Am I the only one bothered by this?

[Rologton]

It may be a few weeks late, but I just had midterms week so I wasn't really following the news. I have just learned about this little nugget of information. (Disclaimer: I know Fox isn't exactly popular, but they're apparently the only ones that covered this. Please disregaurd political stances for this, as they will have no place in what I will be discussing.)


I honestly can't believe it when I hear stuff like this. At the same time that our millitary has taken a massive cut in funding, our government is spending 750k for a soccer field for prisoners of war. What next, do they get their own day spa? Look, I'm not advocating unjust treatment. I'm not saying we go back to the torture and issues that were brought up about Gitmo in recent years, but this is rediculous. Despite what some people think, those people are in that prison for a reason, and it's not because they were upstanding citizens. When is the last time we heard about a couple hundred grand being sunk into a state penitentiary to set up a new baseball field? And yet our prisoners of war can now enjoy their detention with a bit of soccer.


I may still be an ROTC Caditiot and I know there are guys in the real millitary that will snicker at me for it, but I know I've been affected by the budget cuts. This time last year I would have gotten a packing list for Airborne School. As it is now, I am doing no training this summer because they have significantly cut back on training camp slots offered to ROTC Cadets. All of the Cadets that are older than me have jump wings from Airborne or Air Assault school (for those who don't know, Airborne is jumping out of planes, Air Assault is repelling from Helicopters). Some got to go to Mountain or Arctic Warfare school. One started her training to be a Helicopter Pilot. Nobody from my year will have those next year because none of us were able to get one of the handfull of slots to training camps that was given to the entire state of New York. Not to mention the cut to the scholarship fund. Of the 11 Cadets that came into my school last year, 8 of us had scholarships. Of the 7 that came in this yeah, one has a scholarship. What this means is that the people that are very soon going to be Officers in the millitary protecting your country are getting less valuable training. Doesn't that bother you at all? And that's not even to mention all of the issues these cuts have made in the rest of the millitary. Life long servicemen being forced into retirement, units with significantly weakened command structures and soldiers not being issued the gear that they need to perform their duty.


Here's the point: your country's millitary is being told that it no longer has as much money as it used to, which means people have to be fazed out, programs have to be cut, and overall results in the millitary as a whole being weakened. At the same exact time as this, your government spends $750,000 to build a recreation field for prisoners of war. Why?

[medkitz]

This is disturbing , but I think if they were gonna make a field for POW's they should make the prisoners make it with cheap crap / hands....

[Bagger Vance]

I think my vote goes towards most people in the government being assclowns.

[Phantom]

Typical government at work. Make the good guys look bad and make the bad guys look good.

[duck]

Stereo-Typical Politician

"Hey guys, instead of boasting about our minimal budget cuts we're making that GREATLY improve life for all americans and spend 45 Trillion Dollars and give a massive heat lamp we can hang over alaska, because its really cold up there, they might need some heat"

Heres what should happen, Will Ferrell should be the president and all we would do is smoke weed (disclaimer: i dont smoke weed )

[Failhorse]

Why are you shocked by this. Some lobbyist said, "hey we need a soccer field." "BTW it will cost almost a million dollars."
Be shocked at that. I'd me more concerned about how 1/2 the detainees are suspected terrorists named by people already there.
We've never gotten anything creditable from any detainee. Politics aside. Either charge them or release them. Anyway.
How about 120 billion dollars for a joint strike fighter that will never actually be used.

[Argent]

I want my .24 cents back.

[stanley]

Why are you shocked by this. Some lobbyist said, "hey we need a soccer field." "BTW it will cost almost a million dollars."
Be shocked at that. I'd me more concerned about how 1/2 the detainees are suspected terrorists named by people already there.
We've never gotten anything creditable from any detainee. Politics aside. Either charge them or release them. Anyway.
How about 120 billion dollars for a joint strike fighter that will never actually be used.

thank you
honestly guantanamo is so dumb, ask anyone that has ever been involved there and theyre tell you most of the people dont know anything. funny how most people that are in the business of torture disagree with it. also, im not saying im for it, but if youve seen the living conditions of detanees, its already basically torture. they live in cells smaller than your bathroom, again not saying i agree with paying for a soccer field, but more disagreeing with guantanamo in the first place.

[Stolloss]

In case anyone was wondering, it's not a very impressive field. edit: Oops. The article he linked already showed it.

Prisons get about $7 billion total, and I would presume Guantanamo is covered by that, or much less if it is paid for somewhere else. The department of defense got $645 billion this year, and is requesting about the same amount for next year (this cost $34k to produce, btw). By numbers, it's not even a drop in the bucket. There may be better places to cut, but the soccer field did not even come into consideration for that. They could decide not to build a thousand soccer fields and it wouldn't affect the DoD's budget. 750,000 is not a big number to the government.

[Techercizer]

You know, I didn't see a single source for any of that information in the article.

[Maringue]

Two things. First, if you think all 750k of that money went to build that soccer field and 75% of it didn't go into some slush fund, I have some beach front property in Alaska you might be interested in.

Secondly, I can tell you why shit the DoD costs so much money in two words: SECURITY CLEARANCE.

How do I know this? Well I had an old roommate who had very, very high clearance and worked for Northrop Grumman. He lived with me for a year, made a solid 6 figure salary and during that entire year he probably (and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here) put in an honest weeks worth of work.

I actually asked him about this. He basically explained that NG was not allowed to bid on a project unless they had X number of people with high clearance. So they hired him despite having literally zero work for him to do. 6 months later, NG doesn't get the contract but they keep him around (again, doing nothing) so they can bid on other contracts.

The problem is, security clearance is nearly impossible to get unless you were grandfathered in through military service. If you, a civilian, want to apply for a cleared job, the company has to pay you your full salary while you get cleared (anywhere from 3-12 months, depending on the level). During that time, you are basically told to go sit in a specific office and surf the internet or read a book because you are not allowed to do any work. On top of this, the company has to pay the cost of your clearance which is around $50k.

What does this all lead to? Incompetent workers. If you ask anyone who's ever had to work with cleared people in their field on a project, they will tell you right away that cleared employees are maybe, maybe half as qualified as their regular counterparts. My roommate was a freaking satellite communications engineer and he couldn't even figure out how to connect his laptop to our house's wireless router. If any of you know Troppmann, he has many, many stories about working with cleared IT "professionals" who could barely restart a router.

Moral of the story, the security clearance system in our government is killing it with mediocre "experts" who get paid insane salaries. Also, if you ever have the chance to get clearance, take it and run. It's like the goose that laid the golden egg; if you have security clearance you will never look for a job ever again, they will come to you and bring bags of money with them.

[LegendarySurgeon]

Also, if you ever have the chance to get clearance, take it and run. It's like the goose that laid the golden egg; if you have security clearance you will never look for a job ever again, they will come to you and bring bags of money with them.

I've been thinking about this post for a while. It's a weird time, sitting around being paid to do nothing.