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July 26, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
July 26, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #3
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There's a story breaking today that this is a watershed event in American cultural history.
TV Guide is essentially going under.
You know there was a time the TV Guide was the number one circulation magazine in this country.
Everybody used to get TV Guide.
I think they peaked at 21 or 22 million.
That's not 21 or 21 22 million readers that's subscribers go into a household two three, four people in there.
There may have been as many as 70 to 80 million people who read TV Guide in a given week.
Circulation is down to 9 million.
They're apparently losing money and they announced plans today to remake the magazine and bring it back as something radically different than what it is right now and their target date is sometime in the middle of october.
First of all, it's not going to be a small tabloid format anymore.
They're going to go to a regular magazine style format, a larger magazine.
Secondly, they're pretty much going to dump the listings.
Presently TV Guide is about 75 tv listings and 25 stories.
They want to change the mix and make it 75 stories and features and only 25 listings.
In addition to that, they will no longer have local editions.
Right now, TV Guide is a magazine that if you live in Pittsburgh, you get the Pittsburgh tv stations in there.
If you live in Denver, there's a specific edition for you if your stations in Denver are numbered whatever they're numbered, those are the numbers that are on there.
Your local programming is listed.
They're instead going to produce just two editions, one for the eastern part of the United States, the other for the western part of the United States.
Two editions not focus so much on the listings and instead do feature stories.
Apparently the competition from on-screen guides that cable and satellite users have is so extreme, plus daily newspapers that publish their own listings, plus the internet where tv listings are available.
Tv guide was no longer seen by the reading public, by the tv viewing public, as essential and they're going to try to remake the entire thing and turn it into an entertainment magazine that focuses on television, rather than a magazine that you pick up to see what's on tv at that given point in time.
Who would have thought that it would have worked out this way if you'd been told 30 years ago that we're going to go from the four five, six or seven stations in your own local market and you're going to have almost an infinite number of choices?
There are going to be zillions of cable channels and all this material out there, you would have thought, if anything, that would bode well for a magazine that told you what was on television, because no one could ever remember what was on.
Instead, what's happened is there are so many different channels that you pick up a magazine like TV Guide and you see all these listings.
You can't focus in on much of anything.
You can simply scroll to your own pull-down menu.
If you have cable or satellite, it'll tell you what's on, and TV Guide has been rendered largely irrelevant.
Their target for the new magazine would be 3 million subscribers.
That's what they're going to guarantee to advertisers.
They were once at 21 or 22, they're down to nine and the new magazine may have as few as three million TV Guide.
I grew up, I think I learned how to read, reading TV Guide.
I wanted to know what was on television.
Now here's a story for you.
Kickball is back big time, with adults.
Associated press, it's kickball, and the schoolyard game is catching on with adults, such as 33 year old Don Riddell, who plays on a team with his wife, her friends, his bowling and soft softball buddies.
The return of kickball mirrors the resurgence in the popularity of dodgeball, another schoolyard playground game that is now being played in increasing numbers by adults, kickball.
Kickball is back.
I know why kickball is back.
You know why kickball is back.
Kickball is back because anybody can play it.
Who can't play kickball?
Baseball is hard.
You're throwing fastballs and curveballs, even slow pitch softball.
You can whiff at that thing.
How do you play kickball and miss the ball?
You can't miss the ball if the ball is kicked at you.
If the ball is big enough, you're going to catch it.
So we're bringing kickball back.
Dodgeball is already back.
It makes me wonder what's next.
What's the next grown-up game that's going to come back into vogue?
What's the next game the kids played that we all played as children.
Any guesses?
Capture the flag.
How about height and seek?
How about height and seek?
Yeah, they're playing that on the trains now.
How about tag?
Tag is a universal game.
You see, if you saw, went out to a playground a bunch of 40 year old fat guys running around playing tag.
My own favorite, kick the can.
Kick the can was great.
You have kick the can where you guys grew up.
I'm from Wisconsin, you know how kick the can worked.
Kick the can somebody was it.
You kick the can on them and they had to get back to the can and cover adults playing kick the can.
And finally uh, how about keepaway?
Keepaway, those are the next games they could catch on with.
Those are Republican Tax Cuts.
Keepaway yes yes, from New Jersey home state of a good percentage of the staff of the RUSH LIMB BALL program.
Can we blame you guys for this?
New Jersey is kind of becoming the California of the East Coast when it comes to stupid ideas.
A member of the New Jersey state legislature is proposing to ban the smoking of cigarettes in your own automobile.
The uh, the uh guy's name is uh John Mckeon.
He's an assemblyman from New Jersey.
He's a tobacco opponent, says his father died of emphysema.
Sponsor the legislation.
He says, in addition to the health risks that smoking is a driver distraction, cites a study in which 1% of traffic deaths linked to driver distraction were able to be linked to the smoking of cigarettes.
Cigarette smoking is becoming the most politically incorrect legal activity you can engage in.
Look Look at the number of things that we are told that we have to tolerate from people.
But smoking of cigarettes is deemed to be so unacceptable, so socially terrible, so bad for you, that you now see the reaching into people's automobiles.
My own belief is that smoking eventually is going to be banned everywhere, except your private house.
And that's when the cigarette smokers, who don't ever want to speak up for themselves, that's when they're probably finally going to rebel.
So in New Jersey, we now have a proposal to ban smoking while you're in your automobile.
Story from Chicago.
Santiago Calatrava.
Ever heard of him?
No one.
Santiago Calatra.
This shows what a renaissance guy I am.
I know who Santiago Calatrava is.
He is one of the renowned architects in the world.
I know this primarily because I'm from Milwaukee and he designed a building that's in Milwaukee.
Otherwise, I might not know that.
He's real, real hot, though, right now.
He is one of the designers of something that's going on near Ground Zero.
He is designing a building that will be the largest in the United States, tallest building in the United States if built.
Skyscraper in Chicago that would reach 115 stories, topping out at 1,458 feet.
A spire on top would reach 2,000 feet, making it the tallest building in the country, some 270 feet taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago.
The Burge Tower in Dubai under construction is said to be 2,300 feet.
That is likely to be the tallest.
Donald Trump is weighing in on this, says it's a terrible idea, says any building that is the tallest is going to naturally be a target for terrorists.
Trump has his own skyscraper that he's building in Chicago.
Was to be 150 stories.
After 9-11, he scaled it back to 90 simply for terrorism reasons.
I read the architectural review of this in the Chicago Sun-Times, a guy named Kevin Nance.
He says, it is a feminine-looking building, and this building is a positive step forward because it will allow the city of Chicago to get in touch with its feminine side.
We come back after the break.
Is the military going soft?
Are we turning drill instructors into wimps?
Is boot camp just one more sensitivity session?
That's next.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
A little bit earlier in the program, we were talking about profiling potential terrorists.
This story is breaking just today.
ABC News reporting, five Egyptian men with maps of the New York City subway system and video of New York landmarks have been arrested by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark, New Jersey.
FBI and law enforcement officials say the five men, four of whom are illegal immigrants, the other one is a fugitive from law enforcement, were arrested Sunday night following a tip received by the Newark Police Department.
In addition to the subway maps and video, the men had train schedules and $8,000, all in $20,000 and $50 bills.
One of the men answered the door allowed police to enter.
He claimed he had the maps because he had a new job as a street vendor.
FBI officials say that while the men don't have any link to a terror network, noted none of them could adequately explain the items that they had in their position, in their possession, all five men, Egyptian nationals.
I want to talk about a story in the New York Times today.
Headline, as recruiting suffers, military reigns in abuses at boot camp.
Eric Eckholm wrote this.
Let me give you a few paragraphs here so you get a sense of where they're coming from.
Staff Sergeant Michael Rhodes, until recently a driller of Army recruits at Fort Knox, says he was only doing his job hammering civilians into soldiers who would not crack under the pressures of war.
Sergeant Rhodes's methods, investigators said, included punching a recruit in the stomach, hitting him repeatedly in the chest, and throwing another to the floor and calling him a fat nasty.
Years ago, such accusations, if privates dared to voice them, might have led to no more than a reprimand or a transfer for a drill sergeant.
But Sergeant Rhodes, a 16-year veteran, was court-martialed in May, found guilty of cruelty, and impeding an investigation.
He was dishonorably discharged.
Two other drill sergeants in his unit were demoted for mistreating recruits.
A fourth is awaiting court-martial.
Their captain is serving six months in prison for dereliction of duty.
Rhodes is getting a raw deal.
He says he's being punished unfairly for techniques that have long been a part of basic training.
It's commonly known, he says, that all drill sergeants work in the gray area.
If you don't, you aren't doing your job.
The military, however, is having nothing of this attitude.
Colonel Kevin Schweedo, chief of operations for the Army's Recruitment and Training Command, we will hunt down and prosecute those who mistreat recruits.
If we don't do that, we won't get the support of the mothers and fathers.
We won't attract the right kind of people into the military.
The court-martials going on at Fort Knox have drawn praise and criticism from soldiers and veterans.
After one of the trainers, Sergeant First Class David Price, was demoted in April for telling a recruit to swallow his vomit, dragging another by his ankles, and hitting a third with a rolled-up newspaper.
One soldier wrote to the Army Times saying that when she was in basic training in 1988, the drill sergeants were allowed to do a lot of things.
Now if they look at a recruit the wrong way, they get in trouble.
Back then, it was still the real Army and not a farce.
Drill sergeants still get carried away, commanders say, but not often.
The Army, the largest branch of the military, had about 2,600 drill sergeants training almost 180,000 recruits in each of the last two years.
It received 99 complaints of abuse in 2003, 109 last year.
All right.
So we've got the military now sensitive to drill instructors who are too tough, who are too rough.
One is being court, several have been court-martialed, including Sergeant Rhodes, who is accused of drilling a guy in the stomach, hitting another man repeatedly in the chest.
I'm not sure exactly where I come down on this.
I think it's a real, real fine line.
What I am afraid of, though, is that we are going to subject the military to the same standards that we have in the remainder of our society, not understanding that the military by its very nature is different.
We're taking very young people, 18, 19, and 20 years old, and taking them from a society in which they've been coddled, rarely criticized, often over-protected, and we're preparing them for an environment in which they're going to go halfway around the world and are going to put their lives on the line.
They're going to be shot at.
People are going to try to kill them.
We have to turn them into the most level-headed, toughest, mature adults as we can.
And these drill instructors only have 13 weeks to do so.
We're not preparing somebody to go out and work at a submarine shop.
We're preparing them to go out, arm them with deadly force, and put them in a situation in which they may die.
And I think that that demands that we bend over backwards to toughen them.
If you can't take getting clobbered by a drill instructor, how are you going to take an environment in which you may be shot at?
You may have to go into very dangerous areas.
You may have to follow orders that would otherwise seem to terrify you.
In addition to that, the beauty of having boot camps that may be borderline brutal is that they do weed out the people who are too sensitive, who can't take it.
I'm not even going to use the term too weak, but people who are not suited for the kind of environment that they are being put in.
The real world right now for our military is one in which it may well be likely, maybe over 50-50, that you're going to be put in a situation in which your life is at risk.
And I don't think we can afford to respond to a bunch of fears that we're being too tough on people.
Now, I don't think that that means that you want to justify masochism.
And there's no doubt that some drill instructors are just wackos.
They're just people who get off on viciously treating other people.
There are bad people in every line of work.
I have a concern that we're going to take this thing too far.
My own theory as to where this is coming from is not parents who are worried about their young son being savagely treated by a drill instructor.
It's the women.
It's the women.
Since we have sexually integrated drill instructor platoons right now, we're reacting differently to some guy who gets in the face and starts screaming and yelling at an 18 or a 19 year old woman.
It just strikes us the wrong way.
Well, we've got to prepare her for war too.
And I have a fear that we are going to go too far in this regard.
Having said that, I have tremendous trust in the American military.
It is the one institution of our government that works.
They produce incredibly high-quality human beings who are being asked to do a very difficult job, and virtually every one of them responds to it with honor.
Their level of training is outstanding.
And if they think they need to pull back a little bit, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
But there are some red flags here.
And we have to understand what it is that we're training people to do.
To Kenosha, Wisconsin, Chris, Chris, you're on the EIB network with Mark Belling.
Hello, sir.
Just want to say you're doing a great job for Rush today and this week.
Thank you.
What I was talking about is basically I like the system.
I just got all the military about a year ago.
I was through Fort Benning, which in my opinion, I know you're going to get a bunch of people who are going to call up and argue with that, that it's one of the hardest trainings for basic training for people.
Did you ever face the kind of behavior that was described in the story, though, in which the drill instructor slugged people and so on?
We did not get drill sergeants that, you know, hit us, beat us, you know, anything like that.
But they did mentally break you down.
And like what the story said, did change civilians into soldiers.
Oh, and that's what I don't want to lose.
I don't know where the physical contact comes in.
I have a fear of saying absolute rules that you can't do this, you can't do that.
You use the term break.
I think that's what has to happen.
You've got to break people from the conventions of our society and put them in an environment that is terrifying for them.
I'm Mark Gulling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Gulling in for Rush.
You can go to the Club Gitmo gallery at rushlimbaugh.com and keep the pictures coming.
Buy Club Getmo stuff at the EIB store at rushlimbaugh.com and then email us a photo of yourself wearing your club getmo gear.
Where is it worse?
Getmo or basic training to go into the United States military.
We live in a society in which everybody wants everything now to be nice.
My fear of the pressure that is being applied to the drill instructors in the military to not go too far in dealing with recruits is that we are applying standards of fairness, civility, and behavior that are appropriate for civilian life but are not appropriate for the military, which is a unique institution.
Police work may have some similarity, but even there, police officers are not facing the same kind of death toll that soldiers are facing.
These are people that we are putting in a position in which they may die, and some of them will die.
And I think it does require a radical personal transformation.
And beating up on them a little bit, not necessarily physically, may be necessary.
Quoting from today's story in the New York Times, Sergeant First Class John Jennings, sometimes you have to get in their faces, but it's not about making them cry.
The old philosophy was that you're not ready for combat unless you're made miserable all day.
Jennings said when he was trained in 1989, he said he saw verbal cruelty and more rarely physical contact that would now be reported.
According to their detailed manual, drill sergeants may address recruits only as soldier or private or by surname.
With few exceptions, they must ask before touching a recruit.
The use of extra push-ups as a corrective action remains common, but with limits.
The Marines are now considering filing charges against an instructor at Paris Island, South Carolina, who they say failed to prevent a flailing recruit from drowning during a test in a swimming pool.
The court case has been referred for a hearing similar to a civilian grand jury to determine if a court-martial is warranted.
To the telephones and Rocky in Minnesota, Rocky, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Yes, sir, Mark.
I'm a lifetime Marine.
I grew up in the Marine Corps.
I was a drill instructor in 1958, 1959 down in San Diego, shortly after the staff sergeant marched his platoon into the swamps at Paris Island, resulting in the deaths of a number of recruits.
That was 1956, as a matter of fact.
Again?
That was in 1956 that that happened.
You're right.
That's correct.
That's correct.
And that was Staff Sergeant McEwen.
The recruit training underwent some pretty dramatic changes right behind that because of the hue and cry about the training.
And I went on to the drill field two years after that happened, and I was under the gun, as were all the other drill instructors.
And we still had to, we were expected to do our jobs to change the money.
So what do you think of the new attitude that's coming in now, then?
I think that I think it's doing a disservice to the military.
And of course, the Marine Corps has, the boot camp, the Marine Corps boot camp has traditionally been tougher than the other services.
And it still is, as far as I've been able to determine.
But you're right on the money about taking these young men who have been coddled for most of their lives, sticking them into these life-threatening conditions in combat, and to come out on top without ever having been filmed.
Well, what ought to be acceptable?
Verbal abuse?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
How about hitting somebody?
There again, you get into the gray area.
We used to call it thumping.
To slap a man in the face.
That was not considered acceptable.
Do you agree with me that part of what's going on here is that it is naturally different to try to treat a woman in the same fashion that you may be willing to treat a young man here.
Of course.
Of course.
And there again, I have very strong feelings about women in combat, although the Israelis can certainly prove their point.
If we're changing our standards, though, and saying that we have to be more sensitive in the way that we're dealing with recruits because of the realities of how parents in society respond to a sense of real harshness toward women, I think that we may be making a mistake.
Now, I will say this.
We haven't seen any sign that discipline in the military is going to pot.
It still seems as though they're able to motivate these people, and the individuals that we're sending to battle in Iraq and Afghanistan have performed heroically.
So I don't see any sign that they're screwing up here, but I think this is something to be concerned about.
I agree with that, too.
And I'll say that in every platoon that graduated that I had anything to do with their training, at the graduation, at every single one of the platoon graduations, I had at least one set of parents would come up to me and thank me for having done in three months what they hadn't been able to do in 18 or 19 years.
Thank you for the call, Rocky.
Appreciate it.
I love that.
Retired Marine Drill Sergeant, and his name is Rocky.
Sometimes profiling does work.
To Oklahoma City and Dwayne.
Dwayne, you're on Russia's program.
I'm Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark.
I was going to take some exception.
You keep vacillating back and forth whether or not physical contact would be exceptional.
I think it's a close call.
I mean, if I'm whopping.
I want to explain my position here.
If I'm waffling, it's because I do trust the leaders of our military in terms of the decisions that they're making here.
This trend, though, that we see is something that I am worried about.
I'm not convinced it's a problem yet, but it might become one.
So if it sounds like I'm vacillating, it's because I don't think that this is a black and white situation.
Go ahead.
Well, I'm a Vietnam veteran.
I was in 101st Airborne also.
And when you're in that kind of training, advanced individual training, advanced infantry training, you're going to special forces, Green Beret, you expect to have that kind of physical contact training.
When you're in basic training, those instructors should be intelligent enough and sharp enough to get in the face nose to nose with any young recruit and make him miserable mentally, physically.
And his job is to make that guy, that girl, physically competent to where they can withstand any kind of physical confrontation that they're going to see in combat.
They're to make them good marksmans, to know what combat activity is all about so that they can have the confidence that they can carry out their job.
Well, I think your point is very important.
We have to understand, some of these people could be taken prisoner.
The individuals that we're fighting are vicious, sadistic people.
The level of abuse that an American soldier taken prisoner in Iraq could receive is terrifying to think about.
They've got to be prepared for that.
And if you think a little bit of yelling and screaming by a drill instructor is bad, imagine what's going to happen later.
And I think one of the benefits of a harsh drill instruction is that people who are not emotionally suited for that will wash out.
And I don't think that that's, I think that that is good that that happens now rather than once they are sent overseas.
But he's also responsible for esprit de corps.
I mean, it's not just individual survival.
You know, he's got to develop teamwork.
He's got to develop respect for officers.
And you got a guy, you've got an instructor that loses it, you know, and just abuses.
You're going to, I think, develop an opposite reaction from your recruits.
And then you hear of sergeants getting fragged and things like that.
I think you have to, there's always been limits.
When I was in the basic campaign.
Well, do you think they're going too far now in limiting them, or do you think that the drill instructors that are being court-martialed have it coming?
Well, let's put it this way.
If you have limitations on physical contact with a basic recruit, then you don't have to differentiate between male and female.
If they can't do 100 push-ups, if they, you know, they can't drop and do that.
What about the guy at Fort Knox that was, you know, he hit one of the recruits in the head and thumped him in the chest repeatedly.
Is that going too far?
Why?
There is no reason.
Not only that, if the recruit were to fight back, he'd be court-martialed.
So, I mean, are you saying that that drill sergeant acted wrongly or not?
Well, I don't know what the circumstances, if he was acting in self-defense, but if he was just trying to get that recruit, if that recruit refused to do something that he ordered him to do, then he needs to be reported and shipped out, just like he would in a real-life situation.
Thank you for the call, Duane.
Yeah, I think this is a very, very intriguing topic because I don't know what the rules should be myself.
I have not served in the military.
I'd probably be the first guy to wash out if I had to face that kind of treatment.
But I don't think they're looking for me over there.
They're looking for young Americans who are being taken out of a very nice, cushy existence that we have here and being put in a very, very difficult situation.
And I think that that does require a pretty rapid introduction into the harsh realities of what it is that they're going to be facing.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
Interesting story in today's New York Times about the military cracking down on drill instructors in both the Army and the Marine Corps who have gone too far.
On the other hand, they make it clear that they're not trying to coddle anyone, that they are still trying to produce outstanding quality fighting men and women, but that there are limits and they're trying to draw lines that establish what they are.
Most of us who have not served our country and the military know nothing about what basic training is.
Our notion of basic training is Sergeant Carter and Gomer Pyle, or what was the Bill Murray movie, Stripes?
Remember that guy, Sergeant Hulk or whatever he is?
Other than that, what do we know?
You imagine me in basic training.
I'm a kind of argumentative guy.
The first time one of those guys got in my face, I'd start yelling back.
But you wouldn't want me doing what those heroic young men and women are doing in Iraq right now.
First of all, I'm in a situation in my life where I'm beyond having to do something like that.
Secondly, I don't think I could do it.
I'm not strong enough.
I don't know that mentally I could handle the pressure of it.
We're looking for people that are better than the rest of us.
And that's what we all need to understand about the military.
We're not just trying to produce ordinary Americans.
We need and we require extraordinary Americans.
People who are willing to do way more than most of the rest of our selfish, self-indulgent society will do.
We're asking them to go and die for a vague concept that they may not even fully understand.
And we're asking them to do it at a very young age in their lives.
And that means they require the best of training.
And it means that they are trained to be tougher and stronger and more resilient than the rest of us.
Springfield, Illinois, and Troy, Troy, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Hey, have a good day today.
I'm a former Marine, and when I was in boot camp back in 2000, my drill instructor beat the tar out of me more than once.
You know what?
Physically?
He did it for a reason.
When you say beat, he'd beat the tar out of you.
Do you mean physically?
I mean physically.
I mean punched, kicked, because I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
Because I got in a fight with another recruit, and he came in, separated, and beat the crap out of both of us.
Shows that that's something we don't do.
And you're saying that that was positive for you.
Yes, it taught me that it helped me learn how to be a bigger man, how to be a better man, and how to be a good Marine.
It instilled a certain level of discipline.
Would he have been able to accomplish that without laying a hand on you?
Probably not.
Because I was a pretty rowdy and disrespectful individual when I went to boot camp.
I learned a lot of discipline and a lot of self-respect, a lot of respect for other people and authority while I was there.
Well, I will say this.
We all know young men and women who join the military, and you'll see them when they come back for their first leave.
And they are different people.
They are more mature.
You can just see it in them.
There's a different air about them.
There's maybe a little bit more of a seriousness or a sense of purpose.
Something does happen.
It does become a transforming experience, and it's almost always a positive one.
I don't think we can say, however, that there isn't a line at which someone may take it too far.
And I don't think that we can just carte blanche say that a drill instructor can do anything because I think often that going too far is an excuse for using your head and figuring out other ways in which you can motivate the person.
Thank you for the call, Troy.
Florida and Joe, Joe, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
How are you doing, sir?
Pleasure.
I'm great, thank you.
I'm a former captain and lieutenant that was on your base training unit.
And I train these privates to go over to Iraq.
I'm telling you, these privates, they don't listen.
They're coddled by the tank command.
We're told not to swear at them.
You can't even call them guys.
I have a private, at the five of them, who get off the firing range, point and load a weapon at me, not knowing what she was just her miles in the air.
I had to slap her in the head to wake up.
And I believe these privates need to be smacked on sometimes to wake up.
It's no joke.
I had a drill sergeant who had an M16 with a loaded weapon with a bullet in the chamber pointed at his chest.
Again, privates not knowing what they're doing.
They had their head in the air.
In other words, unintentionally, that gun was pointed at the drill sergeant's chest because the person was not paying attention.
Exactly.
And the problem is that the channel command, the lieutenant colonels and above, they're so worried about the media and political correctness that we can't even call them a gaskin there.
We've got to call them soldier or private.
They ain't learned the right to be called soldier yet because they ain't graduated paid the training yet.
I'm telling you, these people are babied.
I'm surprised that they go over there and do a good job.
Well, that's the question that I want to ask about.
So far, we are getting reports.
We haven't gotten reports that they can't handle the pressure in Iraq.
They've been performing heroically.
The problems that you're saying, in which hands are being tied, have not manifested themselves in a lower quality soldier, have they?
The problem is this, right?
The ones that you see out of Iraq, they go to Fort Bennon to become infantry soldiers.
Those guys are trained a little differently, a little harder.
They have to because they're going to be facing the enemy.
The ones that I trained were the comments support and service support.
My God, these people are babied.
I'm telling you.
And the drill sergeant's hands are tied.
They try to train them and they're tied.
They can't yell at them.
They can't do nothing to them.
They got to baby and coddle them.
Did you feel as though when you were serving as a drill instructor that you're an officer?
Okay.
I was my drill sergeant there and I was there watching them.
I felt like a babysitter because I'm telling you, people with 15 years experience, right, know what they're doing, E7s.
I got a conference with all my drill sergeants when I was over there serving, and I had to babysit them because they were afraid that they're going to hurt it in private.
Why do you think this attitude change is coming in?
Do you think they're just afraid of bad publicity from the media?
Pretty much.
Pretty much.
And the problem is this, and I said it when I was in, and I got flat for it.
When they put the females and males together in business training environment, that's all problems happen.
Well, that makes sense to me because our society just is uncomfortable with treating women in the way we are willing to treat young men.
Thank you for the comments, Joe.
It was very helpful.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush.
It's been a pleasure doing the show the last couple of days.
We've been talking about a story in today's New York Times about how the military has disciplining and court-martialing some drill instructors who have taken things too far.
My own position on this is one of ambivalence.
I'm not going to criticize them for the court-martials that they've undertaken because they may well have had good reasons in those cases.
Anyone can take anything too far.
The thing that's important for us to understand, though, is what it is that we are training these young men and women for.
We are training them to do things that most of us would never do ourselves.
We're putting them in terribly difficult situations.
We're training them to become heroes.
And that requires a toughening process.
And I hope that in our desire to appear sensitive and inclusive, we don't sacrifice what's really important because I don't want us to compromise on the thing of which we ought to be most proud.
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