Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Compare and Contrast

A timeline.

Around this time four years ago a GAO report detailing a shocking increase in recruiting improprieties. It was such a problem that the Army had to cease recruiting operations for a day.

Another GAO report was released on this topic back in late January. I saw the first mention of it in a press agency today.

In the user-driven news source "Kansas City Info Zine".

Five years ago this would be an above the fold in the New York Times. Today, it takes a Kansas City resident to post it online.

There has been a 27% decline in substantiated recruiting improprieties across all services despite a 4% increase in the number of people being recruited. The number of reported improprieties has declined as well.

More people, fewer shady things.

The report continues and talks about the impact which the focus on reducing RI and improving QC has had on the services.

It's not that this is something which should be front-page news.

It should be expected that this country's military recruiting personnel should be held to a high standard, a standard higher than what we hold the main of their respective services. As I've written before, in most communities their recruiting center is the only military presence. The individuals manning that station should be expected to embody the service for which they serve (a recent conversation with someone makes me wonder if the Marines aren't embodying their service by having their second-most common RI be sexual misconduct).

While NBC shouldn't interrupt their regularly scheduled programming for the important announcement that the military recruiting services are no longer lying to get everyone in, it shouldn't be up to some diligent Kansas City resident to provide the only media exposure for a story that is the coda to a story that was the talk of the military-bashing only five years ago (I was going to link to one of the blogs I read back then who was always on about how dirty and filthy recruiters were, but his site is either down, or he's protected it from being viewed by people who he doesn't want reading it).

For all the strum und drang about recruiting throughout the hard part of Iraq, it's certainly taken a back seat. Even before the economy took a hit, mission success never mattered as much to the press as the mission failure narrative.

Color me shocked.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Hope and Change!

No, my layout did not finally destroy your eyesight. I finally upgraded my blogger settings to allow the new editor and downloaded a new template. I hope it isn't as hard on some folks' eyes as the old one.

Unfortunately it seems that my comments have disappeared... unless I can find a way to load the blogger comment system with the comments I d/l from Haloscan/Echo.

If you're reading this and I've forgotten to relink you, I apologize. Let me know and I'll add.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Commenty Kinda Goodness!

I check my email and I am bombarded. Like a dozen new emails. I don't have that many friends. I check them and they're all from JS-Kit. Which, apparently, bought Haloscan who previously hosted my comments.

Someone had been going through my archives and leaving lots of comments. Very positive ones which made me reread some of my suffering-induced emo-rantings from a time I'd hoped to forget.

Here's the problem though, and why I likely won't be remaining on JS-Kit. I have no idea which posts this person was commenting on. The admin side I'm looking at has no link to the original post. It takes me to some social-network look alike thingy that doesn't let me see what was being commented on!

So, to whoever you are, if you make it to the current pages "Thanks". I know that I wrote a lot more, and about things that were more interesting way back in the day. If there is anything you have a question about please feel free to email me and ask. I'm always happy to answer questions.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Damned if you do....

A senior Army official said the investigation found evidence that military doctors at Walter Reed were so focused on their teaching and clinical work that they failed to adequately supervise Maj. Hasan or alert authorities when he began to express extremist religious views and harshly criticize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I am trying to imagine the number of hours of mandatory training that would be required within an organization if one of their senior officers had suggested that the career of a junior officer be stopped because of his religious views. What's great is, even if one of those officers had decided to risk his career to suggest that MAJ Hasan should be investigated, and the investigation had turned up the evidence which has been found, the officer making the original claims would still likely face some fall-out for daring to be so insensitive as to think "This person could be violent because of his religious views". Because, of course, we don't have Dr. Manhattan around to explain to use what could have happened by was prevented by the intervention of this hypothetical officer.