll hire civilians who like to be paid low civil service wages to replace military people who treat and nurse the wounded coming home from Iraq; replace those who handle payroll issues for other soldiers; replace those who do a thousand crappy jobs well because they know that what they do is important to other soldiers. Then we can ship the "savings" off to Iraq or some other pre-emptive war.
Another part of the plan calls for shutting down some of the Army schoolhouses and shifting more than 11,000 of those who educate and train soldiers to more lethal jobs. It seems somewhat counterintuitive to reduce training at the same time that we begin to fill the ranks with the less intelligent, less fortunate or just plain unlucky.
If contracting out Army work to the private sector - the Halliburtons and Blackwaters - works so blessed well, why then don't we contract out our national defense in its entirety to the bottom-line guys? No doubt the private sector would be happy to bid on our wars and fight them for cost plus 20 percent. They could hire all the military people put out of work when we close down the Army and Marine Corps and Navy and Air Force. We could put in a penalty clause if they lose the war.
You have been reading excerpts from "Army is broken and in need of repair" by Joseph L. Galloway. You can read the entire piece here: tinyurl.com/8odls. Thanks to news.yahoo.com.
based on a report by Joseph L. Galloway. October 12, 2005
The Army has already relaxed its once-sacred standards so that twice as many recruits who score in the lowest category on mental aptitude tests can enlist, along with many more high school dropouts and other borderline candidates. Now Secretary Harvey has laid out how, without increasing the Army's strength, he'll beef up what he calls "the operational Army," the Army that kills people and blows things up, without increasing the long-term permanent strength of the Army by even one soldier above the hopelessly low total of 482,400.
It's a brilliant capitalist stroke worthy of a cold-blooded CEO. We'll hire civilians who like to be paid low civil service wages to replace military people who treat and nurse the wounded coming home from Iraq; replace those who handle payroll issues for other soldiers; replace those who do a thousand crappy jobs well because they know that what they do is important to other soldiers. Then we can ship the "savings" off to Iraq or some other pre-emptive war.
Another part of the plan calls for shutting down some of the Army schoolhouses and shifting more than 11,000 of those who educate and train soldiers to more lethal jobs. It seems somewhat counterintuitive to reduce training at the same time that we begin to fill the ranks with the less intelligent, less fortunate or just plain unlucky.
If contracting out Army work to the private sector - the Halliburtons and Blackwaters - works so blessed well, why then don't we contract out our national defense in its entirety to the bottom-line guys? No doubt the private sector would be happy to bid on our wars and fight them for cost plus 20 percent. They could hire all the military people put out of work when we close down the Army and Marine Corps and Navy and Air Force. We could put in a penalty clause if they lose the war.
You have been reading excerpts from "Army is broken and in need of repair" by Joseph L. Galloway. You can read the entire piece here: tinyurl.com/8odls. Thanks to news.yahoo.com.
