Recruits eager to serve Uncle Sam

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/APC0101/60827008/1979


GRAND CHUTE — Bryce Lynn woke up Sunday morning a civilian. By 12:40 p.m., he was a soldier.

The 18-year-old Neenah resident was among a group of 31 people who recited the U.S. Army’s Oath of Enlistment before the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers beat the Clinton LumberKings 3-2 in a Midwest League baseball game at Fox Cities Stadium.

Others, like 17-year-old Ashtyn Anderson of Appleton, are involved with the Army’s delayed entry program and won’t attend basic training until next July, when she travels to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. snip

With about a month remaining in the recruitment season, Pullen said his company has written up over 600 enlistment contracts, up from the 498 inked the previous year. snip

“They’ve got mom and dad behind them, a lot of their influencers. But just the regular citizens, to hear it from them and give it to them is fantastic. These guys represent the best and brightest.”

[HereSince1628]

1. Best and brightest? They have stats on the number of top HS grads

that are choosing Uncle Sam's Army rather than UW Madison and other Wisconsin Colleges? I think not.

[eccles12]

2. Far from being the "brightest." More cannon fodder to protect the

in place of the children of privilege.

[marmar]

3. "Best and the brightest"?

I guess that's why white supremacist and L.A. gang symbols have turned up in Baghdad. F..king please.

[Ezlivin]

4. Best and brightest easy to get when you lower the standards

Forest Gump would be a frickin' genius in today's Army.

[reichstag911]

5. Forrest Gump is Commander in Chief.

Nah, just kidding. Gump was obviously more qualified and more compassionate than *.

[gratuitous]

6. And when they come home . . .

The lucky ones will be in body bags, and everyone will remember them with a tear in the eye and a lump in the throat. The child will be remembered as "dying to defend freedom" or some other such nonsense. And all the moms and dads who sent their children off to war will tell each other a whole bunch of lies to make themselves feel better. They will be backed up by a military bureaucracy and support system that can never acknowledge the truth, blaring propaganda about "defending America" and "becoming a man" by "serving" in the military.

The less lucky ones will come back to their home community as aliens, messed up mentally and physically. Their former friends and estranged relatives will no longer recognize them and they will shuffle through a familiar landscape as strangers, all the high-sounding words that accompanied their send-off now forgotten. Instead, they will hear the whispers and see the looks on familiar faces. Words that are no longer so high-sounding, and looks ranging from pity to contempt.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. "Do not use good steel to make nails, or, good men to make soldiers"

Chines proverb.

Cannon fodder and filler for body bags.