Indiana National Guardsmen get goat training

[douglas9]

LAKEVILLE -- National Guardsmen were in town Tuesday getting armed with the latest weapon on terrorism: farming. Thirteen members from the 3-19th Agribusiness Development Team of the Indiana National Guard visited Newton Farms to learn the fundamentals of goat farming before deployment to Afghanistan in October.

"It's a concept by General Petraeus to counter insurgency by working with the people to give them an outlet besides terrorism," said 2nd Lt. Bart Lomont. "We're the third team to go."

Equipped with the knowledge of how to assess the health and overall care of livestock and crops, Guardsmen are working to help Afghans rebuild farming, which 80 percent of Afghans rely on for income.

But the Guard won't be giving up their machine guns and body armor. With 63 members in the unit, the unit offers practical agriculture along with combat zone readiness."I never thought I'd be doing (goat farming) in the National Guard," said Sgt. Alexander Purdue of Nashville, Tenn. "It shows our diversity, since we're all citizens who come from different jobs and we're all soldiers at the same time."

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100908/News01/9080328/1011/News&Template=printart

[unhappycamper]

1. Some Indiana National Guardsmen aslo got trained on how to ride a horse:

Soldiers get horse training before Afghan tour
The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Sep 5, 2010 13:11:06 EDT

Three instructors are helping train 60 soldiers and airmen at the Indiana military training site to ride horses before they head to Panjshir Province, where mountainous terrain makes it easier to travel by horse.

[valerief]

2. Ah, more men who stare at goats. nt

[Myrina]

3. Finally!!

Rather than scattering weapons, death and destruction around the area, if our 'military' truly acted as 'peacekeeping' forces and taught people how to plant, build, read/write, self-govern, etc ... there'd be alot less 'insurgents' ... then once we figure out that those tactics work outside the US, we can start to teach our inner city 'armies' how to lift themselves away from the 'kill or be killed' survival mindset too.

An Army that actually saves people's lives by teaching instead of annihiliating cultures with bunker busters -- who'da thunk??

[LiberalFighter]

4. Rather than train these idiots about goats send in the Peace Corps

or some other group that is not connected with the military.

No amount of training of these National Guards will qualify them to know enough about goats or other farming info.

Why the hell does the National Guard have a Agribusiness Dev Team? It is a bad idea to use military for civilian purposes.