Many Elite Soldiers Leave for Better Pay

[maddezmom]

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Just when the U.S. military needs them most, senior Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other elite forces are leaving for higher-paying jobs.



After getting years of training and experience in the military, they leave for other government jobs or for what defense officials said Tuesday has been an explosion in outside contractor work.


"What makes them so valuable to us makes them highly marketable on the outside," said Chief Master Sgt. Robert V. Martens Jr., senior adviser at the U.S. Special Operations Command, which also oversees equipping and training elite Army Rangers and Air Force special operations commandos.


Better salaries, retirement benefits and educational opportunities are among incentives that might help stem the problem, defense officials said as they met with lawmakers to discuss ways to keep forces who have become so crucial to the war on terror.

~snip~
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&ncid=693&e=6&u=/ap/20040720/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/special_forces

[dArKeR]

1. Trained to kill! 2004, our world is heading in the wrong direction!

[Shakespeare]

2. Yeah...until they get called back up again on IRR.

Anybody who's been in the military in recent years should be sweating bullets right now.

[Dover]

3. A new vocation in the lucrative killing industry. Paid killers with no

scruples about who, where, when or why so long as they get their paycheck. Bushco Inc.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

5. There is a line, and you crossed it.

The vast majority of our U.S. military servicemen have honor, discipline, bravery, and scruples. They do not choose who to fight. That is the job of the Commander and Chief.

Once they leave the military, it should be expected that they would go into the security industry. That is, after all, what they are experts in. And true security experts know that that the best battle is the one that is never fought.

I don't Alert messages because I believe in freedom of speech, but I still would ask you - please - not to act like the GOP caricature of liberals - i.e. a knee-jerk anti-Americans who always assumes the worst motives from their own military.

- C.D.

[oneighty]

8. But Dover has

a good point. IMHO.

180, EX EOD

180

[Pastiche423]

9. Hired killers

are honorable, disciplined, brave and have scruples?

I don't think many will buy that.

Btw, it's commander in chief.

[cap]

10. no...

it is not expected that ex-military go into paramilitary companies like blackwater.

Ex Military often go into law enforcement but they also go into many other fields as well.

[Dover]

12. The line certainly HAS been crossed. But not by me.

Mercenary warriors fighting for corporate interests cross the line.
They are NOT 'our boys', but hired corporate toughs accountable to the CEO and profits. They are not representative of or accountable to you and me, nor are we to them. They allow unpopular and unsanctioned wars to be waged in our name, in secret...which is why their deaths are often not even reported.

These hired killers make a mockery of "our boys" who are willing to put their lives on the line for this country and its principles.

If that is what you consider a 'liberal' mind set, rather than normal concern for this country's conduct and accountability to it's own people and to the planet...so be it.
I find your condoning of this frightening trend misguided and alarming at best.

[saigon68]

11. A lot of these troops are MURDERERS

I say it all the time here---- they are psychopaths, bums and bullies.

And I ain't talking Chuck Graner here---the prison guard who liked to see POWs Piss in their Pants

They are enthralled with killing --- to them its better than anything else

[TahitiNut]

4. "Privatized" = war profiteering

The treasury gets plundered while the economically-coerced get killed.

[phantom power]

6. The GOP should have no problem with this: it's just the market

operating as it's supposed to, right?

[doctorbombeigh]

7. This would be after their implants and lipo, right? n/t

[burrowowl]

13. More taxpayer money

gone to corporations, every dollar, everyone.
I do hope they save a lot of that extra money because if they are wounded, they have to pay for their treatment out of their own pocket, of course the National Guard is also getting a raw deal.