Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Achtung! Papers...Papers....Please: No Child Left Behind Act aids Military Recruiters

host · 05-08-2005, 12:09 AM

1595 American Military Dead: http://icasualties.org/oif/

Quote:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...oped-headlines
mirror link here: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0506-20.htm

Originally published May 6, 2005

Jules Witcover
WASHINGTON - Here are just some of the things that have happened regarding the U.S. involvement in Iraq over the last several days:

The Pentagon released the names of 12 more American soldiers killed in Iraq, bringing the total U.S. fatalities there as of yesterday to 1,591, of which 1,215 resulted from hostile action.

A new Army report said the death in Iraq of Army corporal and former pro football star Pat Tillman was intentionally not reported to his family or the public as having been caused by friendly fire until weeks after the nationally televised memorial service for him.

The judge in the trial of Army Pfc. Lynndie R. England, the Army reservist photographed holding a naked Iraqi detainee on a leash at Abu Ghraib prison, declared a mistrial when Private England's former lover, convicted Abu Ghraib guard Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr., testified that she was just following his instructions and didn't think she was doing something wrong.

The mistrial came after the Army inspector general, Lt. Gen. Stanley E. Greene, exonerated Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former U.S. commander in Iraq at the time of the Abu Ghraib incidents, and other top officers of any wrongdoing in the scandal. His report also recommended only a reprimand for Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the head of the military police unit there at the time.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, issued an annual risk assessment saying that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would put more strain on the U.S. military establishment to deal with other responsibilities elsewhere.

The Army reported that it had failed to reach its recruitment quota for the third straight month, signing up only slightly more than half of the 6,600 new soldiers sought for April. The Army Reserve and the Marine Corps also reported recruiting shortfalls.

An audit of reconstruction spending in Iraq kicked off an investigation by a special inspector general of suspected fraud in nearly $120 million allocated, of which $7.2 million could not be accounted for and nearly another $90 million had insufficient documentation.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi politician whose U.S. support was cut off after allegations of providing false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was named minister in charge of oil in the new Iraqi Cabinet. He received one of several courtesy calls from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Cabinet members.

The overall picture that emerges from all of this is that the U.S. presence in Iraq continues to be not only a tragedy but a comedy of errors that is nothing to laugh about. That's especially true because over the same period, more than 150 Iraqis were killed in various insurgent and suicide attacks.

Countering all of this was the swearing-in Tuesday of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and his Cabinet. But several Cabinet posts were left vacant, including the defense ministry, which was set aside for a Sunni Arab.

U.S. officials reported killing 24 insurgents believed to be followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the reputed al-Qaida leader in Iraq. They said Mr. al-Zarqawi may be ill or injured. Such are the signs of progress proffered by the Bush administration.

But the public isn't buying. In the latest Gallup Poll, 57 percent of those surveyed said it was not worth going to war in Iraq, 49 percent called it a mistake, 56 percent said they thought the war was going "badly" and 25 percent said "very badly."

The news from Iraq gives a good idea why President Bush, according to Gallup, has the lowest rating ever - only 45 percent approval - for a president embarking on his second term.

Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His column appears Wednesdays and Fridays.

As Bush spins it:

Quote:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...top_world_news
April 28 (Bloomberg
................... ``I believe we're making really good progress in Iraq, because the Iraqi people are beginning to see the benefits of a free society,'' Bush said. ``They saw a government form today.''..........................

As mentioned in the Baltimore Sun, military recruiters are not meeting their recruiting quotas, just 3 years and 8 months after the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor:

Quote:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=722391
May 2, 2005 — By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the Iraq war straining the all-volunteer U.S. military, the Army has missed its recruiting goals in April and expects to do so again in May, while the Marines also fell short, officials said on Monday.

The Army and Marines provide the ground forces fighting rebels in the two-year-old Iraq war that has killed nearly 1,600 U.S. troops. At least 51 American troops died in April.............

Not widely known to most Americans is this recruiting "aid". written into the
"No Child Left Behind Act":

Quote:

http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$33891
<h3>No recruiter left behind

Groups raise issue with federal law opening students' data to military</h3>

Chris Graham
chris@augustafreepress.com

Punk rocker Pat Thetic considers himself to be somewhat knowledgeable with what is going on in the world.

But when the drummer for the Pittsburgh-based band Anti-Flag read a few months ago that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires school districts across the country to provide military recruiters access to personal information on their high-school students that they have on file, he was taken aback.

"The scary thing about this is, before I read something about this a few months ago, I didn't know anything about it, and I consider myself to be up to date with current events and that kind of thing. I mean, I hadn't even heard of this, and No Child Left Behind has been in effect for what, three years now? I think a lot of people out there who will read this story will say the same thing," Thetic said.

"It's a classic example of how these kinds of things are done. The less people know about what's going on, the better," Thetic told The Augusta Free Press.

Thetic and his bandmates have taken the lead in getting the word out to music fans and the world at large about the provision in NCLB that opens up school records to military recruiters.

The law, passed in 2001, took effect in January 2002. Under Section 9528 of the legislation, "each local educational agency receiving assistance under this act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary-school students' names, addresses and telephone listings.

"Each local educational agency receiving assistance under this act shall provide military recruiters the same access to secondary-school students as is provided generally to post-secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students," the code section continues.......

.................The St. Louis, Mo.,-based Veterans for Peace organization works to tell students the rest of the story.

"We don't call recruiters liars. We just think that many recruiters only tell one part of the story," said Michael McPhearson, the 4,500-member organization's executive director and a Gulf War veteran.

Veterans for Peace sends volunteers out to schools across the country to engage in what the group calls recruitment education to tell a more complete story of what life in the military is like.

"Recruiters will only tell you the positives about what life is like in the military. Don't get me wrong, we don't want to tell you only about the negatives. We'll share the good things about our experiences in the military, and the not-so-good things," McPhearson told the AFP. "We try to tell the whole story so that high-school students being presented with this choice about their future are armed with as much information as possible."

Veterans for Peace and Anti-Flag are also working to let parents and students know about a line in Section 9528 of NCLB that gives them the ability to opt out of having personal information shared with recruiters.

"A secondary-school student or the parent of the student may request that the student's name, address, and telephone listing ... not be released without prior written parental consent, and the local educational agency or private school shall notify parents of the option to make a request and shall comply with any request," the code section reads.

Several school districts, including the Santa Cruz, Calif., district, attempted early on in the Section 9528 era to take opt-out one step further into the direction of opt-in. Josh Sonnenfeld, a second-year student at the University of California-Santa Cruz, led a campaign while attending Santa Cruz High School to turn around the opt-out provision included in NCLB to make it an opt-in - meaning that parents would have to sign paperwork stating that they would give their permission for their children's information to be shared with recruiters.

The U.S. Department of Education quickly stepped in and threatened to take away the school district's federal funding, Sonnenfeld told the AFP, leading to a shift in focus from opt-in to public awareness.

The Santa Cruz school district now sends information about the opt-out provision in NCLB home to parents on emergency-information cards.

"The thinking behind that is that emergency cards are the one thing that students are required to take home, get their parents to fill out, then return. So it's something that is a guarantee that everybody will see," Sonnenfeld said.................

(Published 04-28-05/News)

There has been no denial by the Blair Admin. in the UK concerning the following report, even in the midst of a close national election campaign:

Quote:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...igence-ON.html

British memo indicates Bush made intelligence fit Iraq policy

Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
May. 6, 2005 10:55 AM

WASHINGTON - A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war........

Could it be coincidence that the NCLB act contains a requirement, later enforced by the Bush admin. cabinet dept. of education, that became law in 2002, that the personal contact info of all public high school students is supplied to military recruiters? (And presumably; to recently reconstituted local draft boards? http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/draft-boards.htm

As the days go by and more of our young soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians fall in this contrived war, will those who posted arguments of support for Bush and his administration's policies, almost all of whom have fallen silent on these threads, post their justifications for their continued support, or withdrawal of it. Seeing the continuing stream of reports, and knowing that some people still support Bush et al, I am moved to keep this discussion active and updated.