Month: October 2005

Good news, Freepers:

Facing recruiting shortages brought on by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has decided to accept a greater number of recruits who score near the bottom of military aptitude tests, the secretary of the Army said Monday.

Coming off a recruiting year in which the Army fell short of its goal of 80,000 active-duty soldiers, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey announced that the Army would allow up to 4% of its recruiting class to be Category IV recruits — those who scored between the 16th and 30th percentile in the battery of aptitude tests that the Defense Department gives to all potential military personnel. …

Until the last fiscal year, the Army had few problems staying below the 2% threshold for Category IV recruits. According to data provided by the Army, Category IV recruits comprised less than 1% of the 2003 and 2004 recruiting classes.

Donald Boudreaux explains the libertarian antiwar position for all those who missed it the first thousand times.

What sort of bizarre "Guest Editorial" is this on Informed Comment today? Billed by Cole as "Guest Editorial: Smith on Libertarians and Iraq" (apparently this Jan Smith), this odd piece reads like an email from the middle of a series, as it makes statements and associations which aren’t explained at all, most of which would make any libertarian’s mind reel. Like this:

For the libertarians themselves, or more precisely, the private elites
they represent, has had far more influence than Israel on the
administration’s foreign policy.

We represent private elites? Who knew? I always thought it obvious that we were the bag ladies of American politics. Or this:

Justin Raimundo can tell you what it takes to satisfy the private elites.

No sh%^&@#*t?! Justin, you old dog, you’ve been holding out on us!

And just to confirm that this guy has absolutely no idea what a libertarian is or what they stand for, he adds:

But what about the libertarians? They are angry that the government is spending “their money” in Iraq. And they are powerful…

POWERFUL? *Boggle*

Smith:

Want many Iraqs, one after another until this century’s empire crumbles into dust? Become a libertarian.

What is this guy talking about? I’m one of those powerful libertarians, typing my opinion powerfully onto the internets. In February of 2003, I, along with other libertarians, powerfully marched in a quarter-million strong protest against invading Iraq. Oddly, the Bush administration ignored our powerful demand.

I’m OK with the Empire crumbling into dust, but what sort of insane logic would lead a person to blame libertarians for "many Iraqs?" Plausibly, Smith could be talking about the war-supporting “neolibertarian” Liberventionists, but the only libertarian he names is the editorial director of AntiWar.com, for pete’s sake. Hello, Jan? AntiWar.com? Get it?

We all know that every word ever posted on David Horowitz’s Frontpage website is a lie, including “and,” and “the,” but the blogger G-Nome has the very worst liar of that crew — Kahanist–defender Steve Plaut — nailed to the wall but good.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen some press about the Individual Ready Reserve in Iraq (oh, here’s some), but Saturday night I met a young lady who’s father was called up to go kill people 20 years after being discharged from the army. He is opposed to the war, and told his kids before going that it was unjust. Apparently he thought it was his duty to go anyway. As misguided as that belief is, many good men have died for having it. Her little sister has had a chance to meet her father only once, the day she was born, then he was off to the wonderful land of liberation and democracy that is Iraq, where he gets to play the IED lottery for the chance to never see her again.

I can report to you that this man’s absence has caused great pain and fear for this family – my neighbors. The girl became particularly upset while decribing her frustration with mass media. In all the hype surrounding this war, she says, there is a distict lack of focus on the lives of the individuals doing the fighting and dying on all sides. Remember the Dover test?

When the life of a dead American soldier is brought up in the press, it is invariably a pack of lies used to exploit their foolish sacrifice in some PR stunt.

Many US troops don’t want to be there at all – some say so outright, and some refuse to fight, but most shut their mouths and do their “duty,” keeping their fingers crossed and biding their time.

The fact that this conflict, which even that traitor Bill O’Reilly calls a “war of choice,” is being fought by guardsmen, the IRR and those unfortunate enough to miss the cut and get “stop-lossed,” is an outrage.

Any American who is for the continued occupation of Iraq, yet has not signed up to go take the place of a man who wants to come home is a pathetic coward and hypocrite.