Occupy what?

[DTorrchia]

'Nuff said!

[WyldemanATX]

These Occupy people are nothing but criminals..

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by Wyldeman30

These Occupy people are nothing but criminals..

Yeah public disobediance is a crime, but it's a benign and harmless one.

Compare that the colossal frauds by bankers which brought about this recession.

1,000 bankers were convicted of fraud in the 1980s in the mortgage crisis of that time.

This time nothing has happened.

That's why people are taking to the streets.

D'Torchia,

There was no "greatest generation." As I've said before 60% of Americans under arms were drafted because they didn't want to be there. In the army people would do anything they could to avoid being in combat positions, and very often in combat wouldn't particpate. Studies showed that 90% of the Americans landed on Normany never fired their weapons. If it wasn't for the Air Corps smashing the Germans in France the US army would never have advanced.

Enough of the myth-spinning and distortions about the nobility of war.

and one more thing....

The US contribution to the war effort in Europe only brought about a communist hegemony over eastern Europe. How anyone could brag about fighting on the same side as Stalin and the Russians in that war is a disgrace.

If I were a US serviceman who served in Europe I would feel disgrace at the outcome of that war.

[WyldemanATX]

You think Rape is a disobedience crime???

If they want to hit the banks were it hurts need to go after the assholes that feed them.

1. U.S. Government.
2. Cell phones do not own one. Get rid of it.
3. cut off your cable.
4. Only buy local for everything.
5. Do not buy any electronics at all.
6. only buy from farmers markets and kill your own meat.
7. Do not use a debit card and withdraw all your money from banks.
8. Do not buy any kind of bottled drink

This would hurt all the banks severely if a high percentage of people did this.

[DTorrchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

D'Torchia,

There was no "greatest generation." As I've said before 60% of Americans under arms were drafted because they didn't want to be there.

TAE, I wish you would stop with this blatant distortion of facts.
Once and for all, be HONEST and put the 60% draft numbers you speak of in the proper context. It had NOTHING to do with American men "not wanting to be there (in the war). Here are the true facts:

The United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
Immediately following the attack there was a HUGE surge of volunteer enlistments.
Beginning Jan 1st, 1943, men who were eligible for the draft (excluding those younger than 18, older than the draft age or those who had deferments for various reasons) were consistently told to wait for their draft number to be called. So in the time span of only one year, many men who tried to enlist were no longer being accepted. Enlistees were still being accepted if slots were available but by and large the Selective Service boards by this time were running so smoothly that the majority of manpower requirements were met through the draft without having to rely on enlistees.
There are numerous reasons why the Government/Military took this action:

1. To spread the quality of recruits over all of the armed forces. (Seems the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), Navy and Marines were getting most of the 'higher' quality of volunteers in the early stages of the war)

2. To try to prevent manpower shortages in war industries and farming. One of the 'lessons' of WWI was that you could not allow patriotism to strip your factories and farms of all available manpower.

3. To control the number of men coming into the services at any one time. That way training resources weren't wasted on too few men or strained trying to train too many.

Harry Truman got the impression that the Military wanted to draft every able body man between 18 and 35 regardless of what it would do to the economy. He (and others) were able to fight them off, by requiring the Military to prove how many men they actually needed and they had to show that they had the resources to train the men they wanted. Needless to say the Military adjusted its manpower requirements.

So from now on when you try to throw out that 60% draft number in an attempt to smear WWII vets, please put it in the factual historical perspective.

(The Army's Green Book official history series, available at larger public libraries and government document repositories (check a local university library) has a whole volume on procurement and deployment of manpower. Try to find it.)



In the army people would do anything they could to avoid being in combat positions, and very often in combat wouldn't particpate. Studies showed that 90% of the Americans landed on Normany never fired their weapons. If it wasn't for the Air Corps smashing the Germans in France the US army would never have advanced.

Based on your responses in the Pat Tillman thread, I can already guess what your answer is going to be but the truth demands that I ask anyway.......
Please list a SOURCE or LINK to your above claim. If you have a reliable source (which I highly doubt given your record on these posts of never providing a source or link) I would like to see it and read it.

Enough of the myth-spinning and distortions about the nobility of war.

The only myth-spinning usually comes from someone that's never been to war. Oh, that's right....that would be YOU. I don't recall ever using the term "noble" in any war that's been discussed. I simply call you on your constant smear campaign against WWII veterans. I provided facts above which put your "60% of WWII vets had to be drafted" into the proper perspective and list why that number was so high. Back up your assertions with facts. Then we'll have a logical discussion on the issue.


and one more thing....

The US contribution to the war effort in Europe only brought about a communist hegemony over eastern Europe. How anyone could brag about fighting on the same side as Stalin and the Russians in that war is a disgrace.

Please study your history books a little more. Our nation's history is filled with examples of many strange bedfellows we had fighting our various wars. Sometimes we were allies with countries that we would later fight against and vice versa. Despite what you allege, Hitler's Nazi Germany and Japan's empire were the primary threats from 1938-1945. Yes Stalin turned out to be one evil SOB which is why we had the Cold War following WWII. Seems to have worked too. Several million people now live in independent countries rather than under Russian domination.


If I were a US serviceman who served in Europe I would feel disgrace at the outcome of that war.

And yet millions of WWII vets are extremely proud of their service and the duty they fulfilled.
It takes a real Slimeball TAE to find fault with the service that WWII vets provided to this nation. Say what you will but chances are you wouldn't be running an escort service if it wasn't for the sacrifices those men made. So next time you go to the bank and cash in on the work your employee/ providers performed, if you see an old WWII vet on the way, a simple "Thank You" from you would suffice rather than questioning why they had to be drafted.

Most of the WWII vets I talk to or have spoken to don't feel any disgrace at all. However I'm pretty sure that a 5 minute conversation with you would be enough for them to form a pretty solid opinion of the kind of person you are.

[theaustinescorts]

You're not serious?

Do you really think you're going to convince anyone that a draft was implimented because otherwise the services would be flooded with recruits they couldn't make proper use of?

That's the most nonsensical, illogical proposition I've heard in a long time.

The draft was implimented for the reason drafts are always implimented - to meet manpower goals. Otherwise they would not have been met.

The day after Pearl Harbor less than 40,000 people volunteered, in a nation of 135 million with about 25% unemployment.

Even if you read someone as nationalistic as Stephen Ambrose, he explains the problems the services had in meeting both material and manpower goals because of DECLINING MORALE in and out of the services in the months after Pearl Harbor.

Ambrose also goes over low morale issues in the army, the resentment between officers and enlisted men, the things used to get out of combat duty, etc.

Also please read John Keegan on D-Day and the army campaign in France.

The US units which hit Normandy were considered to have less than 30% of the combat power they were supposed to because of LOW MORALE.


As far as the US-Stalin alliance is concerned, it wasn't "strange bedfellows."

There was an ideological reason why Germany was sought for defeat when the USSR was not.

The reason was that FDR and other senior politicians were products of the propaganda of the Great War, and believed that Germany was an inherently warlike culture which had to be defeated unconditionally to secure the peace of the civilized world.

This is also the reason why after Germany AND THE USSR attacked Poland in 1939 France and Britain declared war on Germany but not on the USSR.

It wasn't based on principle; it was the same propaganda-driven anti-German hatred which made any real peace at the Paris Conference in 1919 UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE.

It was the failure of Paris in 1919, combined with the economic shock in Germany in 1932 and subsequent economic miracle of the Nazis from 1934 onward that made the war inevitable.

[F-Sharp]

"When I was your age..."

Corporations contributed 30% of Federal revenue, not 8% as they do today.

The average income between the top 1% and the bottom 90 of earners in the United States was roughly 10%. Today it is 350%.

The average producticity rate of the American worker has grown by 300%, however the additional income derived from that increased productivity has landed in the hands of CEO's and not the workers.

The marginal tax rate for earnings $200,000 and above was 94%, and capital gains tax was 25%.

The top 10% of earners held 32% of all the wealth in this country, today that number is 70%

'Nuff said.

[Wrangler58]

Envy is an ugly thing. Pitiful really. If you have money for a computer and this hobby, you are doing better than 2 generations ago.

[GneissGuy]

Originally Posted by F-Sharp

"When I was your age..."

Corporations contributed 30% of Federal revenue, not 8% as they do today.

No corporation has ever paid a cent of the federal revenue. For every dollar the government collects from a corporation, more than a dollar has been collected from the workers by the corporation, and some of it is wasted on accountants and bookkeeping.

Not only that, but the tax collected is regressive because the poor give a larger proportion of their income to corporations.

[Booth]

Originally Posted by Wrangler58

Envy is an ugly thing. Pitiful really. If you have money for a computer and this hobby, you are doing better than 2 generations ago.

Huh?

[DTorrchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

.

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

You're not serious?

Do you really think you're going to convince anyone that a draft was implimented because otherwise the services would be flooded with recruits they couldn't make proper use of?

That's the most nonsensical, illogical proposition I've heard in a long time.

Of course it's nonsensical to someone like you since you didn't bother to actually read or acknowledge the reasons given for the draft. Again, had you bothered to READ about the struggles that were going on behind the scenes, Roosevelt and later Truman's attempts to balance the needs of war material production, food production and the overall ecomony vs the military's need for manpower you would understand that a system that could control how many people were inducted into the military at any one time was absolutely necessary.

So since you seem to have MISSED the points, here they are again:
1. To spread the quality of recruits over all of the armed forces. (Seems the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), Navy and Marines were getting most of the 'higher' quality of volunteers in the early stages of the war)

2. To try to prevent manpower shortages in war industries and farming. One of the 'lessons' of WWI was that you could not allow patriotism to strip your factories and farms of all available manpower.

3. To control the number of men coming into the services at any one time. That way training resources weren't wasted on too few men or strained trying to train too many.

NOTE in # 3 above TAE that is says "too few men or too many"

So your distortion of what I wrote is plainly obvious. It had nothing to do with the military being flooded by too many volunteers. There was an initial rush the day after Pearl Harbor as even you admit....(Check the numbers but the military has rarely had a day when 40,000 people tried to join in one day). Your effort to link these 40,000 volunteers statistically to the total U.S. population is ridiculous and shows your complete inability to understand the subject matter. Compared to the total U.S. Population the number of men and women serving in the military has ALWAYS been statistically insignificant. (Somewhere below 2% of the total population). Let me enlighten you with a quote:
"The Army, in turn, used the opportunity of the air buildup and the $575 million appropriation for a more balanced expansion. Momentum picked up after the German invasion of Poland in September and the outbreak of a general European war. Proclaiming a limited national emergency, Roosevelt authorized an increase to 227,000 for the Regular Army and to 235,000 for the National Guard". http://www.history.army.mil/documents/mobpam.htm

When the European war began in earnest on September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland, the U.S. Army ranked seventeenth among armies of the world in size and combat power, just behind Romania. It numbered 190,000 soldiers.
So when you look at 40,000 volunteers compared to the force numbers above it would be a significant increase!
However that had nothing to do with the draft. The draft was implemented to have a logistically sound way to provide manpower to the military while taking into consideration the needs on the home front. If you haven't bothered to read up on the history and politics of the draft during WWII then you're simply speaking out without any facts. I provided you one such reading source which you apparently have disregarded for your two historians below.


Ambrose also goes over low morale issues in the army, the resentment between officers and enlisted men, the things used to get out of combat duty, etc.

I've read Ambrose's books and enjoyed them. I certainly don't look to them as a source for detailed historical facts. Ambrose tries to paint an overall picture of service life during WWII but even he himself would be the first to admit that for detailed historical facts in regards to the draft, combat duty etc there are many serious historians out there with more in-depth knowledge.

Also please read John Keegan on D-Day and the army campaign in France.

John Keegan? The Brit who trashed Clausewitz and is ridiculed in serious U.S. academic circles for his treatment of Clausewitz??? Ok, yep that's a fine source indeed. Maybe just maybe when you're talking about U.S. troop morale and combat strength you should stick to the many qualified U.S. historians.

It was the failure of Paris in 1919, combined with the economic shock in Germany in 1932 and subsequent economic miracle of the Nazis from 1934 onward that made the war inevitable.
The first factually true statement I've read from you in regards to WWII.

The first duty is to remember. We have an obligation to the Veterans of World War II, and all our wars, to remember.
Not to distort, not to glorify, not to claim triumph but simply to remember the sacrifices they made on our behalf and on behalf of our nation.

[theaustinescorts]

These are the facts:

1. The draft wasn't created after Pearl Harbor. It was created well prior to Pearl Harbor because the US went on a war footing in 1940. Even though there was 25% unemployment the services could not meet their manpower goals because of the pacifisim resulting from the debacle of the Great War. Along with the draft [the first in peacetime] the US also put into the works the Essex class carrier, the Ohio class battleship, the atom bomb, etc. Until this came about the US army only had 75,000 men.......smaller than the army of Romania! That's because after the Great War the American public was fed up with these stupid, useless wars that cost their lives and treasure and didn't benefit them.

2.John Keegan's reporting about morale problems in the US army in Europe are accurate, reported by everyone else as well, and are undeniable. You can find the same facts everywhere else where the topic is addressed.

3.I'm not a fan of Ambrose, but his reporting of the morale problems behind the mobilization crisis and in the services is just undeniable. He didn't manufacture these issues anymore than Keegan did.

The fact is that WWII for the American people was just like every other war, no better and no worse.

At the beginning there was a tremendous shock which CAUGHT PEOPLE OFF BALANCE and made them form rash opinions, but as the months went on there was less zeal, and more doubts emerged. Opinion was very divided. What really raised doubts however was the announcement that the war aim was unconditional surrender. At that time it was an unprecidented aim of war. At the beginning people thought they were going to fight to beat back the armies which had declared war on them....then they were told they'd have to die to bring the war to the capitals of Japan and Germany. That made people wonder what was really going on.

My point about the alliance with Stalin stands for several obvious reasons including this personal one....

In the past I worked with people from the post-war era of the 1950s.

To a man they all believed that defeating Germany was a mistake. After the war they concluded they'd been misled by the American Left and FDR.

Most believed that Stalin was the greater evil. Some believed he was the only evil.

That's why they gave passports to former Nazis, helped them escape Europe, and otherwise worked with Nazis with no problem at all after the war. More specifically, in the Budapest uprising in 1956 all of CIA's agents were former Nazis. There's no longer any controversy about who the US was allied with in the anti-communist struggles of the post-war era....they were all Nazis, former Nazis, or Italian facists. That's now a matter of record. Even Klaus Barbi is now conceeded to have been a US agent after the war. For that matter NASA could have purged itself from former SS officers after their knowledge had been gained, but they didn't. The leadership of NASA liked the fact the all their top talent were former Nazis.

That's the facts about the US government...and it's the exact opposite of everything you'll ever read or see in the media.

Oh and just one more thing....

The far-right Israelis I've dealt with also admired the Germans. It was one reason why they wanted to work with me. We used to speak Deutch together. This is also something you'll never see admitted in any media, but it's true. For that matter these same Israelis used to do business with the Iranians all the time....remember Iran-Contra? Remember David Kimche?

War is game friend...it's not a morality play.

[DTorrchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

These are the facts:

1. The draft wasn't created after Pearl Harbor. It was created well prior to Pearl Harbor because the US went on a war footing in 1940.
Not once did I say the draft was created after Pearl Harbor. Again, please read my posts more carefully if you are accidentally misquoting me or stop doing it on purpose. We were speaking of the increase in military personnel after Dec 7th, 1941, when the U.S. officially entered the war, NOT the beginning of the draft.

Even though there was 25% unemployment the services could not meet their manpower goals because of the pacifisim resulting from the debacle of the Great War. Along with the draft, the first in peacetime, the US also put into production the Essex class carrier, the Ohio class battleship, the atom bomb, etc.

TAE, please, let's keep this realistic. There was a CAP on the size of the armed forces, so manpower shortage had nothing to do with it prior to 1940. Are you disputing the OFFICIAL ARMED FORCES numbers set by Congress? Give me a break! I even quoted Roosevelt having to authorize an increase in the Armed Forces. What part of that don't you believe when it's officially recorded? The Armed Forces don't get to decide how many people they will allow into their service. Congress sets the size of the military, and that determines how many can enlist each year.
So your allegation that it was "pacifism" that caused our Armed Forces to be small in size prior to 1941 is completely, factually incorrect!
After 1941 there were a myriad of logistics to consider. I understand that you've never served and therefor may not fully understand just how tough the logistics of the situation were. It's not like you could simply put out a call for 3,000,000 men to show up and then be prepared to train them, house them, feed them and ship them overseas. It's a little more complicated then that. Hence the Draft was the easiest way to control how many men entered and at what time intervals they entered. Again, Pacifism had NOTHING to do with these issues.

"The main factor which limited the size of the US Army, apart from the capacity of the American economy to equip such a large force quickly, was shipping. The shipping estimates showed that no more than 4,170,000 men could be shipped overseas by the end of 1944. In the event the number of divisions shipped abroad did not exceed 88. This fact was an important restraint on Allied strategy.
Thus although expansion between December 1941 and December 1943 was unprecedented, with the Army growing from 1,657,157 to 5,400,888, a further increase in the number of units was not undertaken."

Maybe the above will help you get a different perspective. Simply talking to left wing friends and reading authors like Ambrose, who's aims are as much to entertain as anything else, does not necessarily provide the insight into the historical facts.

2.John Keegan's reporting about morale problems in the US army in Europe are accurate, reported by everyone else as well, and are undeniable. You can find the same facts everywhere else where the topic is addressed.

Keegan is a Brit. The Brit's performance during and immediately following Normandy are a matter of official record. Eisenhower was so furious with Montgomery's performance that he wanted him sacked. So Keegan's opinions on morale in the U.S. forces have reason to be skewed.

"Despite initial heavy losses in the assault phase, Allied morale remained high".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy

“ Much the most memorable impression I had that night was, seasickness apart, the terrific morale of the troops. Such was their training and briefing, and so muddle-free the assembly, that none of us thought it possible that anything could go wrong or that we were on anything but a rather super exercise where live bullets would not actually be aimed at us, but so as to miss, and death never really happened."
-Mr R. Haig – Brown, 93rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment
crossed the Channel in an LST (Landing Ship, Tank). He describes the crossing on the night of 5-6 June:
http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/memory_crossing.htm

I would quote you many, MANY more examples of U.S. and Allied troops describing their morale but I'm currently limited on access to some of my books on the matter.
Since you brought up Ambrose I'm also currently re-reading "Citizen Soldiers" and have yet to find where Ambrose makes any type of claim of U.S. soldiers' morale problems during D-Day. I'll get back to more on that when I'm completely done re-reading it.



3.I'm not a fan of Ambrose, but his reporting of the morale problems behind the mobilization crisis and in the services is just undeniable. He didn't manufacture these issues anymore than Keegan did.

The fact is that WWII for the American people was just like every other war, no better and no worse.

Apparently you didn't bother to check the facts before making the above statement. There wasn't nearly the resistance to the draft during WWII as compared to the later war in Vietnam. Please check the numbers on that and tell me where you find any evidence supporting your position.

At the beginning there was a tremendous shock which galvanized opinion, but as the months went on there was less zeal for the the effort and more doubts emerged. Opinion was very divided. What really raised doubts however was the announcement that the war aims were unconditional surrender. At that time it was an unprecidented aim of war. At the beginning people thought they were going to fight to beat back the armies which had declared war on them....then they were told they'd have to die to bring the war to the capitals of Japan and Germany. That made people wonder what was really going on.

My point about the alliance with Stalin stands for several obvious reasons including this personal one....

In the past I worked with several people from the post-war era of the 1950s.

To a man they all believed that defeating Germany was a mistake. After the war they concluded they'd been misled by the American Left and FDR.

They all believed that Stalin was the greater evil.

Once you get to the level of evil of either Stalin or Hitler, trying to determine which one is worse is a matter of semantics. Hitler needed to be stopped and was. Japan's eastern aggression needed to be contained and it was. As soon as we had these two problems resolved we DID focus our attention on containing Stalin. While it could be argued that more could have been done sooner, by that stage of the war no one had the stomach for hundreds of thousands of more dead G.I.'s trying to fight an all out war against Stalin.

That's why they gave passports to former Nazis, helped them escape Europe, and otherwise worked with Nazis with no problem at all after the war.

I think they were right, but that's just my opinion.

I appreciate you at least not stating the above as fact and coming out and stating that it's just your opinion. We can agree to disagree on that since no facts are involved.

[theaustinescorts]

Your mantra is that "Hitler needed to be stopped."

This was the crap spewed out by the Brits and American Left, but it's total propaganda.

Stopped from doing what? Attacking Poland?

Didn't the USSR also attack Poland?

Are you going to say that Russia therefore "needed to be stopped?"

Maybe it's because Hitler invaded France?

Yeah but he only did so after France declared war on Germany after Poland, and then for months refused all of Germany's offers to end the war.

The facts are that Germany didn't need to stopped from anything. The war in the west was entirely the doing of the Brits and France. The French and Brits wanted a new war with Germany so they could finish what they couldn't in the Great War, and that's why they used the Polish invasion as a PRETEXT to declare war on Germany. They were in the process of mobilization when the Germans rightly attacked France in May 1940 to pre-empt an attack on themselves by France and England when their preparations were complete.

You can't understand the motives of the actors in 1939 without understanding what happened before in the Great War and in Paris 1919......it was just a continuation of the same issues with different pretexts.

btw...

When the Germans invaded Poland 75,000 Poles were killed.

When the US invaded Iraq 75,000 Iraqis were killed.

When Germany invaded Poland the Germans made up a series of false pretexts to justify their action.

When the US invaded Iraq the US made up a series of false pretexts to justify their actions.

See what I'm getting at?

War is a game. But if you wanna argue morality I think George Bush and Hitler are pretty much the same, but that's only my opinion.

[DTorrchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Your mantra is that "Hitler needed to be stopped."

This was the crap spewed out by the Brits and American Left, but it's total propaganda.

Stopped from doing what? Attacking Poland?

Didn't the USSR also attack Poland?

Are you going to say that Russia therefore "needed to be stopped?"

Maybe it's because Hitler invaded France?

Yeah but he only did so after France declared war on Germany after Poland, and then for months refused all of Germany's offers to end the war.

The facts are that Germany didn't need to stopped from anything. The war in the west was entirely the doing of the Brits and France. The French and Brits wanted a new war with Germany so they could finish what they couldn't in the Great War, and that's why they used the Polish invasion as a PRETEXT to declare war on Germany. They were in the process of mobilization when the Germans rightly attacked France in May 1940 to pre-empt an attack on themselves by France and England when their preparations were complete.

You can't understand the motives of the actors in 1939 without understanding what happened before in the Great War and in Paris 1919......it was just a continuation of the same issues with different pretexts.

btw...

When the Germans invaded Poland 75,000 Poles were killed.

When the US invaded Iraq 75,000 Iraqis were killed.

When Germany invaded Poland the Germans made up a series of false pretexts to justify their action.

When the US invaded Iraq the US made up a series of false pretexts to justify their actions.

See what I'm getting at?

War is a game. But if you wanna argue morality I think George Bush and Hitler are pretty much the same, but that's only my opinion.

While I generally don't mind pointing out where you continue to make factual mistakes in regards to WWII, when you reach the stage of..."George Bush and Hitler are pretty much the same, but that's only my opinion".....I have to excuse myself from the debate. Not because I have some undying love for George Bush but because almost all of your arguments above are so far off base that it would take more time and energy than I am willing to put in, to point out just how out of touch you are with the facts.
That and the fact it's almost 11pm by me and I have a long day ahead tomorrow. Feel free in my absence to carry on with your "Hitler wasn't really all that bad" platform.
Good night.