<p>Well our son was lied to. We were sitting there listening to it.</p>
<p>I have no problem with recruiting - I just expect it to be done with honesty. Especially when dealing with idealistic teenagers who love their country but may lack the experience to judge what they are being told.</p>
<p>What the city of Berkeley is doing is punishing a group of people for the actions of a few isolated recruiters. Of course some recruiters lie, just like some baseball players cheat, some priests molest kids, and some moms drown their kids.</p>
<p>LaxAttack - If you read my 1st post you will see that I said I disagreed with what Berkeley is doing. I think it is disgusting.</p>
<p>But our experience certainly has made us more wary than we would otherwise be. My son was interested in the military for a while and if that had been his choice we would fully have supported him. But to tell him he could choose not to go to Iraq if he joined did not ring true. Unfortunately i do not think it is uncommon. We had a conversation with someone whose husband is career military and was furious at some of the lies a recruiter told his son.</p>
<p>Of course. Nobody is arguing that they <em>cant</em> do this, just that it’s insanely stupid and, dare I say it, unamerican. A president has the prerogative to pardon every murderer in the United States but that doesn’t make it a wise choice.</p>
I agree that it doesn’t ring true but how do you know for a fact whether it’s true or not? I suspect there’s a fair percentage of Air Force personnel who have never been to Iraq and a fair percentage of Navy personnel who have never stepped foot in Iraq. Not everyone in the military is at the head of a column with an M16 in their hands like a lot of people might picture.</p>
<p>It doesn’t really matter though - anyone joining the military needs to realize that they could end up in a war zone. It is, afterall, the military. </p>
<p>I know some people in the military (Air Force) who WANT to go to Iraq but haven’t been able to yet.</p>
<p>I have no problem with military recruiters conveying information but I do wish they’d learn to take NO for an answer. My D must have been contacted a zillion times by the Army and despite telling them NO, they kept on calling and sending mail.</p>
<p>“I hate lying to children, and preying upon them.”</p>
<p>This is how misunderstandings occur. Folks with incomplete information make erroneous assumptions.</p>
<p>I think it’s useful to explain that the Military Officer recruiters office in Berkeley is, at the risk of being redundant, for recruiting OFFICERS.</p>
<p>As such, it’s mission is to recruit graduates from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as qualified graduates from other nearby colleges and universities. I don’t think they have many college graduate children walking through their door. They recruit from among the best and brightest young men and women in the nation who are very well qualified, with degree in hand, both to make their own decisions as fully functioning adults and to serve as future officers in any of this nations military services.</p>
<p>It might seem odd to some, but there are young men and woman who want to lead combat troops, and for whom no other vocation calls as loudly.</p>
<p>But even beyond that, and despite anyone’s feeling about the present wars, this country needs and will have an armed service. Given that as fact, why would anyone want to put any but the very best in charge of such a great responsibility? I think Berkeley’s a fine location for recruiting officers, and I’ll bet they have more qualified candidates walk through their doors looking for that kind of challenge than the conventional wisdom would have one believe. But I’ll have to get back to you on that; hopefully in a few days.</p>
<p>Torture that saves American lives isn’t unamerican. Something tells me that if I came up to you and said we could torture a suspected terrorist, and that it would save your family, you’d say yes.</p>