Anyone else seen this...

[YankeyMCC]

Someone I know sent me what I assume is a phony chain email (see below) and I replied to the sender that I didn't get it, it seemed to extall shutting up and not speaking up for our service men and women. He replied..."You should watch Fox news if you want a fair and balanced view."

:banghead:

Anyway for your amusement here's the email: (and I could not confirm on the hoax lists I have that this is fake so if anyone can provide a link showing it's a hoax that would be much appreciated)

Subject: Navy Chief Article

The author below is a retired Chief and apparently sailed with the US
Navy's Blue Water and Brown Water surface combatants. He may be the Black
Shoes' counterpart of the Brown Shoes' ( Naval Aviation) Grandpa Pettibone.
Chief Edward's hits it right on the ol' Bosun's pipe.

America's military can win wars. We've done it in the past, and I have
absolute confidence that we'll continue to do it in the future. We've
won fights in which we possessed overwhelming technological superiority
(Desert
Storm), as well as conflicts in which we were the technical underdogs (the
American

Revolution). We've crossed swords with numerically superior foes, and
with militaries a fraction of the size of our own. We've battled on our own
soil, and on the soil of foreign lands -- on the sea, under the sea, and in
the
skies. We've even engaged in a bit of cyber-combat, way out there on the
electronic frontier. At one time or another, we've done battle under just
about
every circumstance imaginable, armed with everything from muskets to cruise
missiles. And, somehow, we've managed to do it all with the wrong Army.

That's right, America has the wrong Army. I don't know how it happened, but
it did. We have the wrong Army. It's too small; it's not deployed
properly;
it's inadequately trained, and it doesn't have the right sort of logistical
support. It's a shambles. I have no idea how those guys even manage to
fight.

Now, before my brothers and sisters of the OD green persuasion get their fur
up, I have another revelation for you. We also have the wrong Navy. And if
you want to get down to brass tacks, we've got the wrong Air Force, the
wrong
Marine Corps, and the wrong Coast Guard.

Don't believe me? Pick up a newspaper or turn on your television. In the
past week, I've watched or read at least a dozen commentaries on the
strength,
size, and deployment of our military forces. All of our uniform services
get
called on the carpet for different reasons, but our critics unanimously
agree that we're doing pretty much everything wrong.

I think it's sort of a game. The critics won't tell you what the game is
called, so I've taken the liberty of naming it myself. I call it the 'No
Right
Answer' game. It's easy to play, and it must be a lot of fun because
politicos and journalists can't stop playing it.

I'll teach you the rules. Here's Rule #1: No matter how the U.S. military
is
organized, it's the wrong force. Actually, that's the only rule in this
game. We don't really need any other rules, because that one applies in
all
possible situations. Allow me to demonstrate...

If the Air Force's fighter jets are showing their age, critics will tell us
that Air Force leaders are mismanaging their assets, and endangering the
safety of their personnel. If the Air Force attempts to procure new fighter
jets,
they are shopping for toys and that money could be spent better elsewhere.
Are you getting the hang of the game yet? It's easy; keeping old planes is
the wrong answer, but getting new planes is also the wrong answer.
There is no right answer, not ever. Isn't that fun?

It works everywhere. When the Army is small, it's TOO small. Then we start
to hear phrases like 'over-extended' or 'spread too thin,' and the integrity
of our national defense is called into question. When the Army is large,
it's
TOO large, and it's an unnecessary drain on our economy. Terms like 'dead
weight,' and 'dead wood' get thrown around.

I know what you're thinking. We could build a medium-sized Army, and
everyone would be happy. Think again A medium-sized Army is too small to
deal with
large scale conflicts, and too large to keep military spending properly
muzzled.
The naysayers will attack any middle of the road solution anyway, on the
grounds that it lacks a coherent strategy. So small is wrong, large is
wrong,
and medium-sized is also wrong. Now you're starting to understand the
game.
Is this fun, or what?

No branch of the military is exempt. When the Navy builds aircraft
carriers,
we are told that we really need small, fast multipurpose ships. When the
Navy builds small, fast multi-mission ships (aka the Arleigh Burke class),
we're
told that blue water ships are poorly suited for littoral combat, and we
really need brown water combat ships. The Navy's answer, the Littoral
Combat,
isn't even off the drawing boards yet, and the critics are already calling
it pork
barrel politics and questioning the need for such technology. Now I've
gone nose-to-nose with hostiles in the littoral waters of the Persian Gulf,
and
I can't recall that pork or politics ever entered into the conversation. In
fact, I'd have to say that the people trying to kill me and my shipmates
were
positively disinterested in the internal wranglings of our military
procurement process. But, had they been aware of our organizational folly,
they
could have hurled a few well-timed criticisms our way, to go along with the
mines we were trying to dodge.

The fun never stops when we play the 'No Right Answer' game. If we
centralize our military infrastructure, the experts tell us that we are
vulnerable to
attack. We're inviting another Pearl Harbor. If we decentralize our
infrastructure, we're sloppy and overbuilt, and the BRAC experts break out
the
calculators and start dismantling what they call our 'excess physical
capacity.'
If we leave our infrastructure unchanged, we are accused of becoming
stagnant
in a dynamic world environment.

Even the lessons of history are not sacrosanct. When we learn from the
mistakes we made in past wars, we are accused of failing to adapt to
emerging
realities. When we shift our eyes toward the future, the critics quickly
tell
us that we've forgotten our history and we are therefore doomed to repeat
it.
If we somehow manage to assimilate both past lessons and emerging threats,
we're informed that we lack focus.

Where does it come from: this default assumption that we are doing the wrong
thing, no matter what we happen to be doing? How did our military wind up
in
a zero-sum game? We can prevail on the field of battle, but we can't win a
war of words where the overriding assumption is that we are always in the
wrong.

I can't think of a single point in History where our forces were of the
correct size, the correct composition, correctly deployed, and appropriately
trained all at the same time. Pick a war, any war. (For that matter, pick
any
period of peace.) Then dig up as many official and unofficial historical
documents, reports, reconstructions, and commentaries as you can. For
every unbiased
account you uncover, you'll find three commentaries by revisionist
historians who cannot wait to tell you how badly the U.S. military bungled
things.
To hear the naysayers tell it, we could take lessons in organization and
leadership from the Keystone Cops.

We really only have one defense against this sort of mudslinging. Success.
When we fight, we win, and that's got to count for something. When asked to
comment on Operation Desert Storm, the U.S. Army's Lieutenant General Tom
Kelly
reportedly said, "Iraq went from the fourth-largest army in the world, to
the second-largest army in Iraq in 100 hours." In my opinion, it's hard to
argue with that kind of success, but critics weren't phased by it.
Because no matter how well we fought, we did it with the wrong Army.

I'd like to close with an invitation to those journalists, analysts,
experts,
and politicians who sit up at night dreaming up new ways to criticize our
armed forces. The next time you see a man or woman in uniform, stop for ten
seconds and reflect upon how much you owe that person, and his or her fellow
Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen. Then say, "Thank you." I'm betting
you
won't even have to explain the reason. Our Service members are not blind or
stupid. They know what they're risking. They know what they're sacrificing.
They've weighed their wants, their needs, and their personal safety against
the
needs of their nation, and made the decision to serve. They know that they
deserve our gratitude, even if they rarely receive it.

Two words -- that's all I ask. Thank you." If that's too hard, if you
can't bring yourself to acknowledge the dedication, sincerity and sacrifice
of
your defenders, then I have a backup plan for you. Put on a uniform and
show us how to do it right.

(c) 2005 Jeff Edwards.

[frankly_fedup2]

1. It's not the wrong military. It's the wrong leadership that has put

all of the military in an unlawful war and willing to risk the lives of young men and women in the military who work so hard to succeed for their Commander and Chief. Well their C&C has personal reasons for this war he created in Iraq. None of them involved America's Military either nor were we at danger. A report has come out now that while Bush was giving his speech at the United Nations, our military was already bombing the Hell out of Iraq's military and any planes they had. Then, when our troops started moving in, that's all we heard about. No one told us that Baghdad had already almost been destroyed.

He has infected this country with his stupidity, turned the entire World against us, and continues to put the corporate rich's needs before anything else, including the military. Stories of troops having to have their families buy their body armor . . . are these true? Stories of Humvees without the proper safety equipment . . . is this true?

When you hear people griping about this war, it is in no way denigrating any one person in the military. I admire every one of you because you agreed to serve this country, and even if you yourself don't agree with this war, I know you cannot say that, but you have stuck to your word. That says a lot about a person. The right try to make out that if we criticize the President, the war, anything that we are against the troops. That's a lie. I dare any American to say publicly that they do not believe in our military. Everything has become so political and Bush has separated this country so much, there may even be a civil war here. I would not be surprised. People are getting fed up with all of the lies that continue to be pushed as propaganda.

All Americans thank our Military. My dad was in WWII and I took him to the opening ceremony of the D-Day Memorial. I never realized what D-Day really was until I saw on the History Channel. It was a slaughter of 9,000+ troops on one day on one beach . . . but even with all the death around them, they pushed until they got through. They never gave up, and the military of today has the same convictions regarding their protection of this country. Saying Thank you to a military person is not enough and will never be. Thank you is not enough for what happened during WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf war, and now this war. I cannot imagine how anyone can have the bravery to go into any live combat. You have to have a pretty strong belief in what you are doing to accomplish what you do. You deserve better treatment from your government. The citizens of the U.S. thank you everyday and pray for you. It's the leadership of this country that is treating the military like don't question what we tell you, don't decide whether you feel it is immoral, we told you to do it and do it without complaining.

The careless comments are coming from our government, not the people of this country. Remember that the American People, all of us support each and every one of you and always will. We just want you to come home as bad as you want to.