Quotes of the Morning: Supporting the Troops

“I didn’t have to go on a business trip after all, so I get to rant here some more.. Sweet.”
-Skippy

“March marked the 10th month in a row that the active-duty Army has met its recruitment goals, aided by an aggressive campaign that includes financial bonuses and a significant increase in the number of recruiters.
It has recruited 31,369 soldiers since Oct. 1, compared with more than 32,100 as of this time last year. The goal for each year: 80,000.”
-Associated Press, April 11, 2006

“Fantastic! The Army is back on track. Nothing to worry about. Thank goodness. With us threatening Iran at the moment I was getting a little concerned about our preparedness to take on a third country.”
-Skippy

“Last Sept. 30, the Army closed out one of its most difficult recruiting periods in decades, falling more than 6,600 recruits short of its goal. It was the first shortfall since 1999, and the largest in 26 years.
In the coming summer months, the Army will try to recruit between 8,600 and 10,400 soldiers a month--well above the numbers achieved last year.”
-Associated Press, April 11, 2006

“The Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the number rising to 3,300 in 2007. These officers are the Army's seed corn, the people who 10 years from now should be leading battalions and brigades.
‘We're ruining an Army that took us 30 years to build,’ Republican maverick Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told a group of reporters at a recent conference.
[…]
The Army denies the shortage is a crisis, but its top civilian, Francis J. Harvey, acknowledged concerns, telling the Washington Post: ‘We are worried.’"
-Express-News (San Antonio), April 8, 2006

“Hey, if the military gets a little ‘thin on top’ we can continue to do what we’ve been doing.. We’ll just continue to outsource the tasks that civilian contractors could do for the military, enabling those troops to get back to the task of defending our American Freedom ™. What could go wrong?”
-Skippy

“The U.S. Army and private contractors employed convicted criminals as security guards across the country despite repeated warnings in the past three years of the ‘risky situations’ that could present, according to a new federal report.
[…]
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Army began using outside security guards to man the front gates at 57 U.S. installations because of the number of forces sent overseas.”
-Virginian-Pilot, April 5, 2006

“Well we obviously don’t want to employ criminals to do security. We just want good, reliable, all-American companies with a long record of working with our Administration. Like Halliburton. You can’t get much more all-American than Halliburton. Heck, the vice-president used to run the company.”
-Skippy

“Halliburton Co. exposed troops in Iraq to contaminated water even after a former company worker publicly accused the Houston-based contractor of failing to chlorinate water supplies, Senate Democrats alleged Thurs- day.
Back in January, a one-time water purification specialist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR told a Democratic panel he tested water used for showers, shaving and washing clothes at Camp Junction City in Ramadi last March and found it had not been treated with chlorine.
[…]
Halliburton allowed troops to bathe in water pumped from the Tigris River that tested positive for E. coli and coliform bacteria, Dorgan said.”
-Houston Chronicle, April 6, 2006

“A little dirty water and these people complain? Shameful! Our troops aren’t worried about a little dirty water. They’re tougher than that. This is the military.”
-Skippy

“A U.S. Army doctor serving in Iraq has linked a small outbreak of bacterial infections among U.S. troops to allegedly contaminated water supplied by Houston-based Halliburton Co.
In the latest broadside against Halliburton and its performance in Iraq, Senate Democrats produced an e-mail Friday from Capt. Michelle Callahan, a family physician serving at Qayyarah Airfield West, recounting how she treated six infections over a two-week period in January, at the same time she was noticing the water in base showers was cloudy and foul-smelling.
Follow-up testing of the water soldiers were using to bathe, shave and even brush their teeth revealed evidence of coliform and E. coli bacteria, Callahan wrote in an e-mail to a staffer for the Democratic Policy Committee, led by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.”
-Houston Chronicle, April 9, 2006

“What? It actually made them sick.. Oh… Nevermind..”
-Skippy