tattoes on neck and face != army?

[gimp]

Back to the original point of this discussion.

So if had a tatoo of this: http://ziggy.dreamland.net/wtc/flag.jpg on the back of my neck showing a little, then they wouldn't let me join the army? Or if I had an american flag tattood on my hand, then I wouldn't be allowed in? Piercings are removeable. I can agree with that. I also think it would be hard to judge if a tattoo is racist, gang related, or offensive. If someones got a big ole swastica (I know I spelt it wrong) on their back, then I can see that they shouldn't be allowed to join. What if someone has a tatoo of a naked woman on his arm or something? I'm sure thats considered offensive, but I don't think thats reason not to let him in the military. I could go on about how I feel about 'draft-dodging', and people who don't want to fight, but I won't. I have one thing that just bothers me. It's a little off subject, but how can they let me join the army and give my life to my country, and then, take away my right to buy a six pack of beer.

[oldsoldier]

Ok, my turn before the thread gets colsed. First, Saddam hero worships Stalin. Read your history. He is doing the SAME thing Stalin did. Do we need to remove him? Yes. He is an unstable leader in a region of conflict. Read CNN. Most states in the mideast do not support a war, but agree that Saddam needs to go. What does this say? Well, lets analyze it. The states that think Iraq needs a regime change are too small to affect the change. So, but giving the US the nod, either by allowing us access via their countries, or by not siding with Iraq, they are, in turn, given money to ease their world economy situation. Do they want another Israel? No. They want a muslim state. We agree to that. Why wouldnt we? We want the removal of the present regime to ease other conflicts in the region. By going to war and removing him, we settle quite a few smaller problems.
Now, a few nations there are siding with us for the sole fact that it will allow them to use that particular kind of diplomacy to quell their internal problems. Jordan, for instance, though largely anti-American, supports us by not siding with Iraq on the basis that they are allowed to move the Kurds out of their country. Turkey is the same.
This isnt a simple "war for oil". These politics have been around for years. Our previous president didnt have the nuts to do what needed to be done. Bush Sr. and his advisors took a gamble after the Gulf War; they pretty much didnt expect Saddam to be around for 6 months. They were wrong (based largely on bad intel). He would've fixed the problem, had he got re-elected.
Mideast policy is confusing. We are in the middle of a conflict that has existed since 700 AD. It is unfortunate, but it is true. Most folks wont take the time to understand the region, its beliefs, and how much control the gov'ts and religious leaders have. So, we get the dumbed-down version. It pays to look deeper; gives you a better understanding.
Oh, and soldiers go to war for one thing; one another. No flag, no country, its to go home at the end and tell stories. To live to go home. Thats all.

[oldsoldier]

Oh, just for the record, no, I dont know a whole bunch about the mideast. However, I served during the gulf war, and am still serving (albeit in a different capacity) today. So, it affects me directly. Most of my info comes from CNN, Armytimes, and Jaynes Defense. All public knowledge. So, beofre I get flamed for incorrectness, I jsut want to state that most of what I said came from those sites, but were read in the past couple of days. So they may not be 100% correct.
And, if you dogde the draft, dont come back. We dont need you here.
And you can flame all you want on that one

[pbzmag]

I really doubt that the draft will come back. There are already many men and women who made the military a career, and many more in reserves. I for one would not hesitate to join. In fact, I tried to join the Air Force as an officer but was rejected due to the fact that I have a history of asthma.

pbzmag

[TransMan]

Well as for the tatoo i was thinking about gettin one on my face but decided not too because i want to join the airforce.

As for the forest thing we shoudl have never tried to stop forest fires in the first place. Before we started stoping the fires small fires would accur all the time and clear away the under brush but never really destroy too many of the large trees. When we started stoping those small fires we allowed a lot of undergrowth to accumulate which fueled large fires that we couldnt stop. What i believe we sould do now is go along and clear out the very dense under growth and let the small fires that occur burn out by themselves.

As for draft dodging i have no use for draft dodgers and believe if they leave the country they should not be allowed back in. This is one of the many reasons I have absolutley no respect at all for Bill Clinton he went to europe during Vietnam.

As for halb's statment about Bush send our forces to other countries as a destraction is totaly stupid. If Bush was trying to draw attention away from the economy he wouldnt be giving speches about it constantly. Also if u remember back all those peace keeping missions that Clinton sent our troops on they seemed to be timed perfectley with the screw ups of his.

Sorry for the long post

[shartley]

[FalconGuy016]

I doubt wars will ever come back to something like vietnam, with such trained specialists we have now, and like a 100 kills per soldier ratio, I really doubt there would be a draft. A draft would bring a whole bunch of inexperianced peopel to die

[mag-hatter]

Originally posted by aaron_mag
This is how much I trust politicians. If the President is a democrat I typically want the Republicans in control of the Senate. I trust them so little that I want them totally grid locked so that only the most common sense stuff can be passed.:)

Here is the deal. I think the US needs to protect their interests. That is very important. At the same time I can't stand Bush's "we are the police of the world" stance. The guy gives speeches about how we will pursue our interests despite what the world thinks. He says we will do what we want no matter what the UN thinks. This is nuts! Give the speech on brotherly love and friendship between nations. Then behind closed doors put the screws to the foriegn politicians and tell them they better cooperate. By being so darn publicy belligerent you back other countries (and I'm talking about our allies here) into a corner. They are forced to look like puppets to the United States rather than part of a team. It is not a good policy.

Maybe, however, Bush is right. Force of arms and a strong military presence really helped limit prolonged violence in problemed areas like Palestine and Northern Ireland (note sarcasm).

its amazing how little people cared about clinton bombing iraq during his regime. he didnt even CHECK with the un and he went ahead but thats alright, he's a democrat

[Rooster]

"Totally different situations. Hitler was occupying other countries and Chamberlain was still trying to avoid war. The United States and United Nations has already showed Iraq that it won't tolerate it attacking other countries (Kuwait). I don't believe anyone is saying don't keep an eye on Iraq. I don't think anyone is saying don't keep a strong military presence throughout the world. Attacking a country, however, is a totally different thing. "

You say that the situtions are totally different, then prove how they are almost the same. Hitler was mentally unstable. Sadam is mentally unstable. Both favored themselves military geniouses and became intemently involved in the command of their armies, for good or bad. Both have invaded countries becuase "the land was really theirs anyways." Both used rasism to stay in power. Both used ethnic cleansing on their own people. Both have sought super weapons such as the blastic missle, the german super guns (Sadam tried to build a 1000 foot artilery peice on the side of a mountain aimed at Israel), nuclear weapons, and biological weapons/gas.

Sadam has proven he will attack others. He has refused to disarm. This makes him Hitler-esque global threat. So what do the bleeding heart liberals do? Go straight to pacification again. Give Sadam a little more, that will make him behave. There is one solution to the Iraq problem. Get rid of the people in charge, just like Afgahnistan.

[obsolete898]

Army is correct on the tattoo issue, but there are always waivers.

One of the guys I work with went out and got a tattoo on his neck. Now after paying for the tattoo he has to pay for it to be removed, and that's gonna be harder since they took a stripe from him.

[langrage]

I am not for people dogging the draft.

You can serve your country in other ways and not get drafted.
1.) you could become a minister. They will not be drafted.
2.) you could be an elected official. They don't get drafted.

As far as war is concerned,

I rather act than react.

[petefol]

my question is, why is the US and the UN wasting time looking for weapons of mass destruction in iraq when north korea has SAID THEY HAVE THEM! but the US or UN isnt doing anything about that (not to my knowledge at least). and who is the US to say that other countries can't attack a smaller country? aren't we all forgetting that america was "won" by killing the hundreds of thousands of natives that lived here before the colonists, and really for no reason at all. almost every book i have read has said that the colonists would trick the natives into giving up land or just outright kill them, rather then try to live in peace together. and if you say the reason the colonists killed the natives was because the natives attacked them first, well, we were taking all their land. so all of you people who say that america should help in situations of genocide like when hitler and the nazis would kill millions of innocent people, or when the serbians killed thousands of ethnic albanians, just remember that your own country has done it too. dont get me wrong, i think all that stuff is bad, but america never even gave good compensation to people like the natives, the japanese who were interned, or vietnam vets. i think that the only compensation the japanese who were interned received was under 20000$ and that little amount was years after WW2 when most of the victims were dead. the same goes for most vietnam vets.

[aaron_mag]

Oldsoldier-I don't think this one will get closed. It is a lively debate but we are all pretty much behaving ourselves. We haven't turned it into a flame war just stating differing beliefs.

Originally posted by Rooster

You say that the situtions are totally different, then prove how they are almost the same. Hitler was mentally unstable. Sadam is mentally unstable. Both favored themselves military geniouses and became intemently involved in the command of their armies, for good or bad. Both have invaded countries becuase "the land was really theirs anyways."

Yes Saddam TRIED to invade another country and had his army pulverized. That is the difference. It is not like we are sitting on our hands! There are inspectors in his country right now!

Some might think my stance is anti military. I'm all for a strong military and research. I want our military strength to be a deterrent. Lets see what the UN inspectors find....

[shartley]

[langrage]

As far as what America has done in the past about invading the Indians, you must look at in the context of the time we were in. This was a time of great expansion and it was generally acceptable for people to invade other lands in the name of the mother country. Times have changed and basically we learned from our mistakes. 200 hundred years ago it was okay to pick on the defense less. Now it is not. I understand how hard feelings are still out there but instead of harping on the past we should direct our efforts to the future. I am not stating forget the past but learn from it. This leads to the Japanese internment camps. The US admitted they were wrong and compensated $20,000 to the individuals affected. In order to make sure it won't happen again they set up the Treasury of the United States the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, which paid out 1.3 billion between 1989-93.

Shartley aren't you the king of Hijacking?