Prepare to learn more about Saddam’s WMD intentions

February 2006
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Posted by: Sister Toldjah on February 15, 2006 at 8:14 pm

I blogged last week about several hours of audio tapes that the House Permanent Select Committee was studying which contained conversations with Saddam Hussein regarding weapons of mass destruction. Tonight, via ABCNews Nightline we’ll get to hear some of those recordings:

Feb. 15, 2006 — ABC News has obtained 12 hours of tape recordings of Saddam Hussein meeting with top aides during the 1990s, tapes apparently recorded in Baghdad’s version of the Oval Office.

ABC News obtained the tapes from Bill Tierney [ST adds: this Bill Tierney] a former member of a United Nations inspection team who translated them for the FBI. Tierney said the U.S. government is wrong to keep these tapes and others secret from the public. “Because of my experience being in the inspections and being in the military, I knew the significance of these tapes when I heard them,” says Tierney. U.S. officials have confirmed the tapes are authentic, and that they are among hundreds of hours of tapes Saddam recorded in his palace office.

One of the most dramatic moments in the 12 hours of recordings comes when Saddam predicts — during a meeting in the mid 1990s — a terrorist attack on the United States. “Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2 and told the British as well â€¦ that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.” Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. “In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?” But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. “This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq.”

Also at the meeting was Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. “Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It’s so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it.”

The tapes also reveal Iraq ’s persistent efforts to hide information about weapons of mass destruction programs from U.N. inspectors well into the 1990s. In one pivotal tape-recorded meeting, which occurred in late April or May of 1995, Saddam and his senior aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had uncovered evidence of Iraq’s biological weapons program—a program whose existence Iraq had previously denied.

At one point Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law and the man who was in charge of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction efforts can be heard on the tapes, speaking openly about hiding information from the U.N.

“We did not reveal all that we have,” Kamel says in the meeting. “Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct.” Shortly after this meeting, in August 1995, Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan, and Iraq was forced to admit that it had concealed its biological weapons program. (Kamel returned to Iraq in February 1996 and was killed in a firefight with Iraqi security forces.)

It sounds like this tape promises to once again call into question the left’s persistent and insessant “BUSH LIED PEOPLE DIED!!!!!” rants.

The American Thinker also has a story up today that provides more insight into Iraq’s WMD programs:

Via Peter Glover’s website Wires from the bunker, we learn of an interview between Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator and Ryan Mauro of Worldthreats.com.

Only two weeks ago, General Sada, formerly Sadaam’s no 2 Air Force Commander, told the New York Sun that Sadaam’s WMD was moved to Syria just six weeks before the US-led invasion. Now Ali Ibrahim confirms this and explains the underlying strategy of Saddam:

I know Saddam’s weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980’s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation. Not to mention I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew. At this point Saddam knew that the United States were eventually going to come for his weapons and the United States wasn’t going to just let this go like they did in the original Gulf War. He knew that he had lied for this many years and wanted to maintain legitimacy with the pan Arab nationalists. He also has wanted since he took power to embarrass the West and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. After Saddam denied he had such weapons why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found? That would only legitimize President Bush, who he has a personal grudge against. What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.

Moreover, Ali Ibrahim debunks other shibboleths of the left, including the allegation of no ties between al Qaeda terror and Saddam:

As far as Al-Qaeda is concerned this support was limited for a long time, mainly due to the fact that Al-Qaeda had the hopes of creating an Islamic empire while Saddam wanted a secular Arab nationalist empire. They only really came to terms in the mid-90’s due to the fact that both knew they shared the same short term enemy. Once they came to terms on this Saddam provided Al-Qaeda with intelligence support and whatever money or munitions they could provide. Saddam has had very long standing contacts in the black market as well as with Moscow and would provide whatever munitions he could through these contacts.

Read the whole thing.

Of course, none of this will stop the “BUSH LIED PEOPLE DIED!!!!!” chants coming from the usual suspects, but more and more information keeps coming out that backs up the President’s claims about the potential threat Saddam posed, and why we had to take him out. So many bloggers and others on the left in the opinion media keep misreporting what Charles Duelfer, who took David Kay’s place as leader of the Iraq Survey Group which was in charge of overseeing the search for WMD in post-Saddam Iraq, said about Saddam Hussein’s quest for WMDs. He didn’t rule out the possibility of them being moved to Syria – just said it couldn’t be confirmed one way or the other. Of course there were and are still piles of documents that neither Kay nor Duelfer sifted through. Stephen Hayes writes:

Estimates from people involved in the document exploitation project tell us the U.S. government has in its possession some 2 million “exploitable items.” Of that number, less than 3 percent–somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 items–have been fully exploited. The information that will be made public by the end of this week–28 captured al Qaeda documents and 12 hours of audiotape from Iraq–will provide a glimpse of a fraction of a fraction of the total collection.

Hayes cautions not to overhype nor dismiss the tapes because they don’t prove Saddam had WMD in Iraq at the time the war started. But this new information coming out from these tapes (from what I’ve read) show a serious intent to thwart UN weapons inspectors at every turn, a support for mass terror against America, and a willingness to create WMD as necessary.

Thank you, GWB, for making the decision you made to take out a sworn enemy of this country. In a post 9-11 world, it was the right thing to do. And thanks to the US military and our coalition partners, who’ve been a tremendous help in the fight against terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all over the world.

Read more commentary on this via Jeff Goldstein, Lorie Byrd at Polipundit, Suitably Flip, Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred, The Sundries Shack, Say Anything

Related Toldjah So posts:

In: Politics, War on Terror | Email This Post | Print This

Baklava says:

February 15, 2006 at 8:22 pm

ST wrote, “Thank you, GWB, for making the decision you made to take out a sworn enemy of this country

Yes. Thank you “W” for the courage and leadership in making that decision and picking one of the plans (that the Pentagon provided) that removed Saddam from power and then acted with responsibility in reconstructing and implementing Iraqi leadership just as we had to do in the 7 year and 10 year plan after toppling Japan and Germany.

Sloan says:

February 16, 2006 at 1:11 pm

Putting all of this together, the preliminary picture points to a very real likelihood that Saddam was colluding with al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, to manufacture weapons for these groups and then pass them off to the terrorists for use against Western targets…particularly the Unites States.

Somebody recently speculated that the Bush administration may have its own “October surprise” in the making…a sudden revelation, just before the elections, that provides proof-positive that Saddam either had WMDs or moved them to another state. This is going to be an interesting year.

steve says:

February 16, 2006 at 3:24 pm

He had no weapons, that was his scam. Perception is the game. What one believes is reality IS reality. Poker bluff, and bush fell hook, line and sinker the stupid, dry drunk. You folks need a serious discussion on what propaganda is. Peace

Severian says:

February 16, 2006 at 3:44 pm

Yeah, he had none, except for the ones that have been found. You know steve, those 21 shells filled with sarin, VX and mustard gas that aren’t really there. It figures that someone like you would be into what one believes is reality is reality. It’s totally apparent from the delusional things you post here. Regardless of your feelings on it, reality is what it is, not what you think it is. Stepping in front of a truck and thinking it doesn’t exist won’t stop you from becoming a hood ornament.

February 16, 2006 at 3:46 pm

BTW, great strategy for Saddam eh? Bluff and bluff that you have something that you don’t, and get invaded, deposed, and probably executed because of it. That’s like being such a good bluffer at poker that you convince your opponent you have 5 aces, at which point he shoots you for being a cheat. Real slick…

Dave in CO says:

February 16, 2006 at 4:23 pm

Steve- you sound like you admire Saddam’s ability to pull the long con. Your kinda guy, eh? Peas and carrots

February 16, 2006 at 5:25 pm

Steve wrote, “Poker bluff, and bush fell hook, line and sinker

So did the Democrats like Kerry, Clinton and Albright and so did the intelligence agencies of Russia, Germany, France, Britian and the U.S.

Steve wrote the following “He had no weapons, that was his scam.”

I see. So who told the lie again? His scam and yet you continually lie by saying Bush lied when Bush simply relayed what most politicians at the time relayed from the intelligence agencies….

You twisted your own self into a pretzel and you DON’T EVEN KNOW IT!!!!

thatniceguy says:

February 16, 2006 at 6:54 pm

Wow. You guys *really* want the WMD dream to come true.

Haven’t you gotten it yet? Weapons, shmeapons. This war is and always has been about an ideology. One that requires the U.S. to have a strong military presence in the region.

It’s just neocon, Pax-Americana so thinly veiled that it’s ridiculous that anyone thinks WMDs have any relevance to whether we’d have gone to war in Iraq. If it wasn’t WMDs it would’ve been something else (as we’ve seen from the constantly morphing emphasis on why we went to war –WMDs, Iraqi freedom, Al Qaeda connections, blah, blah, blah).

Iraq just provided the “justification” (PNAC’s words, not mine) and WMDs the initial excuse b/c they knew they could scare the snot out of Americans with talk of mushroom clouds and other nightmare scenarios.

Why so many still quibble over this red herring is beyond me. You believe that finding WMDs will exonerate your man, but it won’t. Get over it already, you’re arguing a point that, even if won, will mean absolutely nada.

February 16, 2006 at 7:16 pm

Ah, the inappropriately named “nice guy,” I see what the left’s approach will be now. After whining that there were never any WMDs, now that it appears that you are about to be embarassed, it’s suddenly not about WMDs, nope, we never were interested in those.

Your goal posts are so moveable they must be on teflon gliders.

February 16, 2006 at 7:45 pm

Severian: “…you are about to be embarassed”

Whew, that’s a good one. Wait…

Whew! Ok, I’m back in my chair now. I wonder how much you’ve been embarrased since this admin has been in office, or heck, just last week for that matter. Anyway, thanks for the laugh.

Alright…so, Severian knows that I’ve argued that there were never any WMDs.

Interesting. Now, care to post something based on facts?

While you’re at it, how about posting a response to what I actually wrote?

Mwalimu Daudi says:

February 16, 2006 at 8:45 pm

Nice to see you get off of the floor, NiceGuy. But the question still remains: Why did Clinton, Kerry, and Albright claim Saddam had WMD long before Big Bad Bubba Bush showed up with his pack of dastardly neocons?

Incidently, what about Severian’s point about the WMD that have been found (at least so far)? How many was Saddam allowed to keep? Or to put it another way – how many people does Saddam get to kill before he becomes a problem worth dealing with? How many “acts of genocide” does it take to make a genocide?

sanity says:

February 16, 2006 at 9:01 pm

Now we have proof.

It comes from none other than Hussein’s General Georges Sada. The nub of his data is this: Hussein flew WMD into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were loaded onto civilian planes with seats removed to make room, so states Hussein’s second in command official in Hussein’s air force.

Therefore, Mr. Bush was correct in his repeated assurance that the liberation of Iraqis was motivated by removing these WMD, such feared over years by both Democrats and Republicans. They were also feared by other free nations’ leadership.

Iraqi Airways Boeings had their seats removed in order to transport cargo. Special Republican Guard Brigades transported WMD onto the planes.

“‘Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming,’ Mr. Sada said. ‘They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians.’”

Vouching for his honesty is Terry Law, President, World Compassion, Tulsa, Oklahoma, a humanitarian organization. Law stated to the press that he has known Sada, a Christian, since 2002, having spent time in his Sada’s in the USA. Law has no doubt that Sada is revealing truth.

“‘Do I believe this man? Yes,’ Mr. Law said. ‘It’s been solid down the line and everything checked out. This is not a publicity hound. This is a man who wants peace (while) putting his family on the line.’”

Further, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on December 23, 2002, stated: “‘Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria.’” See article in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly .

Syria and Iraq were joined at the hip regarding the Baathism ideology—a mix of Nazism and Marxism.

Syria’s own chemical warfare agenda has been of extreme concern to the United States and Israel.

LINK

even after the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had a robust and diverse WMD program. Post-Desert Storm weapons inspections revealed the existence of a massive Iraqi stockpile of chemical and biological agents, a large portion of which was fully weaponised, as well as a mature nuclear weapons programs perhaps a year or two away from completion. Although some of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles were destroyed by the time Saddam Hussein expelled the UN inspectors in 1998, the rest remained.

Indeed, Iraqâ€˜s submission to the Security Council of a patently false December 2002 declaration, combined with an arrogant assertion that its WMD stockpiles were destroyed without any record of the fact, signalled Saddam’s clear intention never to meet the obligations he undertook at the close of the Gulf War. (The notion that Iraq’s totalitarian regime, obsessed as it was with controlling all aspects of public and private life, would have destroyed its WMD without generating some paperwork in the process is laughable.)

Saddam refused to provide any reliable accounting of what happened to his WMD stockpiles, and this deception went on for years, despite the high cost of the international sanctions regime. Even when he had numerous opportunities to dispel American anxiety about his WMD capabilities — through “arranged” defections or the use of favoured French or Russian interlocutors (who could have been discretely given the kind of access to Iraq’s facilities denied to the UN inspectors) — he declined.

Instead, a stream of Iraqi defectors and information gleaned from electronic intercepts and signal intelligence reinforced the conclusion that Iraq still maintained a substantial WMD capability. This was supported by the discoveries made by coalition forces that the Iraqi military establishment maintained elaborate chemical warfare-related paraphernalia.

Not even a long-term inspection strategy could have stopped the full panoply of WMD-related activities. As was persuasively argued some months ago by Condoleezza Rice, experience amassed during the “de-nuclearisation” of such countries as South Africa and Ukraine demonstrates that a prerequisite to a successful nuclear disarmament is a willing host regime that is prepared to give the international community unrestricted access to its facilities and weapons installations. A rogue regime that is playing a shell game with inspectors can never be disarmed with any degree of confidence. Significantly, this concern was well recognized by the UN weapons inspectors; neither Hans Blix, nor any of his predecessors, have ever claimed that they were confident of their ability to disarm Iraq fully of its WMD.
Moreover, it is far from clear that a “just-in-time” approach to WMD deployment is any less dangerous, from the Anglo-American perspective, than possession of a WMD stockpile. At least with respect to chemical and biological agents, the most important assets appear to be the availability of suitable expertise and the necessary industrial base. A rogue state, capable of reconstituting its WMD arsenal at a time of its own choosing, poses as much of a threat as a regime with the WMD forces in being. Certainly, the recent discovery of mobile biological labs, and of various “dual-use” production facilities, indicate that Saddam Hussein was fully cognisant of the manufacturing flexibility of such weapons, and that he was determined to protect his WMD capabilities, making at least a portion of them difficult to detect and, therefore, less vulnerable to attack.
Finally, an Iraqi just-in-time strategy would have been even more dangerous to the United States because of the possibility that it would share either existing WMD, or technical expertise, with a terrorist group. In fact, under the “paradoxical” logic of strategy, a rogue regime which has adopted a virtual arsenal approach, while disclaiming its intent to field WMD, might well feel that it has more plausible deniability and, therefore, would actually be more likely to transfer WMD to a third party.
When the totality of this evidence is fairly considered, the administration’s overall assessment of the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD program remains fully justified. Significantly, Iraq’s failure to avail itself of the one last chance to disarm, offered by Resolution 1441, coming as it did on the heels of 10 years worth of sanctions and 16 successive Security Council resolutions, properly convinced the Administration that Saddam would never give up his WMD program, no matter what economic and diplomatic pressure was brought to bear upon him. Therefore, the policy choice to effect a “regime change” was both consistent with the administration’s reasonable prospective assessments of Saddam’s WMD program and constituted the only effective way of dealing with this threat.

And as for another Left-chant, “The threat wasn’t imminent,” the President explicitly argued that intelligence couldn’t guarantee such finely calibrated assessments: “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.”

Having revealed the basis for my own opinions, I often ask them to share the rationale for their beliefs. I also ask them to cite the documents, evidence, or testimonies that helped them formulate their position.
The responses vary wildly. Some people break off the dialogue immediately, as though examining the thought-process behind an opinion is entirely out of bounds. A few shift instantly from conversation mode to name calling. (One of these accused me of being so tightly wrapped in the flag that I can’t see anything.) And some — a small minority — actually provide links to the resources they consider important.
I am continually astounded by the fact that very few of the President’s critics seem to have actually examined the evidence regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Thousands of pages of unclassified (or declassified) documents on the subject have been released by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the CIA, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and a score of other organizations. The findings of the UN weapons inspectors, including UNSCOM and UNMOVIC reports, are available online. The deliberations and findings of the UN Security Council are just a mouse-click away, but a lot of people are too busy hating the President to review the data.
I’ve read as many of the reports as I can get my hands on, with particular attention to the evidence provided before the onset of military action in Iraq. In my opinion, given the information available at the time, there was every reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had an ongoing chemical/biological warfare program even as the weapons inspection teams were carrying out their UN mandate.
In the eyes of many Bush-detractors, anything that supports the position of the current administration qualifies as propaganda, and can be automatically disregarded. But many of the reports come from sources outside of the American government, and a lot of the documents predate the Bush administration. A significant number originate from sources that are overtly critical of the United States and/or the President, making it fairly difficult to dismiss their contents as Bush administration propaganda.

Read the rest here. A very good read indeed and I highly suggest reading it.

Hope that helps.

February 16, 2006 at 10:17 pm

Don’t distract him Mwalimu, he’s busy humping all those straw men in his last post!

February 17, 2006 at 10:10 am

How large do you think the budget for the Defense Department would be if America had no enimies and was at Peace? Follow the self-interest. Are we at war because people hate us or do people hate us because we are at war? Peace

Lorica says:

February 17, 2006 at 1:36 pm

And Severian, Sadamn will be in denial all the way to the firing squad. He will think to himself, “reality is that I am still Dictator!!” He will repeat that multiple times, but it still won’t stop him from being dead. DED dead!!! Then you all, except Steve, are invited to my house for cocktails toasting his death. AMEN!!! Halalujah!!!! Thank YOU Jesus!!!! Peace at last!!!! – Lorica

February 17, 2006 at 2:00 pm

Personally I think he should be put in a pit and all of his victims should be allowed to stone him to death.

Fitting I think.

At least they may have some sort of cloture afterwards.

February 17, 2006 at 3:27 pm

Sick puppies. Peace

February 17, 2006 at 3:47 pm

No, its called allowing the victims thier own.

While it may not agree with your peacable anarchist (oxymoron in itself) theories of leberal left I wish the world was mine so I could….

It does read more into how the Middle East would do things. If they can stone a woman for not wearing a scarf, then all victims should be allowed to stone the man who killed thier relatives, raped thier children, cut off hands and feet, carved out eyes or shot fathers and mothers in front of thier own families.

If he did that to me, I would like nothing more to do the same to him.

You just go about doing your yoga and thinking the world under your control would be such a pristeen place, a utopia, and when you come back down from smoking your bong we will welcome you back to the real world.

Until then there will be bad people, and good people, and victims.

What Saddam did was not a police matter.
Saddam the gang banger? Yeah right.
Death he dealt in, death he should get.

February 18, 2006 at 11:23 am

Reverend Ike once said, “If you want to help the poor people, don’t be one of them.” In otherwords, don’t be part of the problem, be part of the solution. You cannot wash out blood with blood. And you cannot have Peace(Christ) by making war(anti-Christ). Peace

Big Bang Hunter says:

February 18, 2006 at 12:31 pm

Reverend Ike once said, “If you want to help the poor people, don’t be one of them.”

- The problem with your “in other words” is your interpretation is the exact opposite of what he was trying to convey, and you know it…

- What he ment is you can’t help others if you’re weak yourself. Like you Steve. A weakling who wants others to join him in their cowering fear so he won’t feel so guilty.

- Wonder what the 128 family members I lost in WWII to the Nazi’s would have to say to people like you if their peaceful existance hadn’t been so rudely halted by a lunitic. There couldn’t have been a more peaceful and peace loving group of people than that, and you see what peaceful got them.

- the real problem with seditionists like yourself Steve, is that by not dealing with the realities of this imperfect world you generally get even more people killed.

- Besides its not really peace you want its a deferment so you won’t have to fight for the country you live off of. Why not show some real class for a change and just say that instead of hiding behind a lot of Leftist BS?

- Bang

February 18, 2006 at 4:50 pm

Poor people are also weak? They are the one’s generally going to the military to improve their life condition, aren’t they? The best way to get more people killed is to gin up wars. The condition of Peace is a lifestyle not a head trip. Peace

February 18, 2006 at 5:25 pm

- So aside from not responding to a single point I made in that last post, the typical asshat eveasion, now you come with the idea that everyone in the military is from poor disadvantaged or minority groups. Is that your contention, because I’m sure some of those troops that protect your sick butt, while you and the rest of the moonbats are busy undercutting them, would love to have you say that too their faces.

- Steve, you and your commie friends are digging you way right into political oblivion. Ideas like you just posted are intolerant, bigoted, racist, and almost every other form of prejudice possible to have….

Tell me again why the majority of Americans should take you and your ideas at all serious and vote for your party?

February 18, 2006 at 7:57 pm

I can see steve has not served in the military nor knows much about it by his comments.

I will grant you this steve, most well-to-do people will not join the military, that much is a given.

BUT lower and middle class people are what make up the most if not ALL of the military.

Let me school you my small minded liberal…

The U.S. military is not a “poor man’s force.”

The data shows the force is more educated than the population at large.

Servicemembers have high school diplomas or the general equivalency diploma. More servicemembers have some college than the typical 18- to 24-year-olds. “To carry representativeness to the extreme, we would have to have a less-educated force or we would want a lower-aptitude force,” Gilroy said.
The study is part of DoD’s focus to bring the best recruits into the military. The services – who are responsible for manning, equipping and training the force – take this data and apply it to recruiting efforts.

The force is a volunteer force; no one is coerced into serving. The military is one option young people have after high school. Military service offers money for college – money a large segment of the population doesn’t have. For those people, the military is an attractive option.

Many young people who don’t yet know what they want to do see the military as a place to serve and decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives, rather than take a low-paying job or do nothing.

Critics say the U.S. military has too many African-Americans as compared to the population and not enough Hispanics or Asian-Americans. “We don’t recruit for race,” Gilroy said. “We have standards, and if people meet those standards, then should we say they are not allowed in because of race? That would be wrong.”

The statistics show the number of African-American servicemembers is dropping. That concerns Gilroy and his office. The military is a leader in equal opportunity in the United States, he said, adding that few, if any, Fortune 500 companies can match the equal employment opportunity record of the military. The office is studying why young black men and women are not signing up.

The office also is studying the Hispanic population in America. Census records say Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United States. Young Hispanic men and women have a strong tendency to serve in the military, though so far, only the Marine Corps has been “able to break the code” to get significant numbers of recruits, Gilroy said.

On the socioeconomic side, the military is strongly middle class, Gilroy said. More recruits are drawn from the middle class and fewer are coming from poorer and wealthier families. Recruits from poorer families are actually underrepresented in the military, Gilroy said.

Other trends are that the number of recruits from wealthier families is increasing, and the number of recruits from suburban areas has increased. This also tracks that young men and women from the middle class are serving in the military.

Young men and women from urban areas are not volunteering, Gilroy said. In fact, urban areas provide far fewer recruits as a percentage of the total population than small towns and rural areas.

DoD and the services will use these statistics and more to craft their recruiting policies, Gilroy said.

Lets start with Pay:
Military Pay
If you were thinking the military is a “step-up” for most people then you are sadly mistaken. Some people take pay cuts when they join the military, which I find not fair at all. I think if anything our military should be well paid for the jobs and dangers they face.

Here is a pay chart by pay grade:
Pay Grade Chart

You want additional information on the Military, there is a wide assortment of information HERE

Training wise, you have basic training, your AIT (Advanced Individual Trianing – where you learn your MOS or job you trained for), then you have NCO training, Jump school training, Ranger Training, Jungle training (I had this with my unit), Special OPS, ect.

There is alot of training involved that push recruits and soldiers to the limits. It shows them what they are made of and what they can and can’t do.

I am not trying to sound like a recruiting poster, but the discipline I learned and training I received in the US ARMY I found very benefitial in my normal life in how to deal with problems, how to over come and adapt.

*chuckles* and how to catch a few winks on downtime. I can sleep through a major thunderstorm but be woken with just a little bit of light.

Anyways, if you have questions concerning the military and not lies or propaganda from the liberals, myself and others who have gone through the military will answer any question you put forth.

February 18, 2006 at 9:03 pm

In the 4 years that I served, I met very few Rhodes scholars and alot of inner city kids and country boys. Things haven’t changed that much. Peace

February 18, 2006 at 9:05 pm

Mwalimu: “But the question still remains: Why did Clinton, Kerry, and Albright claim Saddam had WMD long before Big Bad Bubba Bush showed up with his pack of dastardly neocons?”

But the Dems you mention didn’t go to war (and don’t say b/c they didn’t have the guts–that’s tired). Nor had they authored the policies that PNAC authored. If they had, I’d say the same about them. Have you actually read the PNAC papers? The so-called “Bush-doctrine” is nothing but PNAC’s Pax Americana.

Mwalimu:
“Incidently, what about Severian’s point about the WMD that have been found (at least so far)?”

What about them? I didn’t say Iraq had none. I said it didn’t matter either way. We still would have gone to war. That’s according to what I believe is PNAC’s influence on this administration, the obvious cherry-picking, the revelations of many ex-admin officials, Bob Woodward, etc.

Mwalimu: “How many was Saddam allowed to keep? Or to put it another way – how many people does Saddam get to kill before he becomes a problem worth dealing with? How many “acts of genocide” does it take to make a genocide?

If it’s about stopping genocide, then why aren’t we in Darfur?

February 18, 2006 at 9:58 pm

thatniceguy lied by saying, “But the Dems you mention didn’t go to war

The month long bombing in 1998 didn’t happen? It did.

THe Democrats didn’t vote for the war in 2002? They did

Thatniceguy disagreed with going to war and is living in the past because that decision has long been gone. He said, “We still would have gone to war.

When will you get over the fact that the decision has already been made and we went? Saddam was removed. What? You want to put him back in power and go back in time? and say sorry? Geesh. HOW ABOUT MOVING FORWARD IN LIFE. Deal with reality. Why not debate on what we do now? Are you one of those types who want to pull out immediately and let there be a bloodbath or are you one who wants to honor the people of Iraq and continue giving them their country and building that bridge. Japan and Germany took 7 years and 10 years. We are only on the 10th year and we’ll have to hear thatniceguys all over continue LIVING IN THE PAST.

But I didn’t want to go mom. But mom…. I didn’t want to go. Moooommm. Why did we have to gooooo.

February 19, 2006 at 2:23 pm

Baklava: “The month long bombing in 1998 didn’t happen? It did”

You’re not sincerely equating that with what’s going on in Iraq now are you? I mean, you do see a difference, right?

Baklava: When will you get over the fact that the decision has already been made and we went?

That’s a hoot. My original post was admonishing you to do the same. If you look at the topic of this thread (in your title bar), you’ll see that it’s YOU GUYS who are still holding on and desparately trying to prove the WMDs were there. My post was telling you to get over it, b/c it had nothing to do with why we went to Iraq anyway. Ironic huh?

Baklava:“Are you one of those types who want to pull out immediately and let there be a bloodbath or are you one who wants to honor the people of Iraq and continue giving them their country and building that bridge.

When will you grow tired of that ridiculous false choice? That is such regurgitation of Bush admin propaganda crap and you should find it insulting to your intelligence.

Just so you know, Murtha had the best plan I’ve heard to date. Not because he’s a Democrat (in fact, they didn’t even line up behind it), but because he called the situation right and had a sensible military option. I’m sure this admin will adopt some form of it down the road, when it becomes obvious that there’s not much other choice. I just hope it’s sooner than later. I’m tired of hearing about the senseless dying over there.

Baklava: “…Japan and Germany…”

Don’t even bother with that comparison. Different countries, histories, influences, etc. Sheesh, U.S.S.R. vs. Afghanistan is more relevant than that nonsense.

And my original point was that it’s important to understand the real agenda b/c it’s a roadmap to the future and very much relevant to shaping the current debate. But, I guess you missed that with you ridiculous crying routine.

So, let me ask you directly: Are you saying that PNAC’s Pax Americana has nothing to do with our foreign policy, Iraq, etc.?

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