Army is broke in more ways than one

[carincross]

Just as in Vietnam our Army is broke and broken. If we want to save our military we must leave Iraq now! Two recent news items caught my interest:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3971608.html
Fort Sam Houston behind on its utility bills Associated Press
Fort Sam Houston has received 1,300 utility service termination notices for delinquent bill payments, which officials blamed on a major budget shortfall… The post, which trains medics, faces a $26 million budget shortfall this year — a problem that officials said is symptomatic of the financial woes facing posts worldwide… To deal with the budget crunch, the post has fired 100 contract workers, frozen hiring, shut off cell phones and BlackBerry devices, turned in leased cars and stopped troops from using government credit cards.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/8957300/rep_jack_murtha/
REP. JACK MURTHA : THE ANTI-WAR WARRIOR RollingStone Interview
The Army is broken. Today we're 112,000 soldiers short in critical specialties. They're paying bonuses up to $150,000 for a person to go into the service. The National Guard is meeting only eighty percent of its goal nationwide -- and to get the other twenty percent, they've lowered the standards to take those least qualified. All these things put together means an army stretched too thin. Long-term, we've got a $50 billion shortfall in equipment. I've visited three bases: Hood, Bragg, Stewart. I found shortages everyplace. Infrastructure shortages. Equipment shortages. Troops going to Iraq were C4 -- that's the lowest state of readiness. The reason is, they didn't have equipment to train on. They didn't have radios, they didn't have vehicles they needed to train on before they left. The equipment is worn out. I'm concerned for the future of the country.

[ixion]

1. Hi carincross, thanks for posting, and welcome to DU!

Items like this should be posted under general discussion rather than latest breaking news, or LBN. Items posted here should be hard news items only that are less than 24 hours old.


Again, welcome to DU! :hi:

[wake.up.america]

2. Where the heck is all the money going? Halliburton on no-bid contracts?

[JHB]

3. To them and to other contractors...

...Congress has a habit of spending "millions for defense" in the form of big-ticket items (e.g., the F-22 at circa $100 million per plane) but "not one cent for tribute" when "tribute" is the nuts and bolts of ordinary operations, training, and maintenance.

[Toots]

6. One billion a month is simply "dissappearing" and it is now illegal

to even invetstigate the causes.

[Minnesota Libra]

4. carincross, A Big Welcome To DU and yes I know about the..................

.....joining bonuses and the "incentives" to rejoin.

My son was in the Army when Clinton was in office because I told him to me get his military service out of the way "before a neocon/rethug got back in office and starts another war". Ok, fast forward a couple of years, and all of a sudden my son has every recruiter in the country at his door offering up to "$20,000 to re-up". In fact I was there one time when a recruiter stopped by and in the course of the conversation of my son repeatedly saying "No" and the recruiter trying to constantly increase the signing bonus the recruiter finally looked at me and said, "What will it take to convince your son to come back to the Army"? At that point my son snickered and got up to leave and looked at me saying, "Mom, try to be nice. The guy is just doing his job, ok?" I turned to the recruiter and said, "First of all, I'm not his wife so I'm not the person you should be talking to. Second, I told my son to do his service under a Democratic President because the minute a right-winger got in the White House there would be war and there is. Third, if my son is ever stupid enough to reenlist under this WH squatting Supreme Court appointed piece of crap I will break both of his legs and both arms before you ever get him. Now, do we understand each other?" The recruiter was out of that house within five minutes and my son says they haven't been back since my little speech either.

Imho, we need to reintroduce the draft because then every American in this country with a draft age child would have a personal stake in what wars are fought and for how long. Oh, things would change.

[wake.up.america]

5. They could offer me all the money in world. My son is NOT going to...

become part of ANY military.

The politicians who start wars should fight it out themselves.

[cliss]

7. I have 3 teenage sons....

Tall, blond, in good health, excellent shape. NO WAY IN HELL are these 3 going into Rumsfeld's Army. If the country was threatened, yes.

But for Halliburton's Quarterly earnings statement? No way.

And I've had to fight them off. One recruiter called, he practically begged me to put one of the boys on the phone. He said, "Please, just give 45 minutes with him, we have bonuses, we'll pay for his college, we can offer them so much...."

I smiled, told him thank you and hung up.