Arizona militia recruiting veterans with ‘kill records’ to patrol border

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/23/militia-kill-records/


According to KOLD Channel 5 News in Arizona, local militiaman Bill Davis is recruiting “combat veterans, with kill records, to camp out and patrol” along the U.S.-Mexico border. “If it comes to when shots are fired in the general direction of these guys, they have my authorization to return fire, if they’re in defense of their life or their buddy next to them, return fire, stop it as fast as it starts, and they’re capable of it,” Davis told reporters. Despite a warning from Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada that the militia’s plan is “very dangerous” and “very risky,” Davis is pressing forward:

“If we think they’re carrying drugs, weapons, contraband, we’ll get out in front of ‘em and stop ‘em,” says Davis. “They won’t get past us. You can write into that what you want, short of shooting them.”

Watch Channel 5’s report: snip video-

Davis may be feeling empowered from the radical anti-immigrant law passed by the Arizona legislature, which requires police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter as part of a “lawful contact.” In any case, right-wing websites are celebrating Davis’ armed border patrol. The neo-Nazi website Stormfront calls it, “ore good news out of Arizona!”
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not good

and notch their belts

for lo these many decades. It's a bit like the "rapture" thing, just more easily hyped. Gotta find some way to employ those vets!

So that the Arizona folks can just shuffle through the papers and then call up the vets?
Would the job appeal to that many veterans? My sense is that most people who've been through a war don't really want to go back there in any way.
just asking.

gets some type of adrenaline high from being in a combat situation. I think, however, in most cases, you are correct - most people who have encountered a combat situation are not going to place themselves in a combat situation for the hell of it.

Of the low number of individuals who do tend to get addicted to the adrenaline high, they tend to either remain in the military (and, I am NOT confusing these with miitary personnel who remain in the service in defense of their country and as much as they dislike combat, will put themselves into that situation if so ordered) or, they become mercenaries.

The types of 'veterans' this individual will likely attract are either not real combat veterans, or else are veterans who are having difficulty adapting to civilian life. And, the members of the latter group need psychological help more than they need this idiot urging them on.

But then, that's merely my personal opinion, and I'm neither a military expert nor a phychiatrist.

Those attracted to this group will most likely be chickenhawk wannabes--the ones who have the most colorful stories of their combat exploits because they're complete fictions. They tend to be the ones who are most vocal in calling for torture as U.S. policy, and are all for other mothers' sons being patriotic and going to war and doing the fighting and dying while they remain comfortably at home. Their made-up war stories are WAAAAAY over the top, with lots and lots of "confirmed kills."

Tomorrow I have to speak about the Vietnam War to a history class at the local JC. I won't be extolling the glories of killing. I WILL talk about spending 18 months hospitalized on the floor that had all the other facial casualties and the amputees, and about the psycholoogical trauma of war. Usually I talk about politics only in response to questions. But the funny thing is that if it doesn't come up, the prof will ask political questions. I think he just likes to show that vets are diverse in their politics, and not all are war-lovin' wingnuts.

;)