WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! SOLDIERS FOR THE TRUTH "DEFENDING AMERICA NEWSLETTER" 16 August 2000 "When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen." General George Washington, New York Legislature, 1775 "Our militia will be heroes, if we have heroes to lead them." Thomas Jefferson Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-3840 HTTP://WWW.SFTT.ORG ***************************************************************** TABLE OF CONTENTS: SITREP from the President HOT BUTTONS! Hack's Column: Here We Go Again! "From Zimm's Position" -- On the way!" Article 1 - The Art of Mentoring Leaders Big Picture: Article 2 - The Truth? - Earth To Gen. Shelton Article 3 - The Truth! - Our British Cousins dealing with the Readiness Crisis Voices from the Field: Article 4 -- Tell us about ROTC -- the Female Readiness Factor Article 5 - Seniors MUST mentor Junior Officers Article 6 - Proper Mentoring - Key to Readiness and Retention Article 7 -- Army Shell Game - Existing Force Structure should be Sufficient Article 8 - Navy: The All Volunteer--Hollow Force Article 9 - Military Quality of Life - an Inside Perspective Article 10 -- Health Care TARGET For the Week: Sick Call G.I Humor: Article 11 -- GI HUMOR - Some Dogs are different Medal of Honor: Article 12 -- DONLON, ROGER HUGH C., Vietnam 1964 =============================================================== SITREP: 1. Main topics: 1) Mentoring with impact on Readiness and Retention 2) Targeted Military Pay and Benefits 3) Quality of Life/Healthcare 2. Hot Buttons: A. SFTT NEWSLETTER. As of this issue, we will mail an ABBREVIATED version of the newsletter. It will consist of the full table of contents, our SITREP and the first two articles. You can obtain the rest of the newsletter from our website at www.sftt.org. B. Let's join the political debate. - We need more active duty feedback to tell us what YOU think and see. Tell us how you envision the big politicians could fix it, knowing that more money isn't always the answer. Get your buddies involved in the discussion! C. Question of the Week: Are many Command Sergeants Major or equivalents turning into "Enlisted Generals" vs. being the critical bridge between officer and NCO chain? !!! NOTE: We will NEVER reveal your true identity unless you give us your approval. We know how vindictive the system can be. 3. Flash !!! Need help in the marketing arena to redesign our web to help offset some of the Internet operating expenses. !!! Credit Card donation via our WEBSITE at www.sftt.org -- IT IS UP and RUNNING! !!! PLEASE continue your financial support for us. ***So far we have received about 267 donations that keep us on a temporary operating budget. If you are one of our almost 22,000 readers who believes we stand for you and tell it like it is on pertinent defense issues, support us! Just like any small business, we can't forever produce website, newsletter and personal advice for free and survive. Look at article #1 and realize that the Pentagon outspends us by $289 billion and AUSA by $ 20 million. !!! If you cant get through to me via the website, send me your mail direct at [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have something to be published, send it in Word Format if possible. !!! If you think we HIT a target, forward the newsletter to TV, radio and your locale papers. YOU are our best recruiter and intel gatherers. 4. Other Methods of Support Check or Money order: Send to and make payable to: Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-3840. 5. REMINDERS: Your donation is tax deductible! SFTT is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit educational foundation, IRS # 31-1592564. If you send us an E-MAIL address with your donation we can immediately mail you a RECEIPT!!!! Multiple contributions: Please remind us when you submit your donation. We will send you a cumulative statement. This is an abbreviated newsletter. You can find the complete letter archived on the website http://www.sftt.org. "Crew Ready! -- LOAD SABOT - DRIVER MOVE OUT!" R.W. Zimmermann President SFTT [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============================================================== Hack's Column ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here We Go Again! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By David H. Hackworth Another fun-filled week of balloons and baloney as the Democrats try to outpitch the Republican snow-job-a-thon. Besides wanting to frag the Bush-Cheney parade, Gore and Lieberman are distancing themselves from President Clinton as if he had fleas. Smart idea. But this separation shouldn't just be limited to issues of character -- it must also include how, if elected, Gore and Lieberman intend to defend America. We-the-people deserve to know their vision before November, what kind of folks they'll put in the Pentagon's top civilian slots and how they'll excise the rot. Rot always starts at the head. And for the past eight years, the Pentagon's been headed up by dilettantes, social engineers and racketeers. These so-called leaders have allowed our forces' readiness level -- the ability to get there quickly and whack an enemy with a club before he knows we're standing behind him -- to reach a new post-Cold War low. But throwing big bucks at the Pentagon, as both major parties plan to do, isn't the answer. How this largesse is wasted -- since there's never been more money per serving person in our county's history -- is another story. Any solution must start with proper leadership. The way our system works is that this leadership must come from the civilians who run the Pentagon. But since 1993, no way has Clinton's defense team at the secretariat level been selected for their proven leadership skills. Not one past or present Clinton- appointed Pentagon head could lead a troop of scouts into a barn during a snowstorm. And they certainly weren't picked for their defense expertise -- few would know a Stinger missile from a snack bar. None of Clinton's three SecDefs held a leadership position in our armed forces. Only one wore a soldier suit. Clinton's selection criteria was simple: an A Team that would push his agenda to make our military politically correct via max sensitivity training and a women in every foxhole. Equality and consideration for others over fighting skill became the password. Meanwhile, the B Team remained the same old Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) porkers, still into greasing the greedies who play the defense money game -- like major Clinton contributor, defense contractor and friend of Red China, Loral. William Cohen would have to be the worst SecDef since Louis Johnson. He runs the bloated Pentagon as if he were still a U.S. senator -- lots of hot air and too many VIP trips at taxpayer expense. Then there's his predecessor, William Perry, who seldom saw a gold-plated, high-tech system he didn't want to buy. And once he took care of the players, he flashed back to his high-paying MICC job like a rocket. Before Perry there was Les Aspin, a bumbling academic who got canned because he refused to send tanks to Mogadishu, Somalia -- a bad decision that caused a lot of good men to die. And remember Professor Sheila Widnall of MIT, the disastrous Secretary of the Air Force? A smart engineer, maybe, but she didn't have one leadership bone in her body and became a total puppet of the generals. Or try Togo West, a slick Washington insider who as Secretary of the Army spent his time arranging burial plots in Arlington National Cemetery for top contributors -- when he wasn't pushing Clinton's kinder, gentler agenda. Or his assistant Sarah Lester, who referred to our valiant Marines as "extremists" because they're willing to die for our country. This is just a sampling of the harebrains Clinton put in key Pentagon slots. They and the many house-trained generals and admirals who wouldn't stand tall have driven morale so far down that our warriors are now crawling through it. An Army sergeant from Fort Stewart, Ga. -- who asked to remain anonymous -- sums it up for many: "I'll be happy when Mr. Clinton and Mr. Cohen and their ilk are excused from their positions. Perhaps then our military will be treated with respect and dignity from the people at the top and given the right missions. For the sake of my fellow soldiers, I pray that quality, caring leaders who can put our military back on the right track will soon take over." Amen, Sergeant. *** Http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site. Send mail to P.O. Box 5210, Greenwich, CT 06831. (c) 2000 David H. Hackworth Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc. ================================================== ARTICLE 1 - "From my Position" -- On the way!" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Art of Mentoring Leaders ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By R. W. (Zimm) Zimmermann President SFTT 08/14/00 I recently received many letters that point to the lack of mentoring our young officer leaders as a contributor to their high attrition after their initial commitment. It seems that most mentoring today consists of ingraining the tricks of getting ahead and making the promotion gates. During my career, I met very few officer leaders who took mentoring beyond career advancement counseling, doctrinal slide shows, or standard safety briefs. I learned most of the real skinny about leading and combat from combat veterans and books (most not on the official reading lists). Even the occasional military movie with John Wayne, depicting a personable, almost unmilitary leadership style, influenced me. Why is our military failing at mentoring and what can we do to give our young leaders more than just career advancement tactics for their kit bags? Our institutions must be reformed to bring professional experience back into our schools. Stop mindless peer mentoring. Cadets and officer candidates deserve to be trained by former combat platoon leaders and company commanders. Hazing, such as the common "get drunk and naked" games must be eliminated and replaced with tough combat skills training and unannounced alert drills. Successful platoon leaders and former company commanders, with experienced noncom assistance, should coach future platoon leaders, while future company commanders need the guidance and experience of former battalion commanders. Future battalion commanders need not be mentored by staff Majors and staff trained Lieutenant Colonels but by former Brigade Commanders. Unfortunately, these experienced guys are not available for our schools because they are punching other essential career ticket. That leaves only semi-experienced peers to do the teaching. The result: We're stuck with plain doctrine because instructors can't refer to much real experience and we're turning into a "doctrinaire," initiative deprived, and paper oriented force. When I asked my father how the German Army of WWII achieved the high kill ratios for tank crews and the extraordinary level of maneuver flexibility, he simply answered - Kampferfahrung (combat experience) passed on by experts. He still refers to his instructors and immediate superiors as people who would enter hell before their men but rarely in foolish acts of heroism. During his combat gunnery and tactical maneuver training, it was not uncommon to see senior NCO and officer cadre with amputations and the occasional glass eye. Most sported Panzer assault and wounded badges in the highest categories and their accomplishments were legend. No wonder that the young Panzer soldiers respected them and listened to every word of advice, the glass eye or the missing arm a grim reminder of the slightest combat mistake or mishap. Paper grades on tests weren't as important as experience gained through constant drill. Maybe we could learn from that example. Why can't we use the guy who gets injured during combat as an instructor versus trying to quickly separate him through medical disability boards? Why don't we take the successful and experienced field commanders and NCOs and send them to the combat schools as trainers but reward them for it. I remember an Army pilot program called project warrior that pointed in that direction. It never came to fruition because it didn't allow for time to punch all career tickets. Institutional coaching however, cannot exist without unit mentoring by competent leaders, able to level with subordinates. Instead of perpetuating careerism and overdoses of safety briefings, they should talk tactics and leadership in a close circle with junior officers, maybe even over a beer or two. An open discussion of a tactical problem, using an example from recent history, lends itself to creating an environment of lively participation. Add a movie clip and finish with a tactical problem-solving task and you'll see the team gel. Once the officers know each other, include the senior noncoms to foster platoon sergeant-platoon commander teamwork. When coaching, senior commanders need to get away from the "head table" and mix with small groups to learn about the guys who would do the fighting for them. That will enable them to gain comfort in personable motivating without using the efficiency report card as the main attention getter. Trust and confidence in the leader's abilities come from personal contact. As my father pointed out - "if you stand with three Panther tanks and a total of 47 rounds against two or more enemy battalions, your men look to you as the guy with the wisdom and the guts to pull them through. It's best if they know you real well, for comrades won't ever let each other down." (c) R.W. Zimmermann, LandserUSA [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============================================================ ARTICLE 2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Truth? - Earth To Gen. Shelton ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ed.: Is this Chairman doing us a favor by aligning himself with his current political bosses with his overstated readiness assessment? The highest ranking four-star in the country, without prospect for more promotions and power, should have the guts to tell the truth in a non-partisan way for the benefit of the American people. ****************************************************************************** Washington Times, August 10, 2000 Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the broad-shouldered, jut-jawed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stands well over six feet tall and cuts an imposing figure. Having spent the last three years carrying so much political water for the commander in chief who once told an ROTC recruiting officer how much he "loathed the military," Gen. Shelton has needed the impressive girth his military training has provided. Without the benefit of an official announcement, it now appears that Gen.Shelton's water-carrying duties have been expanded to include performing those chores for Vice President Al Gore... Last week, Gen. Shelton interjected himself into a political battle that has claimed the soldiers he is supposed to lead as its principal victims. In his acceptance speech in Philadelphia last week, Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush (drawing upon an undisputed report last November in which two active Army divisions classified themselves as unprepared to carry out their wartime missions) asserted, "Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called to duty by the commander in chief, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.' "Within hours, the Army issued a statement declaring "all 10 of its divisions are combat ready and able to answer the nation's call." More than 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles, Gen. Shelton acknowledged that spending and resources had been cut 40 percent while worldwide commitments - mostly peacekeeping operations - during the past decade have increased 300 percent. Nevertheless, he insisted the Army "jumped right on top of [the readiness crisis]" and brought the divisions back into combat shape... Sen. John McCain, a member of the Armed Services Committee who knows something about the state of the military's readiness and who has butted heads with Gen. Shelton over this very issue, offered an insight different from the Army's politically convenient declarations. "In all due respect to General Shelton," who has been the most politicized Joint Chiefs chairman in decades, "I talked to captains, I talked to first lieutenants, I talked to chief petty officers," Mr. McCain told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "They say they're overextended. They say that they're having difficulty keeping qualified men and women in the military. And recently we saw a study where the captains in the Army are leaving in the largest numbers." The Army claims it has solved its readiness problems by deploying National Guard units for Balkan peacekeeping duties and returning the Army divisions to their normal duties. In fact, the Army plans to radically change how U.S. military forces are deemed to be ready for combat. Indeed, in a front-page story on the very day Gen. Shelton interjected himself into the political dispute over national defense, the New York Times reported that the Army plans to drastically increase its reliance on the National Guard to fulfill its most important mission - maintaining the capability of fighting two major regional conflicts simultaneously. The Pentagon expects to assign four of the National Guard's eight divisions to participate in the Persian Gulf and Korea, the two "major theater wars" that are at the heart of U.S. military doctrine. Inside the Pentagon, the Times reported, "There remains lingering doubt about the ability of the Guard divisions to be ready for combat, especially in a major regional war" - to say nothing of two major regional wars being fought simultaneously. Beyond the horrors that such cockamamie strategies portend, there is the more immediate concern about Gen. Shelton's general disingenuousness over the defense budget. He continues to pretend that the six-year, $112 billion in supposed defense spending increases approved by the commander in chief somehow translates into an immediate increase in the defense budget. In fact, according to page 109 in the Historical Tables for the 2001 budget, the inflation-adjusted spending for national defense will remain below the level in fiscal 2000 for the next three fiscal years. Measured as a percentage of total economic output, national defense spending will be a meager 2.8 percent in 2003, the lowest level since 1940 (see page 103 in the Historical Tables). That was the year before Pearl Harbor. =================================================================== *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! ****************************************************************************** ******************* A vote for Bush or Gore is a vote to continue Clinton policies! A vote for Buchanan is a vote to continue America! Therefore a vote for Gore or Bush is a wasted vote for America! Don't waste your vote! Vote for Patrick Buchanan! Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party system is a snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties have become nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey... Patrick Buchanan
