They Hate the Army and They Hate The RAF…
By Mitch Berg
The Saint Paul School Board is going to debate, again, a resolution by a left-wing boutique pressure group to try to hamper military recruiters on Saint Paul school property.
A source close to the issue says
The superintendent [says] there may be protesters there from the left. While they got the opt out form expanded, they are angry they did not get the recruiter ban from cafeterias. I suspect there has been pressure on the board to reconsider that issue at tomorrow night’s meeting.
Proof that madness doesn’t necessarily reign supreme at the SPPS…:
I believe the superintendent is frustrated that [the school board is] spending so much time on this issue and not on the issues of student achievement. I fully agree with her, and I know you do to.
And there’s a call to action, here:
I know this is short notice, but if any of you can come to them meeting by 6p.m. tomorrow to hear debate and be prepared to speak at 6:30 — if the left starts the attack at the podium. If they appear, do not sign up to speak until they have thrown the first punch. Otherwise they will have the last say …Let them speak first, then sign up. Or, ask if the sign up sheet is broken down by pro and con.If for some reason they don’t speak, and the debate seems to be controlled, then don’t inflame them. But…this time we will need to. Plus, we must force our differences with the left on this issue and drag them kicking and screaming back to the center.
I’m mostly healthy and rarin’ to go, this time. I’ll be there. Think what you want about the military – but when it comes to giving opportunity to the working-class, minority and immigrant students that the district serves so very very badly, the military has the best record around. The “student” group – and the board members who are carrying their water, Tom Goldstein and Ann Carroll – are upper-middle-class, Highland Park/Crocus Hill/Mac-Groveland limo paleoliberals who care about people of color, immigrants and the poor – the people who are most likely to see the military as a path to opportunity – only as far as they provide them a political sinecure. They need to be put back in their place.
So I’ll see you there.
April 11th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Nothing in the “Roundly Debunked” article asserts that troops now being sent to Iraq get the level and intensity of training that U.S. troops had previously been expected to have.
Do you buy goalposts with wheels, or do you have to install them yourself?
You cited, with a big doodoo-eating grin, the “Time” article. The rebuttal showed that Zeimer – the subject of the piece – had as much training as anyone else around him. Different training, but as much, and ample.
If you want to argue that the reduced levels of training are still adequate, go ahead.
My argument really means nothing, Rick, and your “debate” style remains shallow, shrill and facile. Your citation, the Time article, has been shown to be wrong – now you’re trying to shift things to my opinion?
If you want to say the mission in Iraq is a such pressing strategic importance that we must send in troops with lower training standards, go ahead.
Nowhere has it been credibly established that that is the case, though.
But it is incontrovertible that U.S. Army troop training standards have been dramatically reduced due to the war in Iraq.
It is not only controvertible, it has been controverted!
As the guy in the rebuttal said, he’d love to see the “training” that’d out-do an explosion that put a hole through a 3-foot concrete wall (killing, also, a guy who’d been in country for 14 months – the best “training” there is).
For those without the time to follow the link, how does Mitch’s reliable source establish the adequacy or a soldier’s training for Iraq:
Oh, Rick. Do try to pay attention, or people will mistake you for an irredeemably dim little bulb.
The remark about how he looked was not a verdict on his training; merely an anecdotal note about Zeimer’s level of confidence after, DID YOU SEE THIS, ten months of training.
Yes there is your Republican concern for our troops. We are judging combat readiness by how good 18 year olds think they look in uniform. Leslie McNair must be rolling over in his grave.
No, Rick. You are raping the context of the piece to a degree that’d be shameful to anyone that didn’t make “DFL” part of his handle.
Now – go and show my post to “the troops”.
You can’t do it, of course, because your abusive little claims are BS.
You can’t deliver. You never have, you never will.
Quick! Change the subject and move the goalposts again!
April 11th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Cook County Community College, eh? Impressive, swiftee! I hear the HVAC repair program is the tops in northeast Illinois.
Jesus, what a sad case you are – trotting out your kids’ high school GPAs for a little reflected glory. You sure you don’t want to tell us all their ACT scores too? You know you’re dying to.
Not to mention ranting at the local school board about socialism when, by your own admission, you got no skin in the game. Lord you must be an embarassment to your children.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Well, to be fair to Swiftee – every single thing you said in your last comment was wrong.
But other than that.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
That’s possible. Angryclown doesn’t have a 3.55 high school GPA or anything.
April 11th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
If the price of not eternally repeating one’s high school GPA, ACT and SAT scores (I took ’em both) 25 years after the fact as if it has anything to do with anything is not going to an Ivy League school, I’d say it’s worth it to society, to say nothing of the individual.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
“The remark about how he looked was not a verdict on his training; merely an anecdotal note about Zeimer’s level of confidence after, DID YOU SEE THIS, ten months of training”
Not a verdict on the training? Your source asked “So was this truncated training . . . effective? Was he [the soldier, Zeimer] really ready?”. Your expert on training explicitly says that Zeimer’s confidence and the impression he made on his civilian friends and family proves he was ready for combat in Iraq. The position is too silly for words.
As for that fabulous ten months of training, with which you seem so deeply impressed, the Future Soldiers Training Program has nothing to do with combat training. Check it out here:
http://www.futuresoldiers.com/html/futureSoldierTraining.jsp
Yes is is nice the Pvt. Zeimer lost a few pounds, could tell the insignia difference between Staff Sarg and First Sarg, tell military time, and say ‘Whiskey’ instead of ‘W’, but that won’t get you far in Basic Training let alone combat.
If the FSTP is training for combat, then watching E.R. is training for surgery. That you and Robison would trot it out to show that our troops are trained for combat, proves yet again how indifferent you are to issues of military readiness.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Your expert on training explicitly says that Zeimer’s confidence and the impression he made on his civilian friends and family proves he was ready for combat in Iraq. The position is too silly for words.
If that were indeed all he meant, it would be.
But it wasn’t. And I’d like to think you know that, but I’m not very sure anymore.
the Future Soldiers Training Program has nothing to do with combat training.
As was pointed out, the training Zeimer recieved was the same as any other soldier sent to Iraq. The only thing he lacked was a stint at NTS, which, again (or for the first time, most likely) is not individual training.
Robison would trot it out to show that our troops are trained for combat…
Let’s cut to the chase, Rick. Point out the specific shortcomings you allege in Zeimer’s training.
Then show that this is a systematic issue.
Hint: You can not. You will giggle and focus on non-issues, or move the goalposts, or make my “opinions” and my political beliefs the focus. As usual.
And, again, feel free to publicize my beliefs to “the troops”. I’lll await the outpouring of hatred.
Unless, of course, you’re talking (to put it in Latin) de anus.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Mitch:
“Then show that this is a systematic issue”. Try reading the rest of the Time article. Things like:
“The Pentagon made that clear April 2 when it announced that two Army units will soon return to Iraq without even a year at home, compared with the two years units have traditionally enjoyed. One is headed back after 47 days short of a year, the other 81.”
“Today half the Army’s 43 combat brigades are deployed overseas, with the remainder recovering from their latest deployment or preparing for the next one. For the first time in decades, the Army’s “ready brigade” — a unit of the famed 82nd Airborne Division primed to parachute into a hot spot anywhere in the world within 72 hours — is a luxury the U.S. Army cannot afford”
“To boost its numbers, the Army has had to cut its standards. It granted recruits nearly twice as many waivers for felonies and other personal shortcomings in 2006 as it did in 2003. Such waivers allow prospects with criminal records, medical problems or poor aptitude scores to enlist. They climbed from 4,918 in 2003 to 8,129 last year, Pentagon data show.”
You seem to be under the impression that you can believe whatever you find it politically convenient to think, unless compelled by overwhelming evidence provided by others. I think that you, I, and every other American are citizens and as such we have a responsibility to seek out on our own the best information possible, especially when it comes to issues that affect our troops being sent into harms way. There is widespread and easily available information on the crisis of military readiness, but you do not seem to care.
April 11th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
You seem to be under the impression that you can believe whatever you find it politically convenient to think,
And you seem to think that you’re serving up nuggets of blazing truth, when in fact you’re scraping like mad and trying to politicize it to boot!
unless compelled by overwhelming evidence provided by others.
Let me know when you have that “overwhelming evidence”.
you do not seem to care.
As I actually have friends serving overseas, it’s a safe bet I care plenty – and not just to have a political cudgel.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Poor angryclown complained: “I’d love to, Mitch. But Angryclown lacks the time. Time to snark, yes.”
What a coincidence! Kermit was busy moving the GDP forward as well! And while our friend Rick moans “WTF – I posted the cover article of this weeks Time entitled “Broken Army” as if that’s some kind of irrefutable evidence (oh wait, it was refuted. Never mind.), like the good little soldier he is he avoided the more damning challenge: “2) “If Al Gore had been president, there would have been no invasion of Iraq.”
Which I will once again call silly and stupid.
Rick, your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of Elderberries.
April 11th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Kermit:
I ignored 2) not because it was a more difficult challenge, but because 2) was too trivial to notice. Yes, historical counterfactuals are tricky and smart philosophy grad students right long essays on the problems associated with them. But you are not one of those smart people and saying ‘if x had happened, then y, would not have happened’ is a perfectly ordinary and justifiable sort of claim to make.
Al Gore opposed the actual invasion, so it is fair to infer that a hypothetical President Al Gore would not have proposed an invasion.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:07 am
President Al Gore wouldn’t have had to invade anywhere because he would have had to fight terrorists here in the US.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:49 am
Coulda used a little of that from the current president, Paul. A more competent administration might have kept ’em off those planes. Instead we got “My Pet Goat”, a chickenhearted scramble for a secure military base and empty tough talk about getting bin Laden.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:43 am
Little advice Rick. “smart philosophy grad students right (sic) long essays…But you are not one of those smart people”
When making snarky accusations about intelligence turn on either the spell check or your brain. It’s more convincing that way.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:49 am
A more competent administration might have kept ‘em off those planes.
What? Algore was clairvoyant?
Sorry, ‘clown. While I think every administration (except Jimmy Carter) does their best, that’s the dumbest claim I’ve ever heard about Algore – that he would have led a crack team of FBI agents storming down the halls of Logan airport on 9/11, and tackled Mohammed Atta just as he was about to embark.
I’ve asked before – what would an Algore administration, in the eight months between inauguration and 9/11, have done so radically differently?
There’s no answer, of course, because there’s nothing.
April 12th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Not my point, of course, Mitcho. I don’t think that Bush’s documented inattention to the al Qaeda threat, in the early months of his administration, can be fairly called the cause of 9/11. However the 9/11 Commission report makes clear that there were a number of unexploited opportunities to derail the conspiracy in the months leading up to the attacks. Even if you don’t fault Bush, it’s hard to argue that a smooth Clinton-to-Gore transition, in the absense of the 2000 election fiasco, wouldn’t have left a President Gore in a better position to deal with a whole range of issues in the weeks immediately following Inauguration Day. And a greater sense of urgency from the top might have translated to a second look at Moussaui, the evidence of flight training or something else that might have turned into the necessary break. Just what-ifing. We know Gore couldn’t have done worse.
The notion that Gore would have launched the foolish Iraq invasion, though, is simply retarded.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:07 am
You all keep forgetting one historical fact of the first months of the Bush admin: A US spy plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter, killing the Chinese pilot and landing the US crew on a Chinese island in custody. A major international incident that was handled quite well and ended peacefully.
The asinine assuption that ole W. was doing nothing pre 9/11 is just simple bigotry.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Kermit –
Well that certainly takes the prize for Bush excuse making. Poor ol’ George was just too darn busy being President to stop terrorists from killing 3000 Americans.
Our complaint is not that Bush did nothing at all prior to 9/11, but that Bush did little or nothing to react to Al-Queda threats prior to 9/11. Unless you want to argue that Bush was unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, the China issue is hardly an excuse for not taking the terrorist threat seriously. After all Clinton managed to hunt al-Queda with more vigor while winning a war in Kosovo and fighting off impeachement.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Ha ha ha ha. God bless you Rick, that is so funny, I can’t believe it Hunt al Queada with vigor? Clinton? He was to busy diddling interns and lying to grand juries. To quote John F. Kerry “Stunning. Just stunning.” Sure buddy, a major international military incident with a nuclear power is a minor consideration. Slick Willy would have just charmed the Chi-Coms with his aw shucks demeanor.
You complain Bush did little or nothing about al Queda in 8 months. Clinton did little or nothing in 8 years.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Yeah, Kerm, that was a regular Cuban Missile Crisis right there. Plane crashes, Bush sits around and thinks for a week and a half, says “Sowwy!” Crisis over. Christ, it’s his job. Jed Bartlet used to deal with more than that before the first commercial.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
“a major international military incident with a nuclear power”
Clown go easy on Kermit, he probably spent the entire 10 days in bed with a flashlight and the covers pulled up over his head.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Somebody shoulda told Kermit to poke airholes in the plastic sheeting. The oxygen deprivation clearly damaged his brain.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
“Clown go easy on Kermit, he probably spent the entire 10 days in bed with a flashlight and the covers pulled up over his head.”
Actually I was exchanging e-mails with a Chinese national regarding the subject. While you two very impressive intellects don’t seem to think it a big deal, I can assure you the Chinese did.
Selective memory, while convenient, can be a handicap.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Trotting out your brother-in-law again Kerm? You sure give that guy a workout!
April 12th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
“Our complaint is not that Bush did nothing at all prior to 9/11, but that Bush did little or nothing to react to Al-Queda threats prior to 9/11.”
Rick, since you have such sharp googling skills, look up Jamie Gorlick. She was sitting on the 9/11 commision; she should have been sitting in front of it.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
“Somebody shoulda told Kermit to poke airholes in the plastic sheeting.”
Sort of defeats the purpose of waterproof sheets, esp. if the nuclear threat from China is causing bladder control issues.
April 12th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
“Trotting out your brother-in-law again Kerm?”
No, he was born in Chicago, and therefore not a Chinese National. And I thought you were so smart. It turns out you are in the RickDFL wing of SITD. He can’t tell the difference either.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:14 am
Wow, so you know *two* Chinese dudes! Who’da thunk it? I guess that totally insulates you from the notion that you have any prejudices!
By the way, you were right the first time. Angryclown *is* so smart.
April 13th, 2007 at 6:17 am
I have just as many as you do. Maybe less.
April 13th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Chinese men?
April 13th, 2007 at 9:37 am
prejudices
April 13th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Against Chinese men?
April 13th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I’m prejudiced against monkeys.
They’re not really funny at all.
April 13th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Not even Chinese monkeys?
April 13th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Racist!