60% overweight and 44% binge drinkers. Maybe they should try that on the recruitment posters: All the food you can eat and booze you can drink.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jan 15 2007, 03:53 PM) [snapback]375988[/snapback]</div> That sounds like a representative sample of America then.
I perceive there is a difference in being a binge drinker and "having participated in binge drinking". Having robbed one bank makes you a bank robber, but getting good and drunk once or twice does not make one a binge drinker, in fact it means you may doing what is normal for most young people.
People, people, we're talking here about soldiers we (at least our politicians) routinely (and, possibly, by rote?) describe as the "finest in the world"! Anyone read of the number of suicides among our armed forces in Iraq? (Gonna have to go look that one up again, as I'm sure it's increased since I read it 6 months ago.) Is it possible our vaunted all-volunteer military is now, er, a little out of shape and/or not in the best frame of mind for combat? Edit/Update: No suicide figures for 2006 seem to be available yet. U.S. Army suicides for troops fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan in 2003-2005 are reported as 64. No figure is given for other branches of the military. Overall armed forces suicides, regardless of where troops are stationed, are stated as 210 (as reported by MSNBC) for the same time period. Depending on what one reads, military suicides are variously reported as less than, about the same as, and, at least for periods of time, higher than the suicide rate for non-military Americans. MSNBC reporters also caution that Pentagon suicide numbers are almost certainly under-reported, and that some suicides are included as combat casualties. It is reported that the Army, alarmed in the summer of 2003 by suicides among troops that are supposedly combat-ready, has sent "hundreds" of mental health "specialists" to Iraq and Afghanistan to try and ward off suicides, largely through the education of commanding officers in recognizing warning signs of possibly suicide-prone soldiers. I also saw a figure of around 600 troops who were "evacuated" from Iraq in 2005 due to "neurological problems". I'll try to dig deeper on a subject that is gaining interest for me.
Wait a minute - are you saying military personnel sometimes DRINK?! Woah, next thing you know, they'll start using swear words! I bet this current army is the only army ever in the history of the world where any of the soldiers ever used alcohol!
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jan 15 2007, 12:53 PM) [snapback]375988[/snapback]</div> Depends on what the military considers overweight. I know when I had buddies in the Air Force, when they were downsizing, they used a ratio between the neck and the waist as the determining factor. Not body mass index, or weight for a certain height, but a ratio they made up (from what we could see). One of my buddies eventually left because he was underweight on the insurance company charts, had a enviable body mass index, and yet was fat because the ratio between his neck and his waist were not within specs. And "binge drinking"? Among soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines? Why aren't they like most 21 - 29 year olds, who are models of sobriety?
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jack Kelly @ Jan 15 2007, 12:50 PM) [snapback]375986[/snapback]</div> “Offered without commentâ€? . . . But you couldn't help yourself and commented anyway???? Just like an alcoholic, you just couldn't keep away. :huh: “Offeredâ€? Don't you really mean, “Just a setup for a snipe†. . . and an un-researched pitiful attempt at another reason to bring home soldiers who are fighting in Iraq . How's this for an 'oh-my-God let's get out of Iraq now' headline? [which Reuters didn't print, but very well could have done so truthfully]: Military Binge Drinking Up Only 2.7% Since Start of Iraq War.</span> (41.8% then, 44.5% now.) And how about this winner of a statement from the article: “Personnel deployed from 2002 to 2005 had higher rates of work and family stress as well as higher rates of heavy alcohol, cigarette and illicit drug use than those who did not deployâ€. Well! . . . NO S**T SHERLOCK!!!! Compare that to this: <span style="color:#009900">According to a 1997 national study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, nearly half of all college students surveyed drank four or five drinks in one sitting within the previous 2 weeks. Students who live in a fraternity or sorority house are the heaviest drinkers – 86 percent of fraternity residents and 80 percent of sorority residents report binge drinking. In a recent study, 39 percent of college women binge drank within a 2-week period compared with 50 percent of college men. http://ncadi.samhsa.gov/govpubs/rpo995/ The soldiers in Iraq are just getting a taste of what it's like being a sailor - Not allowed to drink alcohol for weeks or months at a time while out at sea [or, as soldiers are now experiencing, while in an Islamic country], then, having a short term port-of-call liberty, make up for lost time. Of course soldiers are going to drink like . . . oh, um . . . . SAILORS! - - - but apparently not like frat boys! I say: Since frats and sororities have nearly double the rate of binge drinkers as does the military - that is an glaring indictment against ALL colleges! Funds should be cut off and those poor, fat, stressed-out college students should be immediately re-deployed home. What the hell were those parents and school administrators thinking by allowing our college students to be put in that much danger! :lol:
They didn't cover the causes in the story. The binge drinking rise is directly due to being involved in a coalition force in Iraq. There are not a lot of soldiers there from the european and australian countries, but the dozens that are serving are showing up in the off hours claiming they can drink our soldiers under the table. One thing leads to another and the statistics get wacky, but in the end, our fine soldiers are the best in the world... at fighting and at drinking. If you check the stats for the ausies, they remain unchanged. 95% were binge drinking before, still 95% now.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Beryl Octet @ Jan 15 2007, 04:06 PM) [snapback]375998[/snapback]</div> Almost kind of like a married U.S. President getting a hummer from an 18 year old intern in the Oval Office? or Kind of like a U.S. President getting disbarred? or Kind of like a U.S. President lying under oath? or Kind of like a U.S. President getting impeached?
Of course statistically they're fatter and use more alcohol than in the past. The enlistment age has been raised to middle age. I"M fatter than I was as a young buck. Most of my contemporaries drink more seriously than the weekend drinking spree of their youth. I'll bet it's not the financially successful middle aged runner who is signing up, but his couch potato brothers who haven't 'made it' as successfully in the world, reasons being myriad including lower self-esteem, financial troubles, drug and alcohol problems, etc. Who did they think they would attract by raising the enlistment age? Titans of industry, gods of health and men of abstinence, upper class offspring of politicians? Mind you, with enough training and supervision even the current middle age enlistees could be shaped into Spartans of yore, but they're not doing that. They are giving them minimal, abbreviated training and sending them out to be cannon fodder...larger, slower targets for the Iraqis to aim for.
