okay. okay. I owe this space another creative article. But I have been working away at my new weekly digest called Activist Page. But it really should be called Activist Scrapbook. Later today I will post a URL to go find it. It's at least 45 pages of pdf file. With pictures and videos and a Thanksgiving card and all such like.

Meanwhile the war horror stories continue. I think of my son the marine recruiter daily. Today I was "researching" the School of the Americas. They had a demonstration there yesterday with 16-19,000 people. That place should be TORN DOWN. I knew all about in the 60's for pete's sake. Why is it still there? It trains people to TORTURE.

I just ran across the following article. I wanted some fun and was laughing at some jokes when it was in an email. As I opened up the article a BIG shockwave ad for champagne flew towards my eyes. Then I saw ads all over the page for gobs of canapes and food. The newspaper ads that paid to run this article are all about glut and consumption. Let's fight a big fat war and keep consumer alive, shall we?

Today, 30,000 jobs were cut at GM. Each one of those jobs will affect lots of other people. Towns will die. Of COURSE Oshawa, Ontario is one of the affected plants. NAFTA has not proved good for us. More jobs will be outsourced from here when an international conglomerate comes in and buys the ruins of General Motors. The guys at the top were cheating on their accounting practices, so to avoid bankruptcy, they take it out on the backs of workers, who in turn can't pay their pharmacists, their babysitters, their automechanics, their electric companies ...

I am not sad to see the dinosaur SUVs pass away. Time for them to go. But look at the price that some people pay to keep the war machine going. Rumsfield & His Cohorts have different types of war plans that don't need tanks. They can torture, send in planes to release white phosphorus with impunity, let American and Iraqi soldiers fight with no protective armor. Meanwhile, everybody have a good time on dayz off and party hearty. Here's to the champagne and canapes ....


GAO says military falling far short in filling vital positions
Defense official denies missions are hampered
By Damien Cave
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
November 18, 2005

The military is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re-enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.

The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for in the last year.



Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the past two years.

The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analyst jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortfalls in filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.

The report found that, in all, the military – which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970s – had failed to adequately staff fully 41 percent of its combat and noncombat ranks.
Officials with the accountability office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals.

As a result, the GAO report questioned whether Congress had been given an accurate picture by the Pentagon of the military's ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The aggregate recruiting numbers are rather meaningless," said Derek B. Stewart, the GAO's director of military personnel. "For Congress and this nation to truly understand what's happening with the all-volunteer force and its ability to recruit and retain highly qualified people, you have to drill down into occupational specialties. And when you do, it's very revealing."

David S.C. Chu, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, denied that the military lacks what it needs to complete the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. "That's what I'm trying to advise against as a conclusion," he said in an interview from the Pentagon.

He said the report failed to appreciate how the Department of Defense handles its recruiting efforts, and had "failed to take into account the dynamic nature of the problem we're trying to solve."

"This report tries to cast that pall on what's going on, but it's misread the fundamental mechanics of how the department actually manages personnel," Chu said. He said that the targets the GAO used to calculate shortfalls are simply guideposts for staffing levels, established at the beginning of a fiscal year.

"As a strategic matter, you may decide, 'Well, I don't really need to have every unit at 100 percent,' " Chu said. "Or, 'I don't really need to fill a particular career field at this point in history at 100 percent.' The report assumes that all positions will always be filled. That's not, in fact, the strategy."

Some military experts also said the gaps would be dangerous only if they continue.

Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the problems posed by the shortfalls would be eased if the military begins to cut the number of men and women it has deployed in Iraq. "But in the degree we have shortfalls of various sorts now, and we multiply that by several years, then we get into serious trouble," O'Hanlon said.

The GAO report also found that often the military offered enlistment bonuses to people who signed up for jobs that were already overfilled.

An Army recruiter in New York, who insisted on anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak to the media, said it was not uncommon for noncombat positions to be opened up at the end of a tough recruiting month, even though people were not needed in those jobs.

[One good lie deserves another, eh?]