ratbastid

Okay, Kerry has apologized. Can this thing go lay in the corner and die now?

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmor...itary&id=95716

Only question is: if it's good enough for the White House, is it good enough for TFP conservatives? Or are they still desperate enough to keep flogging this dead horse?

Bill O'Rights

I'm calling you out on this one, Will.
When I went into active duty 25 years ago, they accepted dropouts, with the understanding that they would be required (ie forced) to receive their GED within a year. While I was active duty, the Air Force did away with that program. They would only accept you if you already had your diploma, or your GED. Then...they went on to make it so that you had to have a high school diploma. GEDs were no longer acceptable.

But...that was a long time ago.

So...I actually did call up an Air Force recruiter...not 5 minutes ago. I was informed by one SSgt. Annebock that one does indeed now have to have either a high school diploma or equivalent (read GED) to enlist in the United States Air Force.

Now...I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. I'm going to assume that, instead of outright lying, you were confussed by something with that whole "Community College" bit. (SSgt Annebock informed me that no community college credit is required to enlist) Could it be that in order to enroll in community college, one has to have a GED?

I find your condescention...most disturbing.
/channel of James Earl Jones

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Jimellow

A friend told me about this quote yesterday, and after reading it again, I still tend to think it takes a dig at the troops. To me, it makes a pretty direct implication that those that go to school and study "succeed," whereas those that don't end up in the armed forces, and ultimately Iraq. Ultimately, I figure the dig is more directed at the organization through which troops are recruited, but since the troops are the ones physically engaged in combat, I tend to apply the comment to them, and it seems inappropriate to me.

That's just my take on it though, and I have no desire to argue over the interpretation of a quote.

I'd also just like to give props to willravel for actually seeking out information, calling around, and actually talking to sources, before making a strong claim. It's something that isn't done enough - especially online - primarily because it takes work, and also provides the reality that seeking out valid facts might prematurely shoot down an argument.

And again, I am not really caught up in the recruiter targeting issue either way, it was just neat to read of someone making calls to recruiters in an act of putting up, or shutting up.

In general, I don't really like the politics forum, but this thread caught my eye, and it seemed like the popular place to be of late.

EDIT: After reading more of this thread, it seems others have called around as well. Good stuff.

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Desperation is no excuse for lowering one's standards.

pig

Re: military recruiters and will and bill - neither of these seems conclusive to me. i honestly wouldn't be surprised if the military would "work with you" a little bit if you lacked some of the requirement, but seemed earnest about wanting to get in, help out, and better yourself later on. its also pretty easy to lead someone where you want to go when you're asking questions of them - even if you don't mean to do it - but i mean, that's what david blaine does for a living.

i'm not sure i even see the j.c. issue as a discreditation. it sounds to me like they are saying you have to have some sort of pre-entrance education credits, and i wouldn't be surprised if there were some limitations on which credits those have to be. ie. amounting to the same information you'd need for a ged.

since we're throwing in anecdotal evidence, i'd just like to thank the marine recruiter, sean studley, who recruited me when i was in high school. did i join? hell no, not my bag. but, the second time he called my house, my friend jon was over. as i'm talking to studley, trying to get him off the phone without being rude, jon starts an impromptu acoustic version of "I love lesbians, you know they are my friends..." in the background. Studlely played it cool.

A few months later I go out to soccer practice, first day...and Studley is the assistant coach. I thought I was dead.

Nope - he was one of the coolest guys I've ever met. Completely destroyed all of my know-it-all high school illusions of what military types are like.

He never lied to me on the phone, answered my questions honestly (even the smartassed ones) and turned out to be a pretty cool dude. Even shaved my head when we won region. He used to initate jokes about us dwarf-tossing him (he was about 5 ft tall, max) at practice.

What does all this matter? Not a damn bit. The military is hurting for recruits, and I'd be very surprised if they didn't want to help kids get in that want in for whatever reasons. But they're not all smarmy assholes, either.

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dc_dux

Now that we are beyond the Kerry apology, time for a little house-keeping to clear up another misconception that magic questioned and the Repubs often repeat. (just like the Bullshit that Dems dont vote to support the troops and vets).

Congress NEVER had access to the same pre-war intelligence as the White House before they voted on the Iraq resolution, despite Bush's claim for three years to the contrary.

From the non-partisan Congressional Research Service:

* The President has access to all national intelligence collected, analyzed and produced by the Intelligence community, and has the authority to restrict the flow of intelligence to Congress.

* Administration officials routinely have access to more, and to more sensitive, intelligence than do Members of Congress. And through their daily routines and staff, Administration officials are inherently more capable of assessing finished intelligence products.

* The President has a statutory responsibility to keep Congress “fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities.”

* There are four types of intelligence not routinely shared with Congress.
- Tailored intelligence products such as the President’s Daily Brief (PDB);
- Identities of intelligence sources;
- Intelligence collection and analysis “methods”; and
- “Raw” or “lightly evaluated” intelligence.

http://feinstein.senate.gov/05releas...-intel-rpt.htm

I dont question the right of the President to have access to more intelligence information than every member of Congress....I do question when he lies to the American people about Congressional access to intelligence being equal.

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

ratbastid

And how do you feel about it when he mocks his political opponent as a "flip-flopper" because that opponent changed his mind based on receipt of more complete information? I "question" that myself.

This WHOLE thing is because the Rove administration is so masterful at manipulating the sound bite. I'm guessing there are staffers in a basement office in the White House watching every single speech that anyone gives for bits to take out of context and smear people with. "I voted for the war before I voted against it" actually MEANT "Once I got a look at all the intelligence, I saw that I had been conned into voting for this war on the first go-round, so I voted against it the second time." In the context of what he was saying, it was impossible to not understand that. But you pull it out of context, and put it on heavy rotation on Fox News, and you've got "flip-flopper".

If you actually look at Kerry's speech, this "stuck in Iraq" thing was one sentence in a long list of (somewhat) humorous jabs at Bush's competence. In context, it's impossible to misinterpret as an attack on the troops. You can just imagine the glee some little GOP staffer felt when he saw that excising that one statement made Kerry look anti-troop. And a week before Midterms, no less! I hope he got a nice little bonus for that.

Willravel

Ouch, swing and a miss. I went to three different high schools. The first was a large high school in a very small town. That was low income, that was crawling with recruiters. As a matter of fact, almost a majority of the kids from my freshman gym class are now in the military. My Chem partner from Sophmore year is now a Staff Seargent (he's good people). When I was attending that HS, I also took Jazz Band at the other high school in town, sine the first schoool didn't have one. Halfway through my junior year, I moved to San Jose. The school I went to in San Jose was full of rich kids. That was when I took my first retail job and was frustrated (maybe a bit jelous, though now I realize it built character and taught me how to work) that the other kids had brand new cars and didn't work at all.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't start building a profile on me, though, as I am purpously vague about certian details of my life so that no one is able to actually figure out who I am. If I wanted people to know who I am, I'd be more specific. I don't, becuase I am pretty opinionated and I'd like to keep TFP and my life seperate.
Thanks to DC_Dux for handling this one.
Again, from Post #55:
I'm not lying and I'm not confused or exaggerating. I'm repeating exactly what I was told. If you don't believe me, then call the number I provided and argue with the recruiter. I don't know why you're trying to callBS on me when I provided a phone number of the source of my information. Isn't that the same as providing a link to an article or citing from a book? Isn't that good enough?
No, one does not need a GED to attend a JC.

florida0214

I Agree he apologized and I for am not a conservative who holds a grudge. IMO it was insulting to the troops and now that he has apologized it's done.

BTW You need a GED to get into most JC's and the Air Force is particular which Credits will count tword the 15 Creidt minumum to enlist and it has to come from a regionaly accredited institution. If you really want to get definitive answers you can look up the Air Force regulation. just google:
AFRS INSTRUCTION 36-2001.
It is the final say when it comes to recruiting anybody into the Air Force.

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filtherton

Was that the same thread where you said that michael j. fox. should be held to higher standards than congress and the president when it comes to making law? I suppose that means that you'd be pretending to be much more offended than your pretending to be now if michael j. fox had said something like this.

silent_jay

Wow you went all the way back to 1972, I'm not positive but isn't that around the time dubya was shoving blow up his nose? You wonder how many foot in mouth comments it takes before someone is considered a dumb fuck, well I wonder how many stupid decisions a president has to make before he's considered a dumb fuck. A concerned Canadian wants to know.

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Absence makes the heart grow fonder

mixedmedia

He shoots. He scores. Nice work.

And as far as Kerry's apology goes, he is apologizing for the way his statement came out. He never intended it to be aimed at the troops. The statement was supposed to be a direct jab at GWB's intellect. Of course, this has probably been asserted on this thread at least a dozen times without rising above the maelstrom of delightful outrage, but I thought I'd lend my voice, too...just in case...you know, like that one little Who in Who-ville.

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roachboy

i find this slippage between a joke aimed at cowboy george and one aimed at "our boys" to be curious.

it only really makes sense within the bizzaro world of conservativeland, with its emphasis on question of Will, which kind of explains why the rovemachine felt it important that cowboy george go about staying the course rhetorically--it was as if the Will of the Leader directly animated the "troops" who, following the same logic, would be reduced to the status of meat puppets that would twitch about and do things coherently only to the extent that the Will of the Leader remained undivided.

The Will of the Leader is of course negatively affected by the presence of any dissent in the land, whence the recurrent equation of dissent with treason--which we got yet another little taste of earlier in this thread. If the People were as One facing the Leader, like the congregation would face Charlemagne, who faced the altar for them, then it would follow that the Will of the Leader would be One, and so the meat puppets that are "our troops" would be coherent and, of course, the war in iraq would make sense at some level.

but the People are not One on this--for obvious reasons, but no matter--and so the Will of the Leader is divided and so the meat puppets in iraq cannot act coherently.

so it follows--kind of--that in the bizzaro little world of conservativeland, opponents of the war in iraq are to blame for how fucked up everything is there. just look at ustwo and squirt's little rants about kerry1972 for a demonstration.

the curious thing is that this little story--which seems to me a pretty accurate image of such logic as there is in the ideology of conservativeland on the subject of, say, the war in vietnam (which is repeated in that of the war in iraq)---is far more patronizing to "the troops" than anything anyone else could or would say could possibly be. they really are imagined as meat puppets linked by some crazy spiritualist circuit to the collective Will of the People.

one way in which this does make sense, however, is as a function of the identity-based character of conservative ideology---the centrality of faith to it---which is of a piece with the non-falsifiability of conservative ideological propositions insofar as the inhabitants of conservativeland are concerned. that political committments are a matter of faith sure does help the drawing of lines that separate "us" from "them" tho, doesn't it?

and this in turn sets up the peculiar nature of this short-lived pseudo-controversy. it was a one or two day vacation for the beleagured inhabitants of conservativeland, one that let them retreat into the articles of the faith and avoid that unpleasantness that we generally refer to as reality (you know, the actually existing war in iraq, the debacle that it is, the self-evident bollocks that has been the administration's non strategy, etc etc etc)...and in the process it allows for an affirmation of one's faith-based community...which in turn draws a little line between conservativeland and other territories...which in turn provides a little reminder of why the inhabitants of conservativeland should vote republican regardless of the magnitude of the fuck up that is the reality they have set into motion---you want to vote for "us" because otherwise you'd have to vote for "them" and that is out of the question, not for any real reason, but because...well...think of how screwy the situation would be for the meat puppets if the administration was actually called to account for its actions?
there would be nothing but static on the lines.

but now that little vacation seems over.
what to do?

....

i know.

let's put on a musical.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dc_dux

Old Man Rumsfeld

by the Capitol Steps

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

smooth

Oh LORD, I was going to post a reply to all this, but this snippet pretty much sums up my feelings about the controversy.

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"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

xxSquirtxx

Yes, because only you can tell the difference between a typo and bad grammar.

p.s. Your first comma is the wrong puncuation in that sentence. Unless, of course, you were actually speaking to the Lord. Who can tell?

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Willravel

BOR or florida, did you call the number I posted and spoken to the recruiter? I'm sure you have a lot to talk about no matter who is wrong.

xxSquirtxx

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flstf

I don't think Kerry meant to insult our troops, I do think he meant what he said though.

Willravel

Freudian slip? It's very possible. He' slowly but surely made his way over to the anti-war area since his flip floppery.

Ustwo

As is obvious with so many jumping on the 'the troops are stupid' bandwaggon here.

He knew his supporters, he just didn't think outside it.

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smooth

I don't know, as my wife said while reading over my shoulder, "it's pretty cut and dry, you guys need a new representative because it's only making you look bad."

but of course, the irony that my too-high expectations of the readership of this forum to pick up on is that the OP is chastising someone for a verbal slip when he can't take the time to make sure his own communication is accurate.

in short, vote for thread closure.
this whole thing reads like a bunch of schoolchildren sticking their tongues out at one another, over what? over someones comment that if you don't stay in school you'll have limited options, including going to war. perhaps drafted.

every sentient being that I know of is aware that our past wars' fighters are culled from the ranks of people with limited opportunity.

the logic escapes people like you, squirt, who knows why, but it does. people with limited opportunities choose to go to war more than people with other choices in life. how that reflects on the intelligence of people in the military is beyond my comprehension.

education!=intelligence
both stupid and intelligent people join the military.
both smart and unintelligent people attend school.

unintelligent people can't seem to disentangle how all of this might be the case and their opinions seem to pervade this thread, unfortunately.

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"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

ubertuber

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