Reply #41: Morning Marketeers..... [View All]

[AnneD]

:donut: and lurkers. I saw 2 stories back to back on the Snews this morning. The first on was the report on the USAR and National Guard readiness and the second on was about the poor folks devastated by the winter tornadoes.

In the first story-they talked about how our reserves got active army cast offs and how some of their equipment dated to VN era. If they get new equipment-it stays in Iraq and they come home with less than nothing. They cannot do their main mission-defend the home front. The leaders testifies that while not broken-it in a bad way.

Well, in the mind of this ex Reservist-it is flat out busted, DOA, flat line, gone, gone, gone. Nothing short of a draft will revive it and that cuts me to my heart. It use to attract the best and brightest. Most of the folks I served with were small businessmen, high level civil servants, CEO's. These were the type of folks that personified yankee ingenuity. I learned how to rig just about anything from these guys. Because we didn't have the state of the art equipment-we scrounged and made do. But lack of equipment isn't what killed it. The continual deployment has killed it. The families and communities have got the short end of the stick. This administration has tried to fight this war on the cheap and this will have repercussions well into our future.

How does this effect those poor folks devastated by those twisters? One of the National Guards missions was that the Governor of the state could call them up to help deal with disasters and emergencies. So here we have our present day guard. Now IF, and that's a big IF, they are even home-most have no equipment to help. No CAT's, earth movers, anything to help move debris and find survivors. Nothing is more frustrating than to see your community devastated and you sitting there with your dick in your hand. The bedrock of our security at home is NOT homeland security-but our Guards and Reserve. Folks-we are in sad shape. People are not volunteering for this anymore and won't. Our military is at the breaking point. Throwing money at it will not fix the problem. It can only be fixed by either a draft-or curtailing obligations. End of story. If we can't take care of our obligations at home-we damn sure can't do it overseas.

Happy hunting and watch out for the bears.