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UK Military Decline


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Rodger that TT. The last 6 years have been a huge bummer. I miss the good days before the teflon administration came into power. Things today just ain't right, as all real 'mericuns will agree. No more reading the weekly KIA reports from two wars (which on an eventful week could run a couple of pages), hoping you don't see a familiar name. No more watching your home, 401K and other investments lose over half their value. No more wondering if this week, your company is going to lay you off.

Yeah, the last 6 years have been a huge disappointment.

Enough of that negativity though. On the bright side, the good guys are making a well deserved comeback!

I for one cannot wait to see what they have in store for us.

your KIA reports must have been in super large print

gary

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They're not just lines of names, they have pictures and summaries as well. Considering the next of kin is notified first, and that could take days, when they finally made it to the papers they would come in blocks of several. God forbid a helo goes down or a rescue attempt went wrong. When I joined up we were losing an average of 75 people per month, sometimes more and sometimes less.

11Bee is right, it was a nightmare waiting to see if some high school buddy in Ramadi would be among the dead. I hated counting the days down from the deployments of my friends. Sitting back and waiting was one of the main drivers that caused me to join.

Edit: I remember sobbing through the movie Gallipoli while my bud was in Iraq for the second time. I really thought he was going to be a gonner, especially since this was right at the time of Fallujah. I joined the same branch he was in to help my people out, after I set aside my reservations about the necessity of that particular war. There really is nothing to miss about that decade -- it was a nightmare growing up without jobs and health insurance. Waiting in the emergency room with bronchitis, which never should have got to that stage, was ridiculous. Growing up with a disabled parent who lost her hearing and injured her back on the job, only to be told by our state that she makes $2/month too much to qualify for insurance even though were a family WAY under the poverty line set at $12k/year. There simply is nothing to be missed. Misery was at a high point. My mom's Imflammatory Breast Cancer wouldn't have been treated without the health care bill. Few complaints here, deep in the heart of Texas.

Edited by Exhausted
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That was a saving grace for me, "at least it's not Vietnam." But that's just me -- try telling the thousands of families whose warriors fell in Iraq that the their loss isn't as tragic as it would have been in 1968, 1953, or 1944. Another thing is that pictures are more easily available and therefore take up more space in a KIA page.

I don't always do this, but I want to quote Richard Cheney for his insight and wisdom about Desert Storm.... no it's just better if you see it for yourself.

54 seconds (0:54) in, Mr Cheney states that "...everyone was impressed that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war."

I remember reading those figures of thousands gone a week in Vietnam; we lost as many in Vietnam in 6 months as we lost during the entire War on Terror. Combat medicine has been a blessing for American volunteers, though the futures of the physically and mentally maimed are always in question when it comes time to trim the budget some more.

Edited by Exhausted
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Depends who you ask, of course. Your average civilian isn't connected to the military, or it's losses. It's the double edged sword of having an all volunteer force.

FYI, I always went to the militarytimes.com websites to learn about losses and such. Peacetime losses are always going to be present, and OND losses have been set at 3 for months now. But US ops across the world are often shrouded in secrecy, so news of losses aren't usually front page in those cases.

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That was a saving grace for me, "at least it's not Vietnam." But that's just me -- try telling the thousands of families whose warriors fell in Iraq that the their loss isn't as tragic as it would have been in 1968, 1953, or 1944. Another thing is that pictures are more easily available and therefore take up more space in a KIA page.

I don't always do this, but I want to quote Richard Cheney for his insight and wisdom about Desert Storm.... no it's just better if you see it for yourself.

54 seconds (0:54) in, Mr Cheney states that "...everyone was impressed that we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had, but for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war."

I remember reading those figures of thousands gone a week in Vietnam; we lost as many in Vietnam in 6 months as we lost during the entire War on Terror. Combat medicine has been a blessing for American volunteers, though the futures of the physically and mentally maimed are always in question when it comes time to trim the budget some more.

a few fellow modelers on here know my background. I'm "class of 68" from the Vietnam era. My first serious taste of death was about ten days before Tet in 68, and I still don't know what happened five feet below me. The mental trauma is still right here as I punch the keys on this computer, as there is no closure. Yes the C.O. wrote his Mom and Dad the usual letter telling them that Jimmy died a hero, and they should be very proud of him (I barely knew him). Getting killed is closure for yourself, but it adds deep anguish to others. I'm just now coming to understand this with a grandson in Afghanistan twice. Sooner (I hope) or later we have to understand that our children are not cheap cannon fodder to cover the whims of some politician.

I lost five buddies in September 68 out of a total of eight in about twenty seconds. I have zero remorse for the guy the fired the rockets (I forgave him thirty years ago). Griffith, Griffen, and I sent their mothers a letter. Then got on with our business. Totally wrong! The KIA page in the VFW magazine can be taken lightly, because we can't see them.

gary

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Depends who you ask, of course. Your average civilian isn't connected to the military, or it's losses. It's the double edged sword of having an all volunteer force.

I mean the commenters in this thread. They were very bothered, and then they stopped being bothered, even though the war and the spending Jennings is unhappy about continued. So what changed?

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TT, dude I really don't know what to say since my voice belongs solely to me. Thanks to everyone before me, and God, that I can express mine the way I do.

Chesshire Cat, I'm so sorry. Just know that the brotherhood of veterans is here when you need them. We are a precious group that knows ourselves better than anyone else.

Edgar, you're right -- we're off track.

Is the UK pulling back on their military? Probably, but I don't know what the national budget looks like -- especially the relationship between entitlement spending and military spending. At least the UK finished paying their war debt to the US in 2002, that was a remarkable day for me. That was the same week Colin Powell testified to the UN about WMDs and used intercepted Iraqi phone calls to back his argument, I remember it well.

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