Don’t worry about the troops Sec. Gates, they’re young and strong, they can take it, I mean who needs rest, right?? Especially when you can get all the R&R you need and never leave the ‘sand box’…
I have been made privy of some information, from 2 separate sources and that information is quite inflammatory, and both sources have requested full anonymity due to the seriousness of these accusations, some of this story is observation and some is from direct involvement, and according to sources, reports have been made, arrests were made, investigations were conducted and apparently it was buried from that point on…
One of my sources was involved in Gulf 1 and his observations pretty much mirrored those of my other source that is involved in Iraq now, and the 1st area of comparison is the availability of ‘black market booze’, that itself doesn’t bother me in the least except for the fact the the U.S. military has declared there will be no booze in an Islamic nation, in accordance with those nations customs, but, that is one of those ‘rules are made to be broken’ things and generally gets a turn of the head and a wink of the eye…And as anyone that has ever spent any time around the military is well aware, ‘camp followers’ have always been a part of war, for those that don’t know what a ‘camp follower’ is, to put it simply, a ‘camp follower’ is a whore, a traveling whore or group of whores, and they follow the Army from location to location servicing the sexual needs of the troops, and again, I personally have no problem with this indulgence, it’s the ‘oldest profession’ and has been around ever since there were armies to follow…
The problem I have with it is this, normally, prostitution was conducted by the indigenous female population of the area of operation but in modern times, with Americas military being made up of quite a few female troops, it appears that at least as far back as 1990 that I can document, there have been U.S. run sex rings, and according to one source there were Navy ships on a Mediterranean cruise that were referred to as ‘The Love Boats’, boats, as in more than one, according to this source, there were at least 6 U.S. Navy personnel that came back from that particular cruise pregnant…
During the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. Navy hospital ships gained the nickname, “Love Boats,” after several female sailors became pregnant while serving aboard the ships.
There were several ‘rings of pleasure’ being run by U.S. Navy personnel and if my understanding is correct, they were not just servicing the Navy men on the ships, they were servicing the Marines that were waiting to go ashore and then those that came back to the ships…
Fast forward to Operation Iraqi Freedom and today, according to this particular source, prostitution allows some female Army troops the opportunity to send home ‘duffle bags FULL of cash’…
According to my source in present day theater, the females procure boxes of condoms, and sell those condoms to male troops for $250 to $300 dollars each and the ‘sex act’ is included, and my source told me, “Sir, their rationale is ‘why give it away when I can make a fortune and have fun too?’ and that’s a pretty wide spread practice today, no pun intended, it happens in all the base camps…”
I also know that drug abuse was fairly wide spread during the Vietnam era, mostly marijuana, hashish and Thai stick, I know that hashish was pretty popular on bases in Germany as well, and I am personally aware that there was quite a bit of hard drug abuse during the Vietnam era, Navy Corpsman regularly handed out generous portions of Dexedrine, pure ‘speed’, to troops going out on patrol for the night or had enough on hand to keep a patrol wired for sound for several days in the field, amphetamine abuse by troops has been a well hidden little semi-secret thing since WWII days, having been made aware of that information by a nurse that was an active duty Army officer towards the end of WWII and on into the Korean conflict…
I am personally aware of troops carrying individual morphine injections, supposedly for the relief of pain for wounded troops but these were regularly abused as some troops who used them to obtain the ‘high’ that comes from it’s use, morphine is, after all, a very powerful opiate and the only experience I ever had with it was when I was having a heart attack 13 years ago and I can tell you, without reservation, if that feeling of total euphoria was any indication of the rush some of our guys got when they hit it out in the field, I can honestly understand how some came to be addicted…
One of my sources has informed me that the abuse of morphine, and opiates in general, isn’t the big problem now, the troops have, according to my source, almost unfettered access to anabolic steroids, cocaine and methamphetamine, supposedly brought into theater by civilian contractors who apparently aren’t subjected to a check going in…
According to my source currently in theater, the abuse of cocaine and meth is mostly, but not exclusively, within the ranks, while the steroid abuse, ‘juicing’ as he called it, is very common in ALL ranks and he related 2 stories of an Army LtCol that was in full blown ‘roid rage’ to the point of actually committing physical abuse on some of his troops, and this was supposedly a documented incident, but the records have never been made public and the ‘gentleman’ is still a LtCol.
There are some that will think this was written to denigrate the troops and their efforts but that is not even remotely true, this piece is written to make those that don’t know, fully aware of the hypocrisy that is the DoD, our troops are being allowed to kill themselves, they are abusing sex, booze and drugs and that abuse is NOT just an isolated incident here and there, it is, according to my sources, a fairly wide spread and barely hidden practice, a part of everyday life for many of our troops serving in Iraq, and it is my opinion that if the military doesn’t know of these abuses, they need to, and they need to act NOW before we have well trained killing machines walking the streets of America, wiped out of their minds on coke, meth and steroids…
Personally, I believe the DoD is fully aware of ALL of this and is simply looking the other way, much as they did concerning the debacle at Walter Reed Hospital and many, if not ALL of the V.A. hospitals nationwide, until many of us raised so much hell that they had no choice but to address the problems at hand, I am sincerely hoping that this story will ignite a firestorm and get these allegations looked into and resolved, not hidden, not swept under the rug in true DoD fashion, but addressed and corrected…
Trackback URL:http://texasfred.net/archives/540/trackback/
Ya know Fred, I heard this same stuff when I was there, in Desert Storm or Gulf War 1, and would have to agree with this source. I actually seen some of it too.
There were several (in the rear with the gear) base camps, I was intially at base camp 15 until we started our movement to the Kuwaiti border.
At this base camp and the other, there was some prostitution going on with the female troops then too.
Also during a ‘Med’ cruise I did there was a Navy supply ship that re-supplied us that was being referred to as the ‘love boat’ because it had both males and females on it and was known to have pregnant sailors on it during that time.
Prostitution is as old as war it’s self, but when you get into the female participants actually being the soldier, airman, sailor or marine then there is a serious problem that certainly needs addressed.
Boozing was easy in Desert Storm too, just send it in the mail via a big cologne bottle and drink it on down around a fire, just be sure to share. And that was in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
I never saw much dope smoking, but speed use was prevalent for those that wanted that energy boost around the 0 dark 30 watch.
I never really saw anyone get into trouble for anything I saw and there needs to be more done to make this less of a problem, after all it can lead to several types of addiction when talking about drugs and alcohol but it don’t seem to be very high on the priority list.
With combat comes a lot of PTSD too, this will make you want to drink and do drugs in itself. But this has been a problem in both peace time as well as war.
This is more than a story this is Breaking News…
The good folks supporting our troops need to know what is happening over there, and they need to know we didn’t send choir boys to fight…
I can sure understand the desire to remove the mind from the BS going on. I also know that any time you put a large population of men in a small area, give them rules and tell them what they can’t do… We MEN are very creative in finding ways around those rules…..
Good Post Fred, I wonder will the MSM pick up on it?
This is nothing new. The only thing I object to is the inclusion of women in the combat theatre. This is done solely for Political Correctness. You insert women in this kind of environment and surely you’ll have some enterprising women. And inserting women into ships and other similar environments = pregnancy. Fuckin’ duh! D’ya think?
Dad told me stories, prior to long flights over Germany or other extensive missions, the Flight Surgeons would issue “pep pills” to the crews. Those “pep pills” turned out to be medical-grade methamphetamine. Some got addicted, some didn’t.
This kind of stuff would happen in Iraq, in Iran, in Korea, anywhere there are young men filled with testosterone and are away from women, booze, and co-fueled by the high of combat survival and camaraderie.
BZ
When we were stationed in Thailand, right after the ‘cease fire’, I met quite a few NCOs who smoked heroine, becoming addicted when they were in Vietnam. Stunk to high heaven, and I refused to go around them, after the first experience. One ended up spending time in a Thai prison. NO, I never tried it. The stench alone was enough!
Fred, the military is a reflection of its civilian counterparts..no worse and if anything better. I would bet money that there are a lot more civilains who abuse drugs and alcohol than military types.
This is nothing new..drug abuse has been around the military every since there has been drugs. And as far as the gals getting rich? When I was in Alaska there was a young pretty thing that finally got caught selling it..she was stationed on one of the remote islands…and got kicked out but her comment to me as I signed her discharge papers was “It was worth it” Rumor was that in six months she had banked over fifty thousand dollars..
I didn’t know whether to envy her or chastise her..ain’t free enterprise great?