Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/374037_amy08.html

Military recruiters use lies, threats

Last updated August 7, 2008 5:42 p.m. PT

By AMY GOODMAN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

It was like an action movie. A young man held at night in a hotel,
threatened with prison. He is to be shipped off to war in the morning.
His friends desperately trying to find him. The "down" button on the
elevator had been disabled. He considered jumping from the window. When
his friends arrive, they encounter military personnel patrolling the
grounds. One sneaks in, gets his friend out, and they drive off into the
night. This was real life for 17-year-old Eric Martinez, a student at
Aldine High School in a poor neighborhood of Houston. He responded to an
Army recruitment pitch, called the Delayed Enlistment Program.

But then, as 17-year-olds are wont to do, Eric changed his mind. When
the recruiter came to his house and threatened his mother, she went to
the recruiting station to meet with the officer in charge: "She talked
to Sgt. Marquette and told him that I didn't want to go, and that's it.
And Marquette said that I had to go, and if I didn't, that I'd have a
warrant for my arrest, and I wouldn't be able to get no government loans
or nothing like that. So, my mom doesn't really know anything about it,
so she believed it, and she told me. And I believed it, too, because I
didn't know much about it either." It was then that they took Eric to
the hotel.

Martinez's friend, Irving Gonzalez, knew he was next. He had signed up
for the same program. As the oldest of four children of a single mother,
Irving's impulse was to help his family survive, get the signing bonus
and gain access to a college education. He then wanted to get out of the
program, to pursue college directly. He called the recruiter, Sgt. Glenn
Marquette. Desperate, he had the call recorded.

Sgt. Marquette: "This is what will happen. You want to go to school? You
will not get no loans, because all college loans are federal and
government loans. So you'll be black-marked from that. As soon as you
get pulled over for a speeding ticket or anything with the law, they're
gonna see that you're a deserter. Then they're going to apprehend you,
take you to jail ... you will do your time, as you deserve. All that
lovey-dovey 'I want to go to college' and all this? Guess what. You just
threw it out the window, because you just screwed your life."

Irving and two others were the ones who sneaked Eric out of the hotel.

After the story broke, Marquette was suspended, and the military says it
is conducting an investigation, but neither Martinez nor Gonzalez has
been contacted. Recent history does not bode well. In 2005, Sgt. Thomas
Kelt, who worked at the same Greenspoint Recruiting Station in Houston
as Marquette, left a phone message for potential recruit Chris Monarch,
saying if he didn't show up at the recruiting station that afternoon:
"We'll have a warrant, OK? So give me a call back." The story went
national. The military conducted a daylong "stand down" on recruitment
to retrain their recruiters. They said they removed Kelt. In fact, he
was promoted to head up a nearby recruiting center.

I asked Douglas Smith, spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in
Kentucky, about why Kelt wasn't punished. Smith replied that Kelt had
received a "negative administrative action ... just because someone has
done something wrong doesn't mean that they get the death penalty."

But there's a difference between the death penalty and a promotion. When
I asked Smith what the penalty was, he replied, "I'm not allowed to tell
you."

Smith and the rest of the military may dodge reporters' questions, but
they can be subpoenaed before Congress to testify under oath.

Texas Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican, said: "Our country cannot deceive its
citizens. Since the Army hasn't taken the initiative, now Congress may
have to get involved." Another Texas congressman, Democrat Gene Greene,
whose kids went to Aldine High and whose wife taught there for years,
agrees. With no end in sight in Afghanistan and Iraq, recruiters must be
prevented from using desperate and aggressive measures to lure our
nation's young people – the poorest and most vulnerable – into the line
of fire.
--
Republicans - They Take Special Pride in their Ignorance.

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On Aug 8, 9:20*pm, wrote:
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Boy oh, boy, Harry talking about someone else lying!! That's precious!