Are Singaporean conscripts too soft?
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That incident is US propaganda.
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Yeah..she admitted she never even fired a shot in ambush and passed out before before she can react..
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Our young grow up playing computer game and eat fast food..... how can they not be soft?
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It seems to me that you failed to read my post on the incident properly.Originally posted by glock:That incident is US propaganda.
Since when was Pvt. Jessica Lynch a female spec? Or could it be in your hurry to dismiss any sucessful American action as propangada you missed out the important details? Please read the posts properly before you shoot off one-liners.
I'm sure we are all quite aware on what transpired with Pvy. Jessica Lynch, but it seems that you are so fixated on that story that you fail to realize that there are plenty of female combatants in the US armed forces that have far better, and more amazing stories to tell.
You are mixing up Pvt. Jessica Lynch with Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester. Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester was awarded a silver star for her actions during an ambush on a convoy.Originally posted by LRRP:Yeah..she admitted she never even fired a shot in ambush and passed out before before she can react..
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2005/20050616_1745.html
WASHINGTON, June 16, 2005 – For the first time since World War II, a woman soldier was awarded the Silver Star Medal today in Iraq.
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Richmond, Ky., received the Silver Star, along with two other members of her unit, Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein and Spc. Jason Mike, for their actions during an enemy ambush on their convoy. Other members of the unit also received awards.
Hester's squad was shadowing a supply convoy March 20 when anti-Iraqi fighters ambushed the convoy. The squad moved to the side of the road, flanking the insurgents and cutting off their escape route. Hester led her team through the "kill zone" and into a flanking position, where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 grenade-launcher rounds. She and Nein, her squad leader, then cleared two trenches, at which time she killed three insurgents with her rifle.
When the fight was over, 27 insurgents were dead, six were wounded, and one was captured.
Hester, 23, who was born in Bowling Green, Ky., and later moved to Nashville, Tenn., said she was surprised when she heard she was being considered for the Silver Star.
"I'm honored to even be considered, much less awarded, the medal," she said.
Being the first woman soldier since World War II to receive the medal is significant to Hester. But, she said, she doesn't dwell on the fact. "It really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she said. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."
Hester, who has been in the National Guard since April 2001, said she didn't have time to be scared when the fight started, and she didn't realize the impact of what had happened until much later.
"Your training kicks in and the soldier kicks in," she said. "It's your life or theirs. ... You've got a job to do -- protecting yourself and your fellow comrades."
Nein, who is on his second deployment to Iraq, praised Hester and his other soldiers for their actions that day. "It's due to their dedication and their ability to stay there and back me up that we were able to do what we did that day," he said.
Hester and her fellow soldiers were awarded their medals at Camp Liberty, Iraq, by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, Multinational Corps Iraq commanding general. In his speech, Vines commended the soldiers for their bravery and their contribution to the international war on terror.
"My heroes don't play in the (National Basketball Association) and don't play in the U.S. Open (golf tournament) at Pinehurst," Vines said. "They're standing in front of me today. These are American heroes."
Three soldiers of the 617th were wounded in the ambush. Hester said she and the other squad members are thinking about them, and she is very thankful to have made it through unscathed. The firefight, along with the entire deployment, has had a lasting effect on her, Hester said.
"I think about it every day, and probably will for the rest of my life," she said.
Any questions? -
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2005/03/after_action_re.html
So is this yet more "US Propangada?"
Also, meet PFC Jessica Nicholson Lynn, not to be confused with Jessica Lynch:
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/06/jessica_lynn_ni.html -
Its Jessica Lynch. Read all about this from the old war horse, Hack. He even phoned the Pentagon to contest the award.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34272
Using Jessica Lynch
Posted: August 26, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Jessica Lynch recently was awarded a Bronze Star Medal, a Purple Heart and the POW Medal. The BSM citation reads: "For exemplary courage under fire during combat operations to liberate Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Private First Class Lynch's bravery and heart persevered while surviving in the ambush and captivity in An Nasiriya."
A BSM for "bravery" and "surviving in the ambush and captivity"!
The Army's official After-Action Report said she was in a vehicle that crashed while hauling butt trying to escape an enemy ambush. She was knocked unconscious and woke up at a nearby Iraqi hospital receiving special attention from some super-caring Iraqi doctors and nurses.
This was probably the first incident in U.S. military history in which an American soldier was awarded our country's fourth-highest ground-fighting award for being conked out and off the air throughout a fight.
BSMs citing bravery typically read: "Moving his machine gun to a forward vantage point, he covered the advance of the infantry with a heavy volume of effective fire. Repeatedly exposing himself to a devastating small-arms automatic weapons and mortar barrage ..." Or: "He voluntarily acted as point man and ... when the platoon was fired upon ... charged the enemy position ... Through his courage, determination and devotion to duty, he saved his patrol from suffering casualties and captured a prisoner who later provided important information."
It's no big surprise that I've been bombarded by thousands of angry e-mails from vets protesting this assault on our country's sacred award system.
"She wasn't wounded in action, nor did she do anything to deserve a Bronze Star," writes Arch McNeill. "We have hundreds of valiant soldiers here in the 3rd Division who far more deserve more than she received but in many cases didn't receive anything."
"I'm going to send all my awards back to the president and tell him where he can shove them," says a genuine war hero, Jack Speed, a former Army Raider.
Trust me, the troops – past and present – are unhappy.
So I rang the Pentagon and asked Col. Jeff Keane, "Why the bravery bit?" Finally, when the standard Army propaganda drill wasn't going down, Keane told me, " It was for her bravery in the hospital."
But all this flimflam wasn't Jessica's doing. She was used right from the first – a frail prop in the Pentagon's public-relations campaign to sell the war to the American people and to encourage their daughters to join up and be heroes.
To keep the truth under wraps, the Army concocted another whopper: "She suffers from amnesia."
A senior officer from V Corps (the unit that eventually awarded her the BSM), who has asked to remain anonymous, comments that there was "tremendous pressure right from the get-go to award Pvt. Lynch a Silver Star. But the high brass here concluded, 'There was no evidence of heroism on her part,' and told the pushers to back off."
But when the propagandists conned the highly respected Washington Post into reporting on how Lynch was shot and stabbed but continued to kill Iraqis until her last round was spent, heroic stuff that would make Audie Murphy look like a slacker – which the Post then took several months to correct – other media were fast to pick up the fairy tale, and the Army was besieged by proud Americans demanding that Jessica be awarded the Medal of Honor.
Of course, many of us now know that a high-priced flack in Tommy Frank's headquarters came up with this tall tale and then duped the Post.
According to retired Marine Lt. Col. Roger Charles: "There's nothing they won't stoop to spin. The Army needed a female hero to boost female recruiting and PR efforts, so they went and invented one."
And that's the root of the problem. The elevation of Jessica to Joan of Arc status is to recruit more women, even though thousands of female soldiers couldn't deploy with their units to Iraq because of pregnancy, no sitters for single moms' multiple kids and other problems.
And poor Jessica Lynch has become the unwitting poster girl for an Army of One that's fast becoming an Army of Two – since apparently more than half of the women deployed to Iraq are now pregnant.[[/url] -
An E-4 in the US Army is a SPC.
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Agree that there is lots of confusion since there are contradicting descriptions of the event. Actually , it may not be the same event right - or maybe wrong Jessica ?
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Why is it when one thinks of US female combatants Jessica Lynch is the only thing so many people know? There are plenty of other more worthy stories of the fighting women in Iraq, and if one wants to get a true picture of everything, those stories are worth taking into account as well.
AFAIK, the Jessica Lynch incident and the resulting politics and propangada was a slap in the face to many of the other combatant units and they aren't that happy about it. Her unit got many more bronze stars and purple hearts then other units that took far more fire and seen more action. The grunts on the ground are hardly blind to this so called "US-Propangada".
The truth is it's just an effect of the news on a general public mostly ignorant of the war, and the incident took on a life of its own. If they really wanted Propangada material it would be so much better to play up Sgt. Hester's exploits.
There are REAL stories of heroism worth finding out about... why fixate on Jessica Lynch and crop it up as a highly ignorant point everytime someone is talking about something entirely different? -
If they awarded everybody who deserves, a medal, bronze star, silver star, DSF, purple heart, watever... It probably wont be worth much anymore. A lot of ppl ought to receive them.
Its been a crazy war... The longest since vietnam... -
OOH - you said the 'v' word. George 'the decider' Bush is not going to be happy.Originally posted by Shotgun:If they awarded everybody who deserves, a medal, bronze star, silver star, DSF, purple heart, watever... It probably wont be worth much anymore. A lot of ppl ought to receive them.
Its been a crazy war... The longest since vietnam...
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The same could be said of US army regulars. Their boot camp looks, as I said in another thread, easy as pish.Originally posted by LazerLordz:The same could be said for US Army Reserve volunteers. Look at the kind of people they get..
It's about us being a developed nation. With conscription, you will naturally have to accept a degradation in quality, because not everyone is keen to push themselves up to be as good as one who has the passion to serve.
Thus the need to use technology to overcome this shortcoming, and the pitfalls were seen in the recent Lebanon conflict, with unfit Israeli reservists unable to make up much ground.
It is justified on the basis that in the US army alot of training is done after they are posted to their units. -
The main issue was that the AAR of the entire Jessica Lynch incident indicated that the result of the ambush was due in a large part to many failures on the part of the unit to prepare their own drivers and personnel for combat. A lot of the medals laced out came more from the politics that came to shroud the issue then it actually being deserved by the people actually involved.Originally posted by Shotgun:If they awarded everybody who deserves, a medal, bronze star, silver star, DSF, purple heart, watever... It probably wont be worth much anymore. A lot of ppl ought to receive them.
Its been a crazy war... The longest since vietnam...
As such, the grunts are the ones who don't really like the whole affair. -
True enough. But why should anyone be so surprised or taken back? The awarding of medals has always been a political agenda. In the past, they used it to pacify the media, give them something to sensationalize.
The only citation thats really worth anything, is ur friend being well and alive, and sharing a nice cold one with you.
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It is true that younsters today are probably softer then those in the past. However, to be fair, the higher level of grumblings today may also be attributable to the freely available number of conduits with which to vent one's frustration. When I was enlisted back in '87, I wanted to grumble, whine, curse, swear, cuss etc etc so badly, but alas there was no internet in those days... So I have no choice but to grit my teeth and bear it.Originally posted by LRRP:Are Singapore conscripts too soft?
Compared to other conscripts from TW, KR, i seriously think our local soldiers got a lot of "discount" in terms of "siong" training. Compare to the training from even just say 5 years ago..Theres a LOT more mechanisation of equipment.
And yet I still see so many grumblings on sgforums and others on how "siong" the training is ah..blah blah..the food no good etc etc and how they wanna give up..
Youngsters now are just simply too pampered..
Whereas today, the channel for one to grumble is just a mouse click away.... It is also not necessarily a bad thing for younger conscripts to grumble... It is a form of stress release. -
I dont care how much they want to grumble. As long as they do their part in NS, do it well, appear when MOB call up and go fight a war when we have too i happy already. I fear that they rather zhao then defend when called up to.
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Why isit always the elderly that are so worried. Afraid that the young guys will run away and leave you undefended? Its always people saying that nowadays the young people so nua, so slack, so useless and cant even take any stress at all.
I definitely do no see any thing wrong with the conscripts complaining. Its not like they volunteer to be doing that. I wonder how people who say that conscripts are too soft would like to have the training conducted? By dunking in water? Perhaps they ought to sign on before saying anything. Who is to say that Taiwan and Korean conscript are not soft and they do not complain at all. I also can wayang till I super garang soldier.
I have ORD-ed and certainly it would be so easy for me to say that the conscript are too slack and training to easy because it would not be me who will have to undergo it and also in war it makes me feel safer but I certainly feel its not right. -
The only thing i can say about conscript nows a day is that they ask too much.
Why need to do this?
What is the reason?
Why not someone else doing it?
Why me ?
Why this why that, but the time you finish explaining to them all, war over already -
Is that really a bad thing? Having smarter soldiers?
I think you are overstating the issue... true our current soldiers are more willing to question the status quo, however this is expected if you are moving in the direction of having a "thinking soldier".
Have you seen how the yanks enlisted men and NCOs stand up to their officers when they make idiotic decisions. Go read Generation Kill. The days of soldiers dumbly following orders are fading away. -
So do you expect during an operation where your solider start asking until he understand, where order was just to move to one corner, or scout the front for 50m.
What if you are in a fire fight, clearing BUA or FIFO. -
When did you ORD? It seems that you are making a lot of bizzare statements about our so-called more questioning soldiers. Were you a commander in a combat unit recently?Originally posted by justcooler:So do you expect during an operation where your solider start asking until he understand, where order was just to move to one corner, or scout the front for 50m.
What if you are in a fire fight, clearing BUA or FIFO.
AFAIK, from MY experience, our current THINK more about things and provide feedback. But at the end of the day they still know what the do when it comes down to the job. And I think that's a good thing. Our men currently want to know if their commander really knows the stuff he is talking worthy of their respect about or if he's just talking out of his butt and giving orders to appear "commanding".
Soldiers that do not understand their orders, follows it all blindly, or does not understand where it all fits into the bigger picture is at best a dumb asset on the battlefield micromanaged by their commander.
The way you make it sound is as if our soldiers question every single thing they do and do not get it done. Which from my experience, does not happen. What is happening is that they actually want to UNDERSTAND what they are doing instead of just being told to go here and there and do this and that.
Is that a good thing? Yes. I would prefer a soldier who questions if I have accounted for the enemy sightings in the next block a few hours ago when I give him the order to move around the next corner. It is a lot better then him simply nodding and going about the thing.
More minds working on the problem is always a better thing, as long as the commander maintains the last word in the end. -
Don't worry. This is a non-issue. SAF has a healthy mix of soldiers who thinks and refuses to think.
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What is there to ask about Scouting? Dun be silly. There is a difference between this situation and asking why they have to fall in at 0530 only to find that the bus only leaves at 0730.Originally posted by justcooler:So do you expect during an operation where your solider start asking until he understand, where order was just to move to one corner, or scout the front for 50m.
What if you are in a fire fight, clearing BUA or FIFO.
Btw, you do know that since the Nuremberg Trial, simply saying "I was following orders" does not absolve the soldier of responsiblity for his actions right? -
IIRC, that stupid bint's rifle jammed due to dust and sand so she did not fire even a single shot. What a waste of rations she is. Should have been charged imo.Originally posted by SingaporeTyrannosaur:The main issue was that the AAR of the entire Jessica Lynch incident indicated that the result of the ambush was due in a large part to many failures on the part of the unit to prepare their own drivers and personnel for combat. A lot of the medals laced out came more from the politics that came to shroud the issue then it actually being deserved by the people actually involved.
As such, the grunts are the ones who don't really like the whole affair. -
A Commander who is always questioned by his men, shows that he has not been able to fully inculcate in them a sense of trust in his judgment and battlefield decisions.