

I'm a Vietnam veteran, and was neither a mercenary nor a dupe. Like most, I was drafted and coerced into service. And the pay, beginning at $75 per month, while in training, was hardly at a mercenary's rate. No, you can't say I was in it for the money, either.









SECOND COMMENT FROM TWH:





As a former soldier myself, even I cringe when I hear people thanking soldiers for their "service" People wax maudlin over our "heroes" in uniform who are somehow "defending our freedom".



Let me tell you a little secret. Most people join the military because it's a job, not because they have noble visions of getting killed on some battlefield.

When I was in the army a few decades ago, we would go through training exercises and we would drink. That amounted to about all we did. I was certainly no hero, nor was I defending our freedom or providing a sacred service to Canadians.



If I knew what I know today, I wouldn't have even considered signing up back then. I was young and naive. The only way I would muse about joining the military today is if Canada itself were under attack. I'm not going to be fooled into putting combat boots on so that I can fight a battle on the other side of the globe on behalf on the international moneylenders.











KEN ADACHI Writes:





In the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, a certain percentage of young American men from blue collar families would typically join some branch of the US military to gain employment, free medical and dental care, free meals and housing, technical training, perhaps some college, and above all, have an adventure and see the world.





No one of those decades had any inkling of what the Pentagon was really about and just how rotten are the scoundrels and liars of Washington DC who connive with their pals in banking and the military-industrial complex to create the pretext and excuses to wage war against innocent people in far away lands, so said scoundrels can generate obscene amounts of profit and booty for themselves, and all at taxpayer expense.





Following the treachery levelled against US service men in the first Gulf war (1991) by its own government in which hundreds of thousands of men and women were subjected to vaccinations that caused the intentionally introduced, lab created "Gulf War syndrome (or illness)", you would think that far more young people would think twice about joining a Pentagon killing machine that had all the earmarks of satanic stewardship.





After the traitors in our military and government, working with the Mossad, orchestrated the events of 9/11, they send US military personnel into Iraq and Afghanistan to engage in such depraved levels of barbarity, cruelty, and murderous savagery (mostly against civilians), that for the first time in the history of the United States, we have scores and scores of returning military men committing suicide because they can no longer take the mental torment that their conscience has forced upon them for their unconscionable conduct in the Middle East.





The only way you can stop this process is to stop cooperating with it and that means to stop enlisting in the military and subject yourself to the Pentagon's sorcerers (and I mean that literally). In 2005, all the signs were in place for the calling of a draft, but ultimately they decided to not follow through because the war in Iraq, I think, was beginning to lose popular support and the institution of a draft would lead to anti-war protests on campuses across the country and that in turn would lead to an eventual pullout of US troops in the Middle East (as in Vietnam).





So they start sucking up recruits from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Philippines to fill American military boots and make up the shortfall with promises of a fast track to US citizenship and other financial perks and incentives (at taxpayer expense, of course). In earlier decades, you could believe the party line that we were the Good Guys of the world and that our mission was to 'maintain the peace' and 'provide stability', and all the flag-waving crap that they throw at naive, inexperienced, and trusting young minds. But today there is no excuse.



