Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters

[kach22i]

It's sad what's happening to our country and to our military.

Army Is Cracking Down on Deserters
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/us/09awol.html?ei=5090&en=a93bb16660600854&ex=1333771200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

At an Army base in Alaska last year, for example, “there was one guy who literally chopped off his trigger finger with an axe to prevent his deployment,” Dr. Grieger said in an interview.

.............“We’re enlisting more dropouts, people with more law violations, lower test scores, more moral issues,” said a senior noncommissioned officer involved in Army personnel and recruiting. “We’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get people to join.” (Army officials agreed to discuss the issue on the condition that they not be quoted by name.)

The officer said the Army National Guard last week authorized 34 states and Guam to enlist the lowest-ranking group of eligible recruits, those who scored between 16 and 30 on the armed services aptitude test. Federal law bars recruits who scored lower than 16 from enlisting.

Desertions, while a chronic problem for the Army, are nowhere near as common as they were at the height of the Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1971, for instance, about 5 percent of enlisted men deserted.

...........Such problems are costly. From October 2000 to February 2002, the Army improperly paid more than $6.6 million to 7,544 soldiers who had deserted or were otherwise absent, according to a July 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.

[legion]

This, from the pro-military New York Times.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by legion
This, from the pro-military New York Times.

Kill the messenger, that will fix it.

EDIT: Different source............................

Many Military Deserters Still Got Paid
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,111877,00.html

WASHINGTON -- Congressional investigators have identified dozens of Army reservists and National Guardsmen who remained on the military's payroll and received checks totaling more than $900,000 despite failing to report for duty.

In a report released Monday, the Government Accountability Office said its "limited investigation... likely significantly understates" how much the military has paid deserters among the tens of thousands of reservists and guardsmen called to duty in recent years.

Reserve officials acknowledged they have no practical mechanism to compare payroll records to lists of troops classified as deserters so that checks can be intercepted before they're sent, the GAO said.

The findings expose "a serious fiscal vulnerability and an affront to those who do perform their often dangerous duties as ordered," said U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-11th District, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.

Davis' committee has been scrutinizing the military's payroll systems for several years and had commissioned earlier GAO reports that found numerous instances of troops being underpaid or having their checks delayed for months as they were shifted to new units or new locations inside Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army has acknowledged those problems, as well as the deserter pay spotlighted in the latest GAO report. The Pentagon's inspector general "generally concurred" with a GAO recommendation that the Army and reserves develop a strategy to ensure that payments are promptly stopped to troops identified as deserters, the new report said.

The GAO said it found a total of 75 reservists who were paid after deserting, focusing most closely on seven assigned to a quartermaster company based in Pennsylvania.

Those reservists, including one Virginia resident, were not named in the report. The GAO said that though they failed to report for duty as ordered in December 2003, six of the seven were paid until the following August, when GAO investigators called the payments to the Army's attention.

One of the soldiers continued to receive payments for eight additional months, collecting another $28,000, the report added. As of May 2006, none of the seven had been arrested for desertion, an offense that carries a prison term of up to 10 years.

[Joeaksa]

Another wonderful missive from the NYT. Wonder if they will give Off Ramp and SloPaste a job? Right up their alley IMHO...

[Moneyguy1]

Anyone changing their view on restoring some form of a draft?

[kach22i]

I picked up the first link from the Drudge Report 2007, and the second from Military.com.................are they "liberals"?

I find what's happening to be sad for our country, no good can come of this situation.

Marines Still Hunting Vietnam Deserters
USA Today | March 08, 2006
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,90335,00.html

WASHINGTON -- In the summer of 1965, Marine Cpl. Jerry Texiero quietly disappeared from his California base, plagued by personal demons and a mounting opposition to the Vietnam War.

Forty years later, in the summer of 2005, Texiero -- now known as Gerome Conti -- was taken into custody by police in Tarpon Springs, Fla., after the Marine Corps tracked him down.

Three decades after the war ended, hundreds of Vietnam-era deserters are still on the loose. Conti's attorneys, Louis Font and Tod Ensign, say the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps in particular, are cracking down on long-term cases in an effort to warn current-day troops in Iraq against deserting.

"My view is that the Marines are trying to send a message to people in the ranks today that they, too, will be required to participate in a war, whether they think it's illegal or immoral," Font says.

Marine spokesman Capt. Jay Delarosa says there was nothing unusual about the treatment of Conti.

However, the Marine official in charge of bringing in deserters said after Conti's arrest that his office was being more aggressive.

Chief Warrant Officer James Averhart, who has commanded the Marine Corps Absentee Collection Center since September 2004, told the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times that he had ordered cold cases reopened and that his squad had caught 27 deserters in his first 11 months on the job, a rate he suggested was higher than those of his predecessors. The Corps last month updated that number to 33 cases.

"I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," Averhart told the newspaper.

Delarosa said Averhart would not answer questions from USA TODAY. Asked whether the Marine Corps stands by Averhart's comments, Delarosa said, "I wasn't involved in that particular interview with CWO Averhart." He added that the Marine Corps has "discouraged most requests for interviews because CWO Averhart has been frequently misquoted."

Will Van Sant, who wrote the Times article, says the Marines never contacted him after it appeared.

Conti, 65, says he was surprised. "I thought they couldn't possibly be looking for me anymore. I would think they would have stopped looking for anybody who had been gone as long as I had."

Conti was held for five months -- four in solitary confinement -- then given an other-than-honorable discharge in January. If he had been court-martialed and convicted, he could have faced three years in the brig and a dishonorable discharge.

Another long-term Marine deserter, Ernest "Buck" McQueen, was arrested in Fort Worth in January. McQueen was Ernest Johnson Jr. when he left Camp Lejeune, N.C., in November 1969 because of concerns about going to Vietnam. McQueen, 55, was discharged without disciplinary action.

McQueen says he didn't take a new name to hide. His Social Security card says "McQueen." He says he was born Ernest Johnson Jr., but when his biological father left, his mother raised her son by her married name, McQueen. When he joined the Marines, he says, they insisted he go by Ernest Johnson Jr.

The government drafted men for the armed forces during wartime from the Civil War until 1973. Conti and McQueen enlisted.

In 1974, President Ford offered clemency to Vietnam draft resisters and deserters. Only 27,000 of 350,000 eligible applied. The offer expired on April 1, 1975. In 1977, President Carter pardoned those who dodged the war by not registering or fleeing the country. Neither Conti nor McQueen applied for the Ford pardon. Both spent decades hiding their past from families and employers. McQueen kept his military experience from two wives and two children, and even Conti's best friend in Florida, Elaine Smith, knew nothing of his history with the Marines.

McQueen says he had been in the Marines for nearly two years when he learned of the My Lai massacre in 1968, when hundreds of Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers. "I saw photos of guys with ears on their chains. I lost my desire to be a part of it."

Conti says his decision to desert was a combination of lingering emotional scars from a childhood lived in foster homes and concerns about stories he also was hearing about Vietnam.

Special Agent Tom Lorang of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) says most older desertion cases are filed away after an initial investigation is completed, although some are re-examined.

Except for the Marine Corps, military officials say long-term cases normally are closed when deserters voluntarily come back in or are stopped by civilian law officials, not through efforts to track them down.

That's not Conti's or McQueen's story. Conti says he was told his file was reopened and his fingerprints were run through a national database. He was in the database because he had been convicted of fraud and theft in 1998. He was on probation and paying restitution when the Marines caught up with him.

McQueen, a carpenter, says his former brother-in-law was called by Marine investigators, and he told them where to find him. "This kind of ... put me in a financial bind," says McQueen, who had been doing carpentry for a church when he was seized.

Conti has returned to his job selling boats, which his employer kept open for him while he was locked up.

"They just need to declare amnesty for everybody from a certain time back or from certain conflicts," says Elaine Smith, Conti's friend. "These guys ... just had issues, as we all did back in the '60s."

Military officials maintain that those who deserted the service are liable under law, no matter how unpopular a war was. "We actively investigate all cases of desertion," says Fred Hall, a spokesman for the Naval Personnel Command. "For each of the active deserters we have on our rolls -- 1,190 as of 31 Jan. '06 -- there is a federal warrant out for their arrest."

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
Anyone changing their view on restoring some form of a draft?

Feel that there should be no draft but that the country have mandatory military service for EVERYONE! At least 2 years for every young person in the country. No exceptions, period.

You want the good training, then you enlist for 4 years or longer otherwise at least you are exposed to some disipline and order in their lives then go to college or work.

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by kach22i
I picked up the first link from the Drudge Report 2007, and the second from Military.com.................are they "liberals"?

I find what's happening to be sad for our country, no good can come of this situation.

Sad??? They broke the law, no different than any other crime. In the end they will not go to jail for very long but they deserve to be caught.

[Moneyguy1]

Joe:

In agreement. Everyone should donate two years to the betterment of the country in some way or another. Too much reliance on "the other guy" to take care of social/military needs.

Might resolve part of the "me first" narcisstic attitude of so many young citizens.

[thrown_hammer]

I think someone that enlists in the military and is surprised they have to go to war is an idiot. That is like applying for a job on the slaughter house floor and being surprised you have to kill moo-moo cows.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Sad??? They broke the law, no different than any other crime. In the end they will not go to jail for very long but they deserve to be caught.

Really?

What do you make of this?

Not Available For Signature



Not Available For Signature

[Joeaksa]

If I could read it might be able to tell you.

What are you trying to get at? What does a DOD report showing that they did not complete their term of duty have to do with this?

[kach22i]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
If I could read it might be able to tell you.

What are you trying to get at? What does a DOD report showing that they did not complete their term of duty have to do with this?

The name on it is George W. Bush.

[Moneyguy1]

Wow!!

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by kach22i
The name on it is George W. Bush.

And??? He is short 5 months and change. Was working (if memory serves me right) at a Senators or Congressmans office the rest of the time.

Better than deserting, they knew where he was it was not in Canada.

Joe

[Moneyguy1]

Seems to me that anyone not completing the terms of a contract is guilty of breach of contract. It would be interesting to see how other individuals coming up short were treated. One isolated incident tells us nothing about a trend.

[legion]

IIRC, that happened towards the end of the Vietnam War and the military was discharging people before their terms were up left and right to get their numbers down quickly. A little different than desserting.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
Seems to me that anyone not completing the terms of a contract is guilty of breach of contract. It would be interesting to see how other individuals coming up short were treated. One isolated incident tells us nothing about a trend.

I know someone let out 18 months early on a medical condition which will never get better. They left a loop-hole that they could call him back anytime. I mean he could be 80 years old and they could still call him back to serve those last 18 months.........at least that the story when sitting on a bar stool.

[azasadny]

We had deserters and folks who made up all kinds of reasons why they shouldn't go to Saudi Arabia in the lead up to Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991. We had people claiming that they were suddenly Muslims and couldn't fight their "brothers", others claimed to be homosexuals, some women got pregnant, etc... all to avoid service during a war. Nothing new about this...

[kach22i]

Originally posted by legion
IIRC

Inactive Item Review Code?

What does that really mean?

I guess it's who you know:
http://www.glcq.com/bush_at_arpc1.htm

This is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_military_service_controversy
Memos allegedly from Jerry Killian