| Well ya know, I have to call B.S. on that staement. Your ignorance is pervasive throughout your post. Have you ever been in one of those leadership positions? Even an NCO? |
Your ignorance is showing through. In answer to "even an NCO"? - yes.
I've worked at too many places to count, but one of which was an area that saw a lot of U.S. Army money. I can tell you for a fact that the most important thing there was keeping the commandant happy. Never mind that there were leaky roofs, drafty walls, or other problems. Have to have all of the best for the big boss. And for his secretary. And for his assistant. All civilians by the way.
The money spent on keeping the big boss in the best office, with the best (and mostly unused) "toys" and "tools" was obscene. Just absolute proof that the stories of spending hundreds of dollars to buy hammers and toilet seats weren't fabrications.
I've also dealt with the full-birds, the lite Colonels, the Majors, the Captains, and even directly with generals with more than one star. Some were smart people, some were completely clueless about their military job. They saw it as part time work, and though some took it as something very important and worthy of more than just a passing thought, most were just there to collect a paycheck and work towards yet another tax-payer funded retirement.
We're talking about the "Brownies" of the world. The type of people that screwed up horribly in the Army Corps of Engineers, in FEMA, and other places.
We're also talking about people that couldn't figure out which end of the weapon to point where. Where and/or how to load a weapon. Where and/or how to break down the standard firearm. No clue how to verify that a grenade even had the pin still in it.
Again, some people are good, some better, and some absolutely suck at the job of soldier. Ted says it above and it hasn't changed:
| too many National Guardsmen (and units) slack off on weekend drills, expecting that pre-deployment training to suffice. |
Exactly. Too many people treat the weekend as play time. They get to see their reserve/guard friends. They use the government paid for telephones, computers, internet, copiers, etc., and accomplish a lot of nothing. If they actually are held to task and actually do try to train they get dirty looks from the people that don't want to put forth the effort.
Who is responsible? Again, the local commanders. Those people are charged with keeping up troop readiness, troop morale, etc. Most don't care at all. As long as there isn't a problem getting their pay for their drill weekends things are fine. They gotta have that money to help pay for the Lexus, or for the big screen TV they wanted to buy. Civilian things and posessions that are more important than making sure that they and their troops are really ready if they get the call.
That is the b.s. and it is what it is. Any one that spends a weekend poking around a reserve/guard unit would see just that. If The Washington Post really wants to do an article on troop readiness they need not go very far to start checking for problems in units in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, etc. And if they actually paid attention to what was going on in those local units, rather than buying the buck passing and b.s. from many of the local c.o.'s they'd see the problem isn't coming from the White House on down, it's coming from the local levels.
