sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides. After the next attack on America, which will happen, recruiting will go up. There is a distinct difference in those of us that served before and after 911. After 911 there was a much higher Patriotism call, combat arms call and Spec Ops. Before 911 after Viet Nam, it was about the tech and the systems. You went in to learn a skill and education.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
FLBear5630 said:I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides….Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
And to add to sombear's post, most of it is public record, so feel free to dig and find out what it went to. How do you think they knew it was $5 Billion over that long period?Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:If you knew anything about Operation Ajax, you would know why the Maiden uprising was not a CIA op.Sam Lowry said:There's no reason to think VY was complicit. He would have liked an economic deal with both Europe and Russia. We were the ones who said it had to be one or the other. He made interim agreements with the opposition to stop the violence, which the US promised to help him do. When that didn't happen, he was forced to flee. We then arranged an illegal vote in parliament, which voted "unanimously" because none of VY's supporters were present. The mob was used as leverage, as in countless other cases (of all the CIA veterans in the world, our friend Whiterock is evidently the only one who's never heard of Operation Ajax).sombear said:
I'm still waiting for you to answer specific questions, but I'll throw some out again:
Was VY in on it?
If VY was not in on it, when did we know he was going to abruptly do a 180 on most of his campaign issues?
If VY was not in on it, how did we know he'd flee to Russia the day after reaching interim agreements with the opposition?
Why would we openly lobby VY (as our allies were doing and as Russia had been doing) and why would Nuland meet with VY and visit protestors of we were trying to secretly plan a coup?
How did we get around the Russian infiltration in Ukraine intel?
Why was Russia not providing evidence of our plan at the time? (Beyond the nothingburger Nuland call the Russians recorded.)
Did we buy/coerce every member of parliament that unanimously voted to oust VY?
How did we control the next two elections? (The "plan" would only make sense if we knew what was coming next, right?)
Why would the guy we "chose" lose to Zelensky? Was that part of our plan? Were we in fact grooming Zelensky while he was a comedian?!?!?!
The idea that every player was a conspirator or we knew everything that would happen next is Da Vinci Code style Hollywood mumbo-jumbo. We laid the groundwork with years of propaganda and election manipulation. When the opportunity appeared, we guided events in our direction. There was plenty of improvisation involved. That's how it works in reality.
Oh yea…Nuland and the Feds spent billions in Ukraine in the years leading up to it on sandwiches and gay pride events only…sure OK!!!
What is the measure? If you say terror attacks on US soil, which started us down this path, you can't argue with the results from the last 20 years. Heck, we just warned an enemy we're in a geopolitical conflict with about an attack before it happened.Redbrickbear said:FLBear5630 said:I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides….Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
A logical fallacy
You have no evidence that the past 25 years of foreign policy disasters in the Middle East have in anyway kept America safer.
Drops in recruitment among military families tell us even the most committed of the public are no buying this BS anymore
ATL Bear said:And to add to sombear's post, most of it is public record, so feel free to dig and find out what it went to. How do you think they knew it was $5 Billion over that long period?Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:If you knew anything about Operation Ajax, you would know why the Maiden uprising was not a CIA op.Sam Lowry said:There's no reason to think VY was complicit. He would have liked an economic deal with both Europe and Russia. We were the ones who said it had to be one or the other. He made interim agreements with the opposition to stop the violence, which the US promised to help him do. When that didn't happen, he was forced to flee. We then arranged an illegal vote in parliament, which voted "unanimously" because none of VY's supporters were present. The mob was used as leverage, as in countless other cases (of all the CIA veterans in the world, our friend Whiterock is evidently the only one who's never heard of Operation Ajax).sombear said:
I'm still waiting for you to answer specific questions, but I'll throw some out again:
Was VY in on it?
If VY was not in on it, when did we know he was going to abruptly do a 180 on most of his campaign issues?
If VY was not in on it, how did we know he'd flee to Russia the day after reaching interim agreements with the opposition?
Why would we openly lobby VY (as our allies were doing and as Russia had been doing) and why would Nuland meet with VY and visit protestors of we were trying to secretly plan a coup?
How did we get around the Russian infiltration in Ukraine intel?
Why was Russia not providing evidence of our plan at the time? (Beyond the nothingburger Nuland call the Russians recorded.)
Did we buy/coerce every member of parliament that unanimously voted to oust VY?
How did we control the next two elections? (The "plan" would only make sense if we knew what was coming next, right?)
Why would the guy we "chose" lose to Zelensky? Was that part of our plan? Were we in fact grooming Zelensky while he was a comedian?!?!?!
The idea that every player was a conspirator or we knew everything that would happen next is Da Vinci Code style Hollywood mumbo-jumbo. We laid the groundwork with years of propaganda and election manipulation. When the opportunity appeared, we guided events in our direction. There was plenty of improvisation involved. That's how it works in reality.
Oh yea…Nuland and the Feds spent billions in Ukraine in the years leading up to it on sandwiches and gay pride events only…sure OK!!!
You guys continue to grasp for reasons I can't understand. Plenty of other low hanging fruit to criticize.
NGOs are public record too and have to report their budget. If interested. But yes, there are black holes, not just in foreign but domestic spending.Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:And to add to sombear's post, most of it is public record, so feel free to dig and find out what it went to. How do you think they knew it was $5 Billion over that long period?Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:If you knew anything about Operation Ajax, you would know why the Maiden uprising was not a CIA op.Sam Lowry said:There's no reason to think VY was complicit. He would have liked an economic deal with both Europe and Russia. We were the ones who said it had to be one or the other. He made interim agreements with the opposition to stop the violence, which the US promised to help him do. When that didn't happen, he was forced to flee. We then arranged an illegal vote in parliament, which voted "unanimously" because none of VY's supporters were present. The mob was used as leverage, as in countless other cases (of all the CIA veterans in the world, our friend Whiterock is evidently the only one who's never heard of Operation Ajax).sombear said:
I'm still waiting for you to answer specific questions, but I'll throw some out again:
Was VY in on it?
If VY was not in on it, when did we know he was going to abruptly do a 180 on most of his campaign issues?
If VY was not in on it, how did we know he'd flee to Russia the day after reaching interim agreements with the opposition?
Why would we openly lobby VY (as our allies were doing and as Russia had been doing) and why would Nuland meet with VY and visit protestors of we were trying to secretly plan a coup?
How did we get around the Russian infiltration in Ukraine intel?
Why was Russia not providing evidence of our plan at the time? (Beyond the nothingburger Nuland call the Russians recorded.)
Did we buy/coerce every member of parliament that unanimously voted to oust VY?
How did we control the next two elections? (The "plan" would only make sense if we knew what was coming next, right?)
Why would the guy we "chose" lose to Zelensky? Was that part of our plan? Were we in fact grooming Zelensky while he was a comedian?!?!?!
The idea that every player was a conspirator or we knew everything that would happen next is Da Vinci Code style Hollywood mumbo-jumbo. We laid the groundwork with years of propaganda and election manipulation. When the opportunity appeared, we guided events in our direction. There was plenty of improvisation involved. That's how it works in reality.
Oh yea…Nuland and the Feds spent billions in Ukraine in the years leading up to it on sandwiches and gay pride events only…sure OK!!!
You guys continue to grasp for reasons I can't understand. Plenty of other low hanging fruit to criticize.
When on the domestic front the Congress gifts say $5 million to a NGO to "sore up democracy" how can you be sure it's not going to supporting liberal organizations and advocacy for progressive causes?
If we can't even be sure what the money spent at home is doing there is no way of knowing what the billions in Ukraine are doing.
You know this…you just don't care
For some strange reason you trust DC lifetime bureaucrats, neocons, and liberal interventionists to do the right thing
Redbrickbear said:FLBear5630 said:I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides….Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
A logical fallacy
You have no evidence that the past 25 years of foreign policy disasters in the Middle East have in anyway kept America safer.
Drops in recruitment among military families tell us even the most committed of the public are no buying this BS anymore
Lies and more lies.ATL Bear said:Complete fabrication, at least prior to Euromaiden. And now you're pinning the Orange Revolution on the CIA? Amazing…Sam Lowry said:I'm afraid you're off on the facts. The vote was 328-0 with 115 absent, if I recall correctly. The minimum required for removal was 338.sombear said:Sam Lowry said:There's no reason to think VY was complicit. He would have liked an economic deal with both Europe and Russia. We were the ones who said it had to be one or the other. He made interim agreements with the opposition to stop the violence, which the US promised to help him do. When that didn't happen, he was forced to flee. We then arranged an illegal vote in parliament, which voted "unanimously" because none of VY's supporters were present. The mob was used as leverage, as in countless other cases (of all the CIA veterans in the world, our friend Whiterock is evidently the only one who's never heard of Operation Ajax).sombear said:
I'm still waiting for you to answer specific questions, but I'll throw some out again:
Was VY in on it?
If VY was not in on it, when did we know he was going to abruptly do a 180 on most of his campaign issues?
If VY was not in on it, how did we know he'd flee to Russia the day after reaching interim agreements with the opposition?
Why would we openly lobby VY (as our allies were doing and as Russia had been doing) and why would Nuland meet with VY and visit protestors of we were trying to secretly plan a coup?
How did we get around the Russian infiltration in Ukraine intel?
Why was Russia not providing evidence of our plan at the time? (Beyond the nothingburger Nuland call the Russians recorded.)
Did we buy/coerce every member of parliament that unanimously voted to oust VY?
How did we control the next two elections? (The "plan" would only make sense if we knew what was coming next, right?)
Why would the guy we "chose" lose to Zelensky? Was that part of our plan? Were we in fact grooming Zelensky while he was a comedian?!?!?!
The idea that every player was a conspirator or we knew everything that would happen next is Da Vinci Code style Hollywood mumbo-jumbo. We laid the groundwork with years of propaganda and election manipulation. When the opportunity appeared, we guided events in our direction. There was plenty of improvisation involved. That's how it works in reality.
appreciate the response, but you're off on the facts. The West have no ultimatums. Putin did.
There was an agreement, but VY fled to Russia the very next day.
VY's party fully participated in the vote, both votes.
One question you didn't answer, if the plan had long been in place, why didn't Russia intel know? Russia publicly blames the west for all sorts of things, yet Putin said nothing about this until the protests.
And just so I understand, you believe we had this plan in place just in case VY went against everything he campaigned on?
The "plan" was to have a government in Ukraine that complied with our wishes. If VY fit the bill, fine. If not, all other options were on the table.
That Russia may have had inroads to Ukrainian intelligence is no surprise. Of course we did too, and more so. The CIA reportedly even had an office in the headquarters of the SBU. No doubt Russia was aware of many of our activities. They could hardly fail to be after the events of the Orange Revolution. That doesn't mean they could stop us.
The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
you keep dodging. Expand to what?Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:...and we have had those kinds of problems before. and fixed them before.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
such things wax and wane.
Note that you again dodged the Ukrainian part of my post.......(wink)
What the Ukraine part?
You think they have enough men for a long protracted war?
The media is implying they do not….
LOL the motte & bailey. See above in bold. That was exactly what you intended to convey.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
Had that exact conversation with daughter yesterday (who's in town for a family event). We are hard into a strategic turn in force posture and composition, transitioning from War On Terror to Peer Competition. It's been underway for years, but it's incredibly difficult to do and we still have a long way to go. It's new strategies, new tactics, new weapons systems, new logistics networks, net training on all of that. EX: Marines have given up all their tanks as part of a transition from an expeditionary land army to its original mission of as an expeditionary amphibious force. Within that context, the whole SOCOM program is going to be deemphasized, will get smaller. They'll no longer be at the tip of the strategic spear, but rather part of a holding action.FLBear5630 said:I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides. After the next attack on America, which will happen, recruiting will go up. There is a distinct difference in those of us that served before and after 911. After 911 there was a much higher Patriotism call, combat arms call and Spec Ops. Before 911 after Viet Nam, it was about the tech and the systems. You went in to learn a skill and education.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
The next war, with a near or peer adversary, you will see the call for combat arms, seaman, and sub crews needed to fight that type of war. Spec Ops won't be sold because it takes too long to train them and the attrition will be too high. Pilots fall into the same category. It isn't a manpower issue, it is a skills and training issue.
LOL. except for the near absence of foreign terrorist attacks on the homeland, accomplished by taking out entire organizations of terrorists and making it clear that any state regime which harbored such & allowed it to build would be taken out in weeks.Redbrickbear said:FLBear5630 said:I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides….Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
A logical fallacy
You have no evidence that the past 25 years of foreign policy disasters in the Middle East have in anyway kept America safer.
Drops in recruitment among military families tell us even the most committed of the public are no buying this BS anymore
whiterock said:
[LOL. except for the near absence of foreign terrorist attacks on the homeland, accomplished by taking out entire organizations of terrorists and making it clear that any state regime which harbored such & allowed it to build would be taken out in weeks.
Quote:
Geez, dude. Do you seriously mean to suggest that we are in no better position and dealing with exactly the level of threat that we faced on 9/10/2001?
Wher is your evidence that we are no better off for having waged the WOT?
Quote:
We just have to do it well ENOUGH.....better than our adversaries. We always do.
Your argument here, as is typically the case with the arguments of critics of US foreign policy in general, and Ukraine War policy in particular, is a textbook fallacy of assuming the conclusion.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
[LOL. except for the near absence of foreign terrorist attacks on the homeland, accomplished by taking out entire organizations of terrorists and making it clear that any state regime which harbored such & allowed it to build would be taken out in weeks.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/01/america-since-911-terrorist-attacks-linked-to-the-war-on-terror
This article is old now so it doesn't list the ones that have occured since it was written, but it shows one terrorist attack on the US every other year from 9-11 to the time it was written. So much for the assertion that the GWOT prevented them.
Very poor analysis. All of those attacks are "homegrown" meaning individual actions inspired by islamist rhetoric. None of them....not. one....were 9/11 type attacks recruited, planned, trained abroad by terrorist groups with leadership and infrastructure.Quote:
Geez, dude. Do you seriously mean to suggest that we are in no better position and dealing with exactly the level of threat that we faced on 9/10/2001?
Wher is your evidence that we are no better off for having waged the WOT?
A pretty good case can be made that the country is far less safe today given the flawed immigration and border policies we adopted since 9-11 than it was in 2001. The domestic Muslim population has exploded and we have zero idea how many foreign terrorists have entered the country.
Well, yes. See your link above. We imported most of those problems. But immigration policy is a completely separate issue from the effectiveness of the WOT.Quote:
We just have to do it well ENOUGH.....better than our adversaries. We always do.
"...And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Reading comprehension error. I did not say we had to build colossal works. I said we merely had to build/do things better than our adversaries. And we invariably do.
You will see SOCOM going back to their original missions. For example, Rangers, 82nd will go, take and hold key points such as bridges, airports, ports, etc... A friend of mine, now retired, said that the training for the 82nd has shifted from urban to airports and taking them. Think Grenada...whiterock said:Had that exact conversation with daughter yesterday (who's in town for a family event). We are hard into a strategic turn in force posture and composition, transitioning from War On Terror to Peer Competition. It's been underway for years, but it's incredibly difficult to do and we still have a long way to go. It's new strategies, new tactics, new weapons systems, new logistics networks, net training on all of that. EX: Marines have given up all their tanks as part of a transition from an expeditionary land army to its original mission of as an expeditionary amphibious force. Within that context, the whole SOCOM program is going to be deemphasized, will get smaller. They'll no longer be at the tip of the strategic spear, but rather part of a holding action.FLBear5630 said:I don't think that is strange. The strategy of fighting them over there, rather than over here is working. Recruiting always goes down when the danger subsides. After the next attack on America, which will happen, recruiting will go up. There is a distinct difference in those of us that served before and after 911. After 911 there was a much higher Patriotism call, combat arms call and Spec Ops. Before 911 after Viet Nam, it was about the tech and the systems. You went in to learn a skill and education.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
The next war, with a near or peer adversary, you will see the call for combat arms, seaman, and sub crews needed to fight that type of war. Spec Ops won't be sold because it takes too long to train them and the attrition will be too high. Pilots fall into the same category. It isn't a manpower issue, it is a skills and training issue.
What most people miss is that we don't necessarily have to any of that transition perfectly. We just have to do it well ENOUGH.....better than our adversaries. We always do.
Just seems like a stretch to me. We had favorable governments, including, we thought, VY.Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Look at it as a US Road and Belt program... If the Commies do it, it must be good.sombear said:Just seems like a stretch to me. We had favorable governments, including, we thought, VY.Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan. And, do so without Russin intel knowing our plan along.
And do all of that with only $5 billion over 20 years, most of which was accounted-for military spend.
I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
whiterock said:you keep dodging. Expand to what?Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:...and we have had those kinds of problems before. and fixed them before.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
such things wax and wane.
Note that you again dodged the Ukrainian part of my post.......(wink)
What the Ukraine part?
You think they have enough men for a long protracted war?
The media is implying they do not….
what ages are being mobilized in Ukraine?Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:you keep dodging. Expand to what?Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:...and we have had those kinds of problems before. and fixed them before.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
such things wax and wane.
Note that you again dodged the Ukrainian part of my post.......(wink)
What the Ukraine part?
You think they have enough men for a long protracted war?
The media is implying they do not….
I'm not sure what you are even asking…
I respond to this: "Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool"
With a simple article about recruiting in the armed forces being down.
What "expand" are you taking about?
whiterock said:what ages are being mobilized in Ukraine?Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:you keep dodging. Expand to what?Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:...and we have had those kinds of problems before. and fixed them before.Redbrickbear said:whiterock said:Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool.Redbrickbear said:Realitybites said:
Meanwhile, in NATOs largest military...
"Diversity management calls..
The message is clear: if you are a straight white (or Asian) male and join up, you will be permitted to be shot for America when a feminazi or ****** orders you to the eastern front, but don't plan on things like leadership, promotion, or career development being part of your future.
Orwell would be proud.
I have no idea who Whiterock (the rest of the pro-war posters) think they are going to get to fight Russia for them….
Military recruitment is going no where and no one wants to die for DC regime change wars
[Military families have soured on the military.
The % of military family members who would recommend service to their children dropped from 55% in 2016 to 32% in 2023.
Relatedly the military fell 41,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal & it is now at its smallest size since 1940.
I've been talking about this lately, but this is the first time I can recall seeing hard numbers. That's a massive drop! I found this June 2023 Wall Street Journal article discussing the crisis in-depth; if you don't have a WSJ subscription, I found this website where the entire text can be read for free. Excerpts:
Today, nearly 80% of all new Army recruits have a family member who has served in uniform, according to the service. That can be a good thing, said Col. Mark Crow, director of the Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis at West Point, because "people who know the most about it stick around."
Depending too much on military families could create a "warrior caste," Wormuth said. Her plans seek to draw in people who have no real connection to the military and to broaden the appeal of service.
First, 80 percent of new Army recruits have a family member who serves?! That's massive! And yet, Joe Biden's Army Secretary, Christine Wormuth, is worried about a "warrior caste" being formed. Look, I can see the reason for concern that the same families, and network of families, carry the burden of the nation's war-fighting, but there is something natural in this. And in any case, it's so damned typical of a managerial liberal that they won't be happy until they have forced human nature to conform to a scheme. Do we really have the luxury of fretting about warrior castes when we can't get enough people from any family to sign up?
It's not only about wokeness, but about how the civilian and military leadership of the US has used and abused the armed forces in this century:
Sky Nisperos, who moved around the world as a military brat, said that as a teen she began to see the effect of her father's nearly dozen deployments and tours away from his family. Ernest Nisperos said he remembers being asleep when one of his kids jabbed him in the ribs to wake him. He put Sky's sister in a wrestling ankle lock before he realized he was back home.
"My sister and I would say, 'It's just drill sergeant-dad mode,' especially for the month he came back," Sky said.
Ernest Nisperos realized his deployments, which involved battle planning and top secret intelligence, were taking a toll. In 2019, after he returned from Afghanistan, he took the family to Disneyland. During the nightly fireworks extravaganza, he cowered in the fetal position while his family and "Toy Story" characters looked on.
Sky worried her father would end up like her grandfather, the military patriarch, who in the years since he retired from the Navy started to have what the family describes as flashbacks to his time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2005, sometimes yelling that he needed to take cover from a nonexistent attack.
Her father decided he didn't want that life for Sky and her two siblings.
… The sudden and unpopular conclusion to the war in Afghanistan in 2021 added to the disenchantment of some veterans, including Catalina Gasper, who served in the Navy. Gasper said she and her husband, who spent more than two decades in the Army, used to talk to their boys, now 7 and 10, about their future service, asking them if they wanted to be Navy SEALs.
In July 2019, on her last combat deployment to Afghanistan, she was stationed at a base in Kabul when the Taliban launched an attack. The blast battered Gasper's body and she was transported back to the U.S. for treatment and recovery.
She was left with lingering damage from a traumatic brain injury. She is sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. She has recurrent dizziness and forgets words. She also has bad knees and herniated discs in her back.
The U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, precipitating Kabul's fall to the Taliban. "We're left with the gut-wrenching feeling of, 'What was it all for?' " she said.
She said she was a patriot but decided she would do everything she could to make sure her kids never enter the military. "I just don't see how it's sustainable if the machine keeps chewing up and spitting out" our young people, she said.
The cost of the Globalist American Empire is paid in part by families like the Gaspers and the Nisperoses. Then many of them come home and find that they've been fighting for a system that despises people who believe in the things they believe in, and a government that expects them to kill and die for its supposed national security interests overseas, but won't even defend its own southern border.]
I don't think I ever said we are running out of manpower.
We have 330 million people in the USA
Just pointing out that we have some serious problems had home with recruitment and military families are souring on the idea that their children should serve
such things wax and wane.
Note that you again dodged the Ukrainian part of my post.......(wink)
What the Ukraine part?
You think they have enough men for a long protracted war?
The media is implying they do not….
I'm not sure what you are even asking…
I respond to this: "Good grief, man. Now you're trying to suggest that WE are running out of manpower? Missing recruiting deadlines is not at all the same problem as available manpower pool"
With a simple article about recruiting in the armed forces being down.
What "expand" are you taking about?
That's some grade A spinRedbrickbear said:Another drone strike by US-backed Ukrainian forces on the airbase housing Russia’s strategic nuclear fleet. Would’ve been nearly inconceivable a few years ago -- now barely makes a ripple pic.twitter.com/F8tssnDnX3
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 22, 2024
Very little of it was accounted-for military spending. Most of it was through USAID, another CIA front.sombear said:Just seems like a stretch to me. We had favorable governments, including, we thought, VY.Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan. And, do so without Russin intel knowing our plan along.
And do all of that with only $5 billion over 20 years, most of which was accounted-for military spend.
That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Ukraine is FIGHTING for Democracy and to join the EU. That is a huge success. Will they keep it? Who knows, but 30 years ago or when Reagan really started going after the Soviet Union did anyone ever think that would happen? If this was a CIA operation it THE most successful of the modern era.Sam Lowry said:That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Ukraine is no more democratic than Russia, and that's probably being generous.FLBear5630 said:Ukraine is FIGHTING for Democracy and to join the EU. That is a huge success. Will they keep it? Who knows, but 30 years ago or when Reagan really started going after the Soviet Union did anyone ever think that would happen? If this was a CIA operation it THE most successful of the modern era.Sam Lowry said:That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Money well spent, the Baltics, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania all former Communist are now Democracies and fighting to stay free and in the EU. Not to mention the bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO. This has been a banner operation!
Sam Lowry said:Ukraine is no more democratic than Russia, and that's probably being generous.FLBear5630 said:Ukraine is FIGHTING for Democracy and to join the EU. That is a huge success. Will they keep it? Who knows, but 30 years ago or when Reagan really started going after the Soviet Union did anyone ever think that would happen? If this was a CIA operation it THE most successful of the modern era.Sam Lowry said:That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Money well spent, the Baltics, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania all former Communist are now Democracies and fighting to stay free and in the EU. Not to mention the bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO. This has been a banner operation!
Reagan built an arms control framework and established trust with the Russians such that they were able to voluntarily relinquish Ukraine in exchange for the promise of neutrality. More than anyone else, he would be absolutely horrified by what's happening now.
Good catch. You are correct .Sam Lowry said:FLBear5630 said:Ukraine is FIGHTING for Democracy and to join the EU. That is a huge success. Will they keep it? Who knows, but 30 years ago or when Reagan really started going after the Soviet Union did anyone ever think that would happen? If this was a CIA operation it THE most successful of the modern era.Sam Lowry said:That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Money well spent, the Baltics, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania all former Communist are now Democracies and fighting to stay free and in the EU. Not to mention the bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO. This has been a banner operation!
Reagan built an arms control framework and established trust with the Russians such that they were able to voluntarily relinquish Ukraine in exchange for the promise of neutrality.
No one, not even the Russians, thought the CIA had an office in the SBU prior to Euromaiden.Sam Lowry said:Lies and more lies.ATL Bear said:Complete fabrication, at least prior to Euromaiden. And now you're pinning the Orange Revolution on the CIA? Amazing…Sam Lowry said:I'm afraid you're off on the facts. The vote was 328-0 with 115 absent, if I recall correctly. The minimum required for removal was 338.sombear said:Sam Lowry said:There's no reason to think VY was complicit. He would have liked an economic deal with both Europe and Russia. We were the ones who said it had to be one or the other. He made interim agreements with the opposition to stop the violence, which the US promised to help him do. When that didn't happen, he was forced to flee. We then arranged an illegal vote in parliament, which voted "unanimously" because none of VY's supporters were present. The mob was used as leverage, as in countless other cases (of all the CIA veterans in the world, our friend Whiterock is evidently the only one who's never heard of Operation Ajax).sombear said:
I'm still waiting for you to answer specific questions, but I'll throw some out again:
Was VY in on it?
If VY was not in on it, when did we know he was going to abruptly do a 180 on most of his campaign issues?
If VY was not in on it, how did we know he'd flee to Russia the day after reaching interim agreements with the opposition?
Why would we openly lobby VY (as our allies were doing and as Russia had been doing) and why would Nuland meet with VY and visit protestors of we were trying to secretly plan a coup?
How did we get around the Russian infiltration in Ukraine intel?
Why was Russia not providing evidence of our plan at the time? (Beyond the nothingburger Nuland call the Russians recorded.)
Did we buy/coerce every member of parliament that unanimously voted to oust VY?
How did we control the next two elections? (The "plan" would only make sense if we knew what was coming next, right?)
Why would the guy we "chose" lose to Zelensky? Was that part of our plan? Were we in fact grooming Zelensky while he was a comedian?!?!?!
The idea that every player was a conspirator or we knew everything that would happen next is Da Vinci Code style Hollywood mumbo-jumbo. We laid the groundwork with years of propaganda and election manipulation. When the opportunity appeared, we guided events in our direction. There was plenty of improvisation involved. That's how it works in reality.
appreciate the response, but you're off on the facts. The West have no ultimatums. Putin did.
There was an agreement, but VY fled to Russia the very next day.
VY's party fully participated in the vote, both votes.
One question you didn't answer, if the plan had long been in place, why didn't Russia intel know? Russia publicly blames the west for all sorts of things, yet Putin said nothing about this until the protests.
And just so I understand, you believe we had this plan in place just in case VY went against everything he campaigned on?
The "plan" was to have a government in Ukraine that complied with our wishes. If VY fit the bill, fine. If not, all other options were on the table.
That Russia may have had inroads to Ukrainian intelligence is no surprise. Of course we did too, and more so. The CIA reportedly even had an office in the headquarters of the SBU. No doubt Russia was aware of many of our activities. They could hardly fail to be after the events of the Orange Revolution. That doesn't mean they could stop us.
Except all that happened after Reagan was out of office. So there's that pesky misalignment of time and events. It was the Clinton Administration that negotiated the Budapest Memorandum.Sam Lowry said:Ukraine is no more democratic than Russia, and that's probably being generous.FLBear5630 said:Ukraine is FIGHTING for Democracy and to join the EU. That is a huge success. Will they keep it? Who knows, but 30 years ago or when Reagan really started going after the Soviet Union did anyone ever think that would happen? If this was a CIA operation it THE most successful of the modern era.Sam Lowry said:That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Money well spent, the Baltics, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania all former Communist are now Democracies and fighting to stay free and in the EU. Not to mention the bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO. This has been a banner operation!
Reagan built an arms control framework and established trust with the Russians such that they were able to voluntarily relinquish Ukraine in exchange for the promise of neutrality. More than anyone else, he would be absolutely horrified by what's happening now.
The timeline argument is pesky only because you've mentioned it at least four times without ever explaining it. Clinton obviously played a role in poisoning our relationship with Russia. I'm not sure what you think that proves, unless it supports my point.ATL Bear said:Except all that happened after Reagan was out of office. So there's that pesky misalignment of time and events. It was the Clinton Administration that negotiated the Budapest Memorandum.Sam Lowry said:Ukraine is no more democratic than Russia, and that's probably being generous.FLBear5630 said:Ukraine is FIGHTING for Democracy and to join the EU. That is a huge success. Will they keep it? Who knows, but 30 years ago or when Reagan really started going after the Soviet Union did anyone ever think that would happen? If this was a CIA operation it THE most successful of the modern era.Sam Lowry said:That's basically what I've been saying. We can speculate about how much planning there was, but the point is that it all happened as a result of US influence. The 20 years of US spending are relevant because they created the conditions that culminated in regime change.sombear said:I don't doubt that for a second. We were open about our support, so have to assume there was direct support.Redbrickbear said:sombear said:Sam Lowry said:The $5 billion was spent on promoting "democracy," i.e. political manipulation and regime change. There's nothing absurd or even particularly controversial about it. It's just one of those things we don't talk about.sombear said:Redbrickbear said:sombear said:
Since 1991 . . . And most of it spent early and half of which was military and 1/4 of which was direct economic assistance.
You know you can't account for where all those billions went.
The Feds can't even keep with where they spend billions at home…much less in a corrupt 2nd world country like Ukraine.
Let's just be honest….it was slush fund cash to buy off politicians and influence Ukraine.
And possibly to help foment unrest and coups if necessary
My answer may surprise you. I have no idea how much we sent Ukraine. It could be well north of $5 billion.
But folks on your side often point to the $5 billion mentioned in the speech. My main point as I've posted several times is that $5 billion since 1991 is pennies compared to what we've given other fledgling democracies. And to connect that $ to an unexpected coup over 20 years later is absurd. And public data has shown that such spending historically has mostly been economic development (loans that don't have to be repaid) and defense.
I don't see how suddenly, in literally a period of weeks, we could have unleashed this grand plan...
Unleash a grand plan…probably not.
Influence events on the ground by passing around cash and calling on favors and rooting on the protests/coup? Absolutely
Money well spent, the Baltics, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania all former Communist are now Democracies and fighting to stay free and in the EU. Not to mention the bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO. This has been a banner operation!
Reagan built an arms control framework and established trust with the Russians such that they were able to voluntarily relinquish Ukraine in exchange for the promise of neutrality. More than anyone else, he would be absolutely horrified by what's happening now.
And if you think Ukraine is no more democratic than Russia, then take a gander over the last 20 years at the executive branch of both as well as the uniparty of the Duma for the past 15+ years compared to the Rada.
