Where is McCain planning on getting those extra 10,000 troops for Iraq?

[NNN0LHI]

Poll question: Where is McCain planning on getting those extra 10,000 troops for Iraq?

[liberal N proud]

1. Your High School!

[Burma Jones]

2. Take them out of Europe, Korea, Okinawa, Stateside

If that fails, we can rent Hessians.......

[Inland]

3. Stop-loss.

By the way, is ten grand really so many that the balance is tipped, or just a down payment?

[NNN0LHI]

4. We kept escalating in Vietnam for the same reason we are given now

"We can't afford to lose"

Years later we learned that in fact it was the chemical companies, munitions makers, and oil corporations who couldn't afford to lose.

Don

[shenmue]

5. Guard and Reserve?

There was no box for that, so I checked "not sure." I don't think he could successfully reinstate a draft right now.

[Ian David]

6. "Project 10,000: McCain's Moron Corps"

It's less abitious than "Project 100,000" which was also called "McNamara's Moron Corps.":


Assault and (Aptitude) Battery

<snip>

"The debacle in Iraq has made recruiting an impossibly difficult job and recruiters are sinking to new lows in the face of growing pressure to fulfill monthly quotas as well as fierce opposition from parents who don't support the President's botched Iraq war mission."

One of the military's new lows brings us back to the subject of ASVAB and the methods of the Vietnam-era. Faced then with the need for expendable troops, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara instituted an unholy coupling of the War on Poverty and the War in Vietnam—Project 100,000. Project 100,000 called for the military, each year, to admit into service 100,000 men who had failed its qualifying exam. The program claimed that it would outfit those who failed to meet mental standards, men McNamara called the "subterranean poor," with an education and training that would be useful upon their return to civilian life. Instead of acquiring skills useful for the civilian job market, however, "McNamara's moron corps," as they came to be known within the military, were trained for combat at markedly elevated levels, were disproportionately sent to Vietnam, and had double the death rate of American forces as a whole.

Today, a desperate Pentagon seems to be following a strikingly similar path. As Eric Schmitt of the New York Times has written, the Army is increasingly turning to high-school dropouts, has already almost doubled last year's number of recruits scoring in the lowest level on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and is "accepting hundreds of recruits in recent months who would have been rejected a year ago." Meanwhile, those who happen upon the Pentagon's ASVAB website will find another slick design, with few military trappings, no ".mil" web-address, and lots of objective career counseling. You have to troll around the site to discover in the fine print that it's offered as a "public service by the U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data Center."

Like Today's Military.com, the ASVAB site makes a pitch to parents, exhorting them to "{e}ncourage your teen to take the ASVAB." It also tries to influence teachers to "{i}ntegrat{e} the ASVAB Program Into the Classroom," even recommending that portions be "assigned as homework" to students.

More:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050713/an_army_of_no_one.php

[goddess40]

7. They just called up a 53 year old

He's been out of service for 13 years. He's going back as a mechanic, the job he held before he took early retirement, the problem is the job is now computerized and he hasn't worked as a mechanic since he left.


http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/wdhlocal/284681111299343.shtml

Army activates vet, 53
13 years after retirement, Mosinee man ordered to report for duty

Things have changed since then, Olson said. Equipment has become more computerized, and he hasn't had one day of training in more than a decade.

[readmylips]

8. Military keeps sending me propaganda to enlist.....

guys, I'm 58 years old and retired. My hubby (a republican) finds it funny and thinks that I should report to the enlistment office but take the media with me. Only way I'll get them off my back.