Branum; expert on incompetence
An IVAW refugee sent me this video of James Branum explaining that which he doesn’t understand – enlistment contracts for the military;
This is Sgt Abe that Branum mentions from TheHonestRecruiter.org, a Quaker organization;
At the time Branum filmed his video above, he had four clients in jail.
I joined the Army after Vietnam, I guess I’m the only guy who was not lied to by his recruiter (salute to you SSG Carroll of the Liverpool, NY recruiting center wherever you are).
Category: None
Once again (as if it needed to be mentioned), this is another example of how the IVAW is opposed to the military and not the Iraq War.
Would they support recruitment in any circumstance? I highly doubt it.
Um, gee Jonn. Me, too. After Vietnam, during the Cold War and my Recruiter SSG Robert B. St.Clair never lied to me, either.
Huh.
As a matter of fact, when I asked him if we would ever go to war again,(I was young, give me a break)he looked me in the eyes and said, “There are no guarantees in anything, so if you think Uncle Sam wants a pansy-assed kid in his Army, turn around and get outta my office!”
Adirondack Patriot: There you would be completely wrong-but I don’t think it’s unheard of to want recruiters to be honest. My recruiter, for example, lied to me before 9/11. Granted, he lied to me about different sorts of things. He told me I would have to cut all my hair off before going to boot camp (thus why I showed up looking all butch and endured no end of questions). He told me that there were no psyops openings and wouldn’t be for at least two years, so I should sign up for the job I only kind of wanted RIGHT AWAY. He told me there was no chance of my getting a signing bonus or Army College Fund-which was a lie. He just would have had to do the paperwork showing I’d had some college at the time of enlistment. He also told me that if I dropped out of college to join the military, the military would make sure I didn’t get a bad record for dropping classes. (SO NOT TRUE) He told me a lot of lies. They just happened to be little lies. But they were still pretty shitty and unnecessary.
A recruiter is in sales, no different than any other sales people. Just as you have honest sales people, you also have dishonest sales people. Just because someone has a dishonest car salesman, does that mean all of them are bad??? Does that warrant protesting car dealers everywhere?
This is no different, however, I consider the source, so it doesn’t really mean a whole helluva lot to me.
My recruiter was no bs honest and she never said anything to try and talk me into anything. In fact, she talked me out of one field I was considering, she wasn’t the only one,(I was a greedy bastard and there was an $22,000 enlistment bonus for that field)she told me that I had a high asvab score and could choose any program I wanted. She told me to go for the technological fields. I did, but it didn’t matter, I still ended up in the dirt.
My recruiter lied to me, he told me that Ft. Leonardwood was a spa. I showed up expecting to get regular massages and be able to sleep in untill noon, but them drill sergeants were mean. He also told me that combat engineers don’t go into combat and I would never be deployed…
Really? Are people still using that tired ass excuse? My recruiter lied to me…wah…I didn’t know that being an infantryman involved shooting at people.
This meeting just made me want to bang my head on my keyboard.
“Would they support recruitment in any circumstance? I highly doubt it.”
Ditch the Stars-n-Stripes for the Hammer-n-Sickle and they’d clamor for a return to the draft.
OldTrooper:
No, it doesn’t mean that all of them are bad, but it does mean I think it’s fair to get frustrated by the guys who lie…who are usually under heavy pressure to make quota. The fact that you can get a bad NCOER and be relieved if you don’t make quota is a problem, I think.
Frankly, I was assured that Vietnam was just a new, hip, happening vacation spot combining the best of tropical splendor like Hawaii, with the mystery and adventure of Marrakesh… I’d get free gourmet foods…a surfboard… and that just like Surf City, there were two swinging honeys for every guy, a hot nympho Vietnamese girl and a horny and bored American nurse. Oh, yeah, and that if I didn’t like it, I could leave any time. I just assumed that they told that to everyone.
Well, *I* sure as hell knew how dangerous it would be, and I stepped up anyway, facing the yellow hordes, taking fire as I covered my buddies’ retreats to safety, suffering wounds but pressing on because I knew that lives depended on my cool, collected self.
I put myself in for the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross and the Crow dee la Guerre or whatever the hell that frog thing was, but the imperialist war-mongers in DC denied me my just rewards… they said that some lying ‘witnesses’ jealously disputed my account of the events and that I was actually running from a security guard at a Bangkok whorehouse. Like, THAT wasn’t heroic or anything? Capitalist pigs.