Comments on: CBS Sort of Gets It

By: whig

whig — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 09:47:12 +0000

Hard enough to rehabilitate people into ordinary society when they have been trained as killers. We’re going to need a lot of PTSD treatment.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:38:24 +0000

They need to be pulled out and stood down so they can get their non-military stuff in order to relieve that stress, then they need re-training to be an army again, instead of small clusters of people trying to stay alive in a hostile environment.

If you don’t give them an extended break, you are going to lose the people you need and get stuck with the crazies, the violence junkies. These people have been on an adrenalin overdose for more than a year and burns out the body and the mind. They need “normalization” so they can be re-trained to reality, because a war zone is not reality.

The institution needs the time to throughly debrief the troops coming back to find out what worked and what didn’t, including all of the little things like uniforms and personal equipment, as well as the vehicles and weapons.

They need to fix the payroll system and equipment management, because things have not been working, because those are the small irritants that become big problems.

These guys were thrust into a situation for which they had no real training, and then used as “beta testers” for all kinds of crap. They changed the damn uniform in the middle of a war – you don’t do that as it leads to friendly fire problems.

This was a mess on every level.

By: whig

whig — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 04:44:40 +0000

That sounds like a good thing, if I had any idea how to interpret it.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 02:50:35 +0000

We need a tourniquet to stop the bleeding while there is still a structure to work with.

By: whig

whig — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 00:19:19 +0000

Well, we can’t fix the army while it’s in Iraq, for sure.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:45:33 +0000

The question is how long it is going to take to rebuild an effective army – it’s already broken. The surge/escalation pretty much guaranteed that. The “substandard” people pulled in with standards lower than the draft are going to need to be weeded out and the middle ranks in both the enlisted and officer corps are in disparate straits.

By: whig

whig — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:03:59 +0000

Or your army.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:23:59 +0000

That’s a great way to lose your retirement.

By: whig

whig — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:07:23 +0000

Think of it like an investment strategy. Call it “investing for success.” Here’s how it works. When the stock goes up, you can withdraw some of the interest. When the stock goes down, you hold it no matter what because you can only sell when it goes up.