America’s Obesity Epidemic Thins Out Pool of Potential US Army Recruits
Sputnik – 03.05.2023
In one of its worst years ever, the US Army’s official figures showed that it failed to reach last year’s goal of 60,000 new recruits, falling short by about 15,000.
It looks as if the US Army won’t be able to live up to its recruitment expectations this year, since a considerable number of prospects simply cannot cut the mustard.
Speaking at a congressional hearing this week, US Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said they are not going to “make” the projected goal of 65,000 new soldiers.
“We are doing everything we can to get as close to it as possible; we are going to fall short,” she noted.
According to local press reports, the US Army had also missed its recruitment target of 60,000 last year, falling short by about 15,000 “active-duty recruits.”
This trend is due to the considerable number of prospective recruits turning out to be unfit for service, or either failing the entrance exam meant to gauge their intelligence or “being too overweight to serve,” one US media outlet revealed.
Only about 23% of Americans aged 17 to 24 can meet the Army’s expectations, the media outlet notes, citing Pentagon figures.
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From the Archives
Ronald Reagan’s Torture
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | September 8, 2009
The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, released in August 2009, referenced as “background” to the Bush-era abuses the spy agency’s “intermittent involvement in the interrogation of individuals whose interests are opposed to those of the United States.” The report noted “a resurgence in interest” in teaching those techniques in the early 1980s “to foster foreign liaison relationships.”
The report said, “because of political sensitivities,” the CIA’s top brass in the 1980s “forbade Agency officers from using the word ‘interrogation” and substituted the phrase “human resources exploitation” [HRE] in training programs for allied intelligence agencies.
The euphemism aside, the reality of these interrogation techniques remained brutal, with the CIA Inspector General conducting a 1984 investigation of alleged “misconduct on the part of two Agency officers who were involved in interrogations and the death of one individual,” the report said (although the details were redacted in the version released to the public).
In 1984, the CIA also was hit with a scandal over what became known as an “assassination manual” prepared by agency personnel for the Nicaraguan Contras, a rebel group sponsored by the Reagan administration with the goal of ousting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
Despite those two problems, the questionable training programs apparently continued for another two years. The 2004 IG report states that “in 1986, the Agency ended the HRE training program because of allegations of human rights abuses in Latin America.”
While the report’s references to this earlier era of torture are brief – and the abuses are little-remembered features of Ronald Reagan’s glorified presidency – there have been other glimpses into how Reagan unleashed this earlier “dark side” on the peasants, workers and students of Central America. … continue
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Americans have waken up. They are no more willing to sacrifice themselves for the Deep State. That is GOOD news.
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Too much sugar , toxic vegetable oils and sweeteners not enough omega 3 fats . If you look at pictures of US servicemen after ww2 you think they are off another planet .
They need a bit of keto – less carbs and tons of veg and grass fed fats.
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WHY?
Why do you think they have opened the borders?
With all the Queers, Drag Queens, Perverts etc., supported by the Democrats, there is a GREAT need for “Attilia and the South American Huns”
Who Was Attila the Hun?
Attila the Hun, 5th-century king of the Hunnic Empire, devastated lands from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, inspiring fear throughout the late Roman Empire. Dubbed “Flagellum Dei” (meaning “Scourge of God” in Latin), Attila consolidated power after murdering his brother to become sole ruler of the Huns, expanded the rule of the Huns to include many Germanic tribes and attacked the Eastern Roman Empire in wars of extraction.
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fatboy program=DFAC front-and-center, 21 days diet and fitness education as pre-basic, NO POGEY BAIT or you are on the bus for home, same day. Graduate ‘fatboy’ successfully and pass tape test and a physical=now eligible to begin actual basic training. Walk 4 miles a day, ONLY eat meals as provided at the dining facility which have been put together by school-trained nutritionists. Obesity kills
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“Only about 23% of Americans aged 17 to 24 can meet the Army’s expectations, the media outlet notes, citing Pentagon figures.” A little arithmetic = 77 percent CANNOT meet expectations…astounding.
Not sure this is pertinent or “weighty,” but: when I signed up for a 3-year Army tour in 1963 as a callow, depressed 19 yo college dropout, I observed during and at the end of 8 weeks of boot camp at Fort Gordon, GA, that there were three categories of my fellows (male–whites, blacks, latinos, draftees as well as enlistees like me).
–There were those whose pre-enlistment diet — for reasons of poverty, ignorance, lack of discipline… — made them underweight and and in physically tenuous ‘health’; a balanced (while often ‘tasteless’) 3 squares courtesy of (GI-operated; no contracting-out in those days; I did plenty of KP/Kitchen Police drudgery) duty in the company messhall, and the strenuous physical-exercise regime brought them, and their weight and health, up to a decent, enforced, standard.
–There were the “fatties,” who found themselves pleasantly lower in weight and in far better trim at ‘graduation’; they were proud of themselves and we of them, even if unstated.
–Then there were those (I counted myself among them) who entered and left at the same weight, surely with better muscle tone, tight waists and less fat, and appearance.
Of course, I also recall that dam’ near all of the recruits were cigarette smokers, but I suppose that’s another element in the tale of nutrition, health, fitness, sustainability….
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Recruit the Fat f**ks. Let them do admin work and free up real soldiers?
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What are “real soldiers”? Do we even need “real soldiers” anymore?–seems like drones are now the substitute for “real soldiers.” (BTW, is the “airborne corps” still a functional reality in our Army? Isn’t it/parachutes/jumpers now “relics of the past”?)
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