An Army of (No) One (recruiting poor, mentally ill, low performers)

[2Design]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/23498/

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Obviously the Pentagon wants recruits badly and cash-strapped teens represent one of the best chances to fill uniforms. The military clearly thinks that America's youth couldn't really pass your basic intelligence test. Its websites downplay danger and its slick TV commercials show bloodless scenes of adventure and heroism that don't square with images (and news) now coming home from Iraq to anybody's neighborhood. From hiccupping recruitment rates, it's clear, however, that America's teens already know these ads and websites are missing a few critical elements -- scenes of American troops acting as foreign occupiers, killing civilians, torturing detainees, fanning the flames of discontent, and failing to deliver basic safety or security not just for Iraqis but for their own troops.

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<snip>
Assault and (Aptitude) Battery

Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, head of the Army Recruiting Command, recently stated, "Having access to 17- to 24-year-olds is very key to us. We would hope that every high school administrator would provide those lists to us. They're terribly important for what we're trying to do." In the wake of the revelation of the Pentagon's massive new database of America's youth, Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita claimed, "We are trying to use appropriate methods to make ourselves competitive in the marketplace for these kids who have a lot of choices." But as Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel recently wrote in her Editor's Cut blog, it isn't just choices keeping the kids away:

"The debacle in Iraq has made recruiting an impossibly difficult job and recruiters are sinking to new lows in the face of growing pressure to fulfill monthly quotas as well as fierce opposition from parents who don't support the President's botched Iraq war mission."

One of the military's new lows brings us back to the subject of ASVAB and the methods of the Vietnam-era. Faced then with the need for expendable troops, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara instituted an unholy coupling of the War on Poverty and the War in Vietnam -- Project 100,000. Project 100,000 called for the military, each year, to admit into service 100,000 men who had failed its qualifying exam. The program claimed that it would outfit those who failed to meet mental standards, men McNamara called the "subterranean poor," with an education and training that would be useful upon their return to civilian life. Instead of acquiring skills useful for the civilian job market, however, "McNamara's moron corps," as they came to be known within the military, were trained for combat at markedly elevated levels, were disproportionately sent to Vietnam, and had double the death rate of American forces as a whole.
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[getmeouttahere]

1. I'm trying to remember if they discuss this....

Moron Corps in "The Fog of War." Of course, the fire-bombing and burning to death of 100,000 in Tokyo was quite enough for me to understand that then, as now, this country is run by madmen.

[Ian David]

2. I don't remember ever hearing of The Moron Corps before

It sure would explain those "Veterans for Bush" bumper stickers I see now and then.

[2Design]

5. swift boat liars are probably part of those unfortunates tooo n/t

[Ian David]

3. McNamara's Moron Corps

McNamara's "Moron Corps"
HBO's "Path to War" leaves out some of the most shameful brainstorms of the Vietnam War's masterminds -- including a little-known recruitment program that turned the mentally and physically deficient into cannon fodder

May 29, 2002

The highly acclaimed HBO movie, "Path to War", powerfully details President Lyndon Johnson's descent into the disastrous quagmire of Vietnam. LBJ is depicted, in part, as a victim of his defense secretary, Robert McNamara's, intellectual duplicity. But the film spares McNamara from the deeper moral condemnation he deserves, entirely overlooking, for instance, one of his most heinous acts as the chief architect of the war -- a cynical recruitment gambit aimed at the underclass known as "Project 100,000."

By 1966, President Johnson was fearful that calling up the reserves or abolishing student deferments would further inflame war protesters and signal all-out war. And so, even after McNamara began privately declaring the war was unwinnable, the defense secretary devised Project 100,000.

Under his direction, an alternative army was systematically recruited from the ranks of those who had previously been rejected for failing to meet the armed services' physical and mental requirements. Recruiters swept through urban ghettos and Southern rural back roads, even taking at least one youth with an IQ of 62. In all, 354,000 men were rolled up by Project 100,000. Touted as a Great Society program that would provide remedial education and an escape from poverty, the recruitment program offered a one-way ticket to Vietnam, where "the Moron Corps," as they were pathetically nicknamed by other soldiers, entered combat in disproportionate numbers. Although Johnson was a vociferous civil rights advocate, the program took a heavy toll on young blacks. A 1970 Defense Department study disclosed that 41 percent of Project 100,000 recruits were black, compared with 12 percent in the armed forces as a whole. What is more, 40 percent of Project 100,000 recruits were trained for combat, compared with 25 percent for the services generally.

More:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/05/29/mcnamara/index_np.html

[jwirr]

4. As the mother of/advocate for developmentally

disabled citizens I remember lobbying against this in the Vietnam war era. This is the absolute lowest level one can drop to and it does not surprise me that bushie could dig a deeper cesspool for himself and his military buddies. They are a true piece of shit.