3 Rangers charged in Tacoma bank heist

<snip>
Viewing surveillance video of the robbery, an FBI agent would later note it was an "extremely well organized and executed robbery that was carried out with military-style precision and planning."

On Thursday, three members of the Army's elite Rangers unit at Fort Lewis were charged in federal court in connection with the robbery.

The suspects, Alex Blum, Luke Sommer and Chad Palmer, each hold the rank of private first class and are attached to "C" Company, 2nd battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, according to charging papers.

A Fort Lewis spokeswoman declined comment. "This is covered under civilian law enforcement and right now it's an FBI issue," she said.

</snip>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003190695_rangers11m.html


...posted without comment....Kurt

Just a few more bad apples, I suppose. Can't draw any general conclusions about the military or its civilian overlords in this administration from this isolated example. Or any other isolated example, no matter how many isolated examples keep cropping up.

Your sarcasm is noted.

Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of kids in the military, many uneducated and drawn from destitute families. Not to mention the awful trauma when they get back, which a close personal friend of mine is dealing with now. Some are going to turn to crime, as is the case among pretty much any random sampling of the population that large.

But most of them **aren't** "bad apples," and your insinuation that this robbery allows you to draw any general conclusions about people in the military is absolute garbage. Did you make similar "general conclusions" about the people stranded in New Orleans after Katrina? Rumor has it a few crimes may have been committed.

On the other hand, I am happy to draw general conclusions about the civilian overlords based on their shitty policies.

No, far worse. I think the amount of money our country spends on its defense budget is obscene. And more than obscene, criminal. A criminality that will indict our country in the years to come for its short-sightedness. As much as people chide North Korea for starving its people while maintaining an out-of-all-reasonable-proportion military, North Korea can at least point to the United States and its neighbor China as mortal threats to its national existence. The United States has no comparable threat, yet we squander over a billion dollars each and every day on defense that we don't need, don't use, and that doesn't address threats to our way of life.

I sympathize for your friend; he's a victim of a mad society that values guns over butter, thinks that violence will drive out violence, and that the answer to the darkness of humanity is more and deeper darkness.

But who are these Rangers accused of knocking over a bank? They're supposed to be among the best and the brightest our military has to offer, aren't they? This is what our militaristic mindset produces: Criminality writ large in war and criminality writ small in our own cities, towns and villages. It's institutional, it's part and parcel of the society that produced it. The situation in New Orleans was the result of an extraordinary circumstance, and your effort to equate people trying to survive when their own community has been devastated and the larger society has failed them indicates a certain mode of thought that contradicts your handle.

Whether the this robbery was performed by criminals who used their military service to train for crime (as I believe), or whether they were institutionally indoctrinated by the military, you still generalized and stereotyped servicepeople as criminals. I brought up Katrina only because a lot of conservatives used criminal acts by people trying to survive as a means to rationalize their own hatred and stereotyping.

I've got a number of friends who have served, some of them believed in their mission, others are horribly disillusioned by the whole experience. Either way, they are all good people.

And if we want to change the infrastructure and values of this nation, we need to get progressives elected. Calling the troops criminals and "victims of a mad society" won't win many elections, and the neocons at the top will only get more powerful.

So my personal perceptions of the uselessness of the military aren't going to affect Democrats running for office in the least. A disturbing number of folks in and out of the military are indeed criminals, and calling them such is merely a statement of fact. Denying reality isn't very healthy, either for the body corporeal or political. Unless, of course, your handle is meant ironically.

indication that the armed forces are scrapping the bottom of the barrel for recruits. They have had a very hard time making their quotas and they may be dropping the bar too low. This does not mean that every recruit or every soldier is a bad person - only that the recruiters are taking people they would have rejected in the past for legal or medical reasons.

are responsible for mass murder, steal from everyone that moves (except the rich), cheats, commits fraud in a hundred different ways, are actually not the most moral or chaste critters on earth (like they try to make everyone believe), and likes to terrorize everyone that maybe they's just follow the example of their fearless leaders.

as their motto says

rangers lead the way

after all, Rangers do not leave a man behind.

funds to pay their bills - maybe they were just making a withdrawal.

:shrug:

They were given 2 weeks off so went to rob a bank? Our tax dollars at work, keeping us safe.

they WON'T be going to iraq anytime soon! hmmmm......

You don't get to become a Ranger just by asking. How many soliders had to settle for their second choice because these three got selected?

:headbang:
rocknation

I see.They got caught.

Don't know those guys. I'm not speaking for the military, but just like in the civilian world you got good people and bad people, they will definately be dealt with accordingly. You can get an trouble for almost anything.