“Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe?

“Expediency asks the question, Is it politic?

“Vanity asks the question, Is it popular?

“But, conscience asks the question, Is it right?

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one as conscience tells one that it is right.”

For more about Ricky, his support website is here.

A Quaker Soldier for Peace In Iraq

Misleading Students to

Get Them to Enlist

Colonel Says Incidents Are the Exception, Not the Rule

Nov. 3, 2006 — - An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.

ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?” one student asks a recruiter.

“No, we’re bringing people back,” he replies.

“We’re not at war. War ended a long time ago,” another recruiter says.

Last year, the Army suspended recruiting nationwide to retrain recruiters following hundreds of allegations of improprieties.

One Colorado student taped a recruiting session posing as a drug-addicted dropout.

“You mean I’m not going to get in trouble?” the student asked.

The recruiters told him no, and helped him cheat to sign up.

During the ABC News sessions, some recruiters told our students if they enlisted, there would be little chance they’d to go Iraq.

But Col. Robert Manning, who is in charge of U.S. Army recruiting for the entire Northeast, said that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq.

“I would not disagree with that,” Manning said. “We are a nation and Army at war still.”

Manning looked at the ABC News video of his recruiters.

“It’s hard to believe some of things they are telling prospective applicants,” Manning said. “I still believe that this is the exception more than the norm. … I’ve visited many stations myself, and I know that we have many wonderful Americans serving in uniform as recruiters.”

Yet ABC News found one recruiter who even claimed if you didn’t like the Army, you could just quit.

“It’s called a ‘Failure to Adapt’ discharge,” the recruiter said. “It’s an entry-level discharge so it won’t affect anything on your record. It’ll just be like it never happened.”

Manning, however, disagrees with the ease the recruiter describes.

“I would believe it’s not as easy as he would lead you to believe it is,” he said.

Sue Niederer, whose son, Seth, joined the Army in 2002, said she was all too familiar with recruiters’ lies.

“They need to do anything they possibly can to get recruits,” Niederer said.

Seth was sent to Iraq and was killed by a roadside bomb.

Niederer said she was not surprised by what ABC News had found. She believes it’s still a widespread problem. She said that recruiters told Seth he wouldn’t be put into combat.

“Ninety percent [are] going to be putting their lives on the line for our country,” she said. “Tell them the truth. That’s all. Just tell them the truth.”

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

Soldier, 17, says recruiter forged parental release

Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 12:30 am

A 17-year-old Fort Stewart soldier who says he was tricked into enlisting early when an Army recruiter forged his parents’ signatures on a release form is standing by his decision to serve as an infantryman.

Meanwhile, a Salt Lake City recruiter has reportedly admitted to wrongdoing in an ongoing military probe into the allegations.

Such claims of recruiter misconduct are on the rise. Reported violations by U.S. military recruiters increased by more than 50 percent last year, a rise that may be caused by growing pressure to meet wartime recruiting goals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last month.

Pfc. Steven Price, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, arrived at Fort Stewart in July feeling he’d been deceived into enlisting.

“I think it’s fraud,” he told the Savannah Morning News last month after arriving on post. “My recruiter told me I could get basic over with early and spend time with my family until I turned 18.”

Price, who will turn 18 on Nov. 26, said he was in a youth detention facility on a felony gun theft charge when he was recruited in January. After agreeing to enlist, he said his recruiter produced a parental release form bearing the signatures of both his parents, who are divorced and live 90 miles away from each other.

His father, Dean Price of Tooele, Utah, said he was surprised to learn his signature was on the form.

“Neither of those signatures are ours. It’s forgery and fraud,” he said.

Price’s mother, Lisa Jensen of Brigham City, Utah, said it appears the recruiter signed her name on a Jan. 10 parental release form, obtained by the Savannah Morning News, after she declined to do so.

“I said I wasn’t ready to sign anything yet,” she said. “We were taking a chance that my boy could go to war. I told the recruiter I needed to make sure this is what we both wanted.”

Jensen said she eventually signed a release on Feb. 8, before Price entered basic training. She discovered the forgery on the earlier document when her son returned home after basic training with his enlistment papers in hand.

The U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion in Salt Lake City is conducting an internal investigation into the allegations, said spokesman Maj. George Bacon.

He said a recruiter has admitted wrongdoing, but he declined to get into specifics until the investigation is complete.

“This isn’t something we brush aside,” Bacon said. “Anytime allegations are brought, we look into it. Forging a document is one of the worst things a recruiter can do.”

S. Douglas Smith, a spokesman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command, declined to identify the recruiter involved. He said the facts in the case have been gathered, and the investigative findings will go to the recruiting brigade command charged with making decisions about prosecution.

“Further actions are pending conclusion of the investigation,” Smith said.

The recruiting battalion was also investigating why Price was enlisted from a youth detention facility, Bacon said.

To remain in the Army, Price plans to request a court expunge his felony conviction, which stems from charges his father pressed against him, Jensen said.

“I want to stay in. I want to do something with my life,” Price said Wednesday from Fort Stewart. “I was locked up for a while after I got mixed up with the wrong people, but I served my time.

“I love adventure, so I joined the infantry, and I’m doing good here.”

Typically, a felony conviction would disqualify someone from joining the military.

But the number of Army recruits who are convicted felons or have criminal records is growing, according to a February analysis of Defense Department statistics by Salon.com.

That report found that 17 percent of all recruits who entered the Army in 2005 entered with waivers, meaning the Pentagon waived something that otherwise would have disqualified them from service. The use of waivers has increased 42 percent from pre-2000 numbers.

Recruiter misconduct is also on the rise. Last month, the GAO reported that allegations of wrongdoing among military recruiters rose from 4,400 cases in 2004 to 6,600 cases in 2005. The number of substantiated cases increased from about 400 to nearly 630 in that period.

The number of cases found to be criminal violations more than doubled, from 33 to 68.

Violations grew even as the number of people joining the military declined. The number of new recruits across all military branches fell from 250,000 in 2004 to 215,000 in 2005, according to the GAO report.

“Some recruiters, reportedly, have resorted to overly aggressive tactics, which can adversely affect (the Defense Department’s) ability to recruit and erode public confidence in the recruiting process,” the report said.

Pressure to achieve monthly recruitment goals during wartime may be one reason why violations have increased, according to the GAO.

The Army announced Friday that it met its recruiting goal for 2006 one week ahead of schedule. On Friday, Army Secretary Francis Harvey enlisted the Army’s 80,000th soldier.

A package of new financial incentives, new recruiting approaches and a bigger recruiting corps apparently worked. The result was a turnaround from last year when the Army missed its target for the first time since 1999 and by the widest margin in more than two decades.

Jensen said she’s proud of her son’s decision to serve, but she has one piece of advice for parents who may opt to release their children to the military before they turn 18: “Follow them all the way through it, and ask a lot of questions.”

Price said the Army has helped him get his life on the right track. As part of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, he is preparing for a possible combat tour in Iraq that could begin next year.

He also has advice for new recruits.

“Don’t believe everything the recruiter says,” he said. “I strongly suggest you talk to someone who is already in the Army, who is not a recruiter, and learn about the different options available.”

Despite his experience, Price said he has no hard feelings against his recruiter.

“It was deceitful, but I don’t hold grudges,” he said. “He’ll get his punishment. I was just afraid this was going to get me kicked out.”

Signatures not theirs, parents say

The signatures of 17-year-old Pfc. Steven Price’s parents were allegedly forged on an Army parental release form by a Salt Lake City recruiter Jan. 10.

Lisa Jensen and Dean Price of Utah say the signatures on the highlighted signature panels shown here are not theirs.

http://new.savannahnow.com/node/143806

Military Recruiting: DOD [Department of Defense] and Services Need
Better Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities:

Report GAO-06-846:

Report to Congressional Requesters August 2006:

Excerpts from the GAO Findings

“DOD [The Department of Defense] and the services have limited visibility to determine the extent to which recruiter irregularities are occurring. DOD, for example, has not established an oversight framework that includes guidance requiring the services to maintain and report data on recruiter irregularities and criteria for characterizing irregularities and establishing common terminology. <snip>. Additionally, the services do not track all allegations of recruiter wrongdoing. Accordingly, service data likely underestimate the true number of recruiter irregularities. Nevertheless, available service data show that between fiscal years 2004 and 2005, allegations and service-identified incidents of recruiter wrongdoing increased, collectively, from 4,400 cases to 6,600 cases; substantiated cases increased from just over 400 to almost 630 cases; and criminal violations more than doubled from just over 30 to almost 70 cases. The department, however, is not in a sound position to assure Congress and the general public that it knows the full extent to which recruiter irregularities are occurring.

“A number of factors within the recruiting environment may contribute to irregularities. Service recruiting officials stated that the economy has been the most important factor affecting recruiting success. Almost three-quarters of active duty recruiters responding to DOD’s internal survey also believed that ongoing hostilities in Iraq made it hard to achieve their goals. These factors, in addition to the typical challenges of the job, such as demanding work hours and pressure to meet monthly goals, may lead to recruiter irregularities. The recruiters’ performance evaluation and reward systems are generally based on the number of contracts they write for applicants to enter the military.
[Emphasis added.]

GAO-06-846 Military Recruiting: DOD and Services Need Better Data …

Using the Weapons of the Weak

A Message by Chuck Fager at

the Quaker Conference on

Torture
Guilford College

Greensboro NC

June 3, 2006

Introduction: For more information about the Quaker Conference on Torture, and QUIT — The Quaker Initiative to End Torture, click here.

Friends, time is short, and torture is long, so I’m going to talk fast . . . .

I want to start with the Bible, specifically a parable – a parable of Quakerism. It’s from the beginning of Chapter 18 of the Gospel of Luke. I’m sure you’re all familiar with it – this is a religious crowd, right? Piece of cake.

Well, to refresh our recollection, the parable tells of an unjust judge, who neither feared God nor had any regard for people, and a widow, who had nothing but her voice, and came into his courtroom. The widow came and she cried out to the judge, “Give me justice! Give me justice!” But the unjust judge ignored her.

Now the text is very terse here, but the social context is not hard to fill in: Chances are the widow’s back was against the wall. Chances are she was in court because some greedy relative or landlord was trying to steal the inheritance from her dead husband, which was probably all she had to live on. Yet her case at first seems hopeless, because we’re told straight up that the deck is stacked, the fix is in, and the judge is crooked. How is he crooked? He’s likely on the take, selling his rulings to the highest bidder.

But this widow doesn’t give up. She keeps coming back, again and again, and cries out to the judge, and to anyone else who will listen, “Give me justice! Give me justice!”

What was she doing? Consider: she was a woman alone, in a society where such women were the very archetype of powerlessness and weakness. If she loses her case, she’ll probably starve to death – and starvation was common in those days. So this was a life and death struggle, and in it she made use of all she had, that is, the weapons of the weak, and the powers of the powerless.

What are these weapons of the weak? What are these powers? I group them under the initials TVA, for Tenacity, Veracity, and Audacity.

The widow is tenacious – she keeps coming back, she won’t give up. And when she cries out, she’s speaking not only of her own case, but also reminding the judge – and the watching and listening public – of his sacred duty: he’s supposed to be upholding the Law of Moses, the law of God. For centuries, this Torah had echoed for faithful Jews with Deuteronomy’s stern command to Israel’s judges, 16:19 – “Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe . . .justice, and only justice shall you pursue.”

So with her cries the widow is not just making a private complaint – she’s also speaking ancient truth, reminding the Israelite public, as well as the judge, that there is an authentic, a holy tradition of justice in her society, and that it’s being blatantly and shamelessly perverted here. So her cries are also an expose, a kind of committed feminist journalism. They shine a spotlight, or at least a penlight, of veracity into the fog the judge uses to conceal his dirty deeds.

And she is audacious – in her patriarchal world women were expected to keep quiet, especially in the public sphere. The courts were men’s turf, and litigation was men’s business. But she refuses to go along with this custom. She breaks the mold; she thinks, and acts, outside the box.

And eventually she wins, she gets a chance at survival. This is a limited victory– she doesn’t convert the judge – he’s still crooked; and she doesn’t overturn the corrupt system of which he’s a part. But she wears him out, harasses and embarrasses him, until he decides he’ll have to give her what she’s due, if only to get her off his back.

For a text that’s only five verses long, there’s a lot of meaning packed into this parable. In fact, as I said, I find in it a model for Quaker social witness, and particularly for the work we are now beginning on torture. Why is it a model? I think there are two reasons.

Using the Weapons of the Weak — 2

A Message by Chuck Fager, at the Quaker Conference on Torture, Guilford College, Greensboro NC June 3, 2006

First of all, because in the face of the forces that are establishing torture as an accepted instrument of policy, we too are among the powerless. We – and our votes – don’t count. This realization is very important, and not an easy one for Americans. It maybe especially uncomfortable for us here, because looking around, I see that most of us here are white, middle class, and pretty liberal to left-liberal in outlook.

As such, I suspect that many of us have been to diversity sessions and anti-racism workshops, where we’ve heard a lot about white privilege, and might even be feeling a bit guilty about all that privilege we are told we enjoy.

But how we name things is important, Friends, and here I think we need to be careful. I find the phrase “comforts” more helpful than “privilege.” Whites like us have more creature comforts than many others in our society. We benefit from various preferences that are culpably connected with a past and presence of racism and oppression. That’s true enough.

But the term “privilege” connotes to me a connection to power, and this is where the term falls short. Because in relation to those who are truly in power today, especially where torture is concerned, I contend that even the wealthiest and most comfortable among us here is essentially without power. We too are among the powerless.

In fact, almost all Americans are now without real power, or access to power, in this matter, and most others relating to peace and war. Not only are we without real power, we’ve also lost most of the rights we once thought we had. What’s left is mainly pretense and illusion. And of course, creature comforts.

So our powerlessness may be more comfortable than some others, but it’s powerlessness still. If any of you are inclined to doubt this estimate, I propose a little experiment to test it out:

When you get home on Monday, call the office of your senator, or Member of Congress, and ask for an appointment to discuss torture with her or him, face to face, for half an hour. Call again the next Monday and every Monday, and see how long it takes for an appointment to happen.

I suggest it will take a long time. In fact, I have here a check for $100, drawn on my personal account, made out to QUIT. I’ll give it to QUIT’s Treasurer as soon as someone here can verify that you have spent fifteen minutes face-to-face with your Senator or Member of Congress talking about torture as U.S. policy.

One condition: I’m talking here about actual power-holders; so Democrats don’t count. And you know what? I think I’m going to get to keep this check for a long time.

So if Quakers trying to end torture are among the comfortably weak and powerless, I suggest that if we’re to have any hope of success, we set out to learn from the widow of Luke 18 and deploy the weapons of the weak. That’s the second reason the widow’s story is a model for us. And what are these weapons? Remember the initials: TVA

Tenacity, Veracity, and Audacity.

If you look at the history of serious Quaker social witness, that’s what you will find. Take slavery: we worked against it in the US tenaciously, for a hundred years. It wasn’t a fad or a fashion. And in those generations of struggle, Quakers kept telling the truth, that slavery was an abomination before God and man. And they did this in many ways, some as audacious as Lucretia Mott facing down mobs with her eloquence, and others daring to start the Underground Railroad – and they had the audacity to run that railroad right through this campus, by the way.

There are other examples – but that’s the past. What about now? What does TVA mean for Quaker work against torture?

I can be very concrete. Tenacity means that we prepare for a struggle that we expect to last longer than most of us in this room will live. To do that, as we return home tomorrow, we will need to keep our ears open, especially our inward ear, the one that hears the insistent whispers of the Spirit.

We need to keep that inward ear open, because some among us will are going to start hearing some insistent whispers of calling:

Using the Weapons of the Weak — 3

A Message by Chuck Fager, at the Quaker Conference on Torture, Guilford College, Greensboro NC June 3, 2006

One among us will hear a calling to start a newsletter about the work of ending torture– because we’ll get nowhere if we don’t keep in touch.

And someone else will hear a whispered call to raise funds for QUIT’s ongoing work, because there will be bills to pay. Another Friend will hear a whisper about going out to network actively with other groups that are building a larger anti-torture movement, because we can’t possibly do this on our own.

The whispers to several more will be to form a committee to begin planning the next QUIT conference, in a year or two, in order to keep up the momentum and enlarge the network.

This is tenacity: building a small but sturdy infrastructure that can support ongoing Quaker work, and connect it to the larger struggle. If it doesn’t happen, if some among us don’t hear those whispers and respond to them – then that makes us tourists here, and torture an activist fad, and shame on us. But I think we’ll be listening.

As for Veracity, it means continuing to educate ourselves in an ongoing way about the ugly truths of torture, and the growing opportunities to end it. I’m very serious about this educational task, and feel obliged to sound a warning here: if most of what we knew about torture before this weekend came from the news media, Friends, we are not yet well-informed – even if we get all our news from NPR. (Or for that matter, from Fox News.)

News reports are just the beginning, and too many, even in prestigious outlets, are not to be trusted. Learning the hard truths of torture will require digging deeper, doing hard work And as we become more versed, we are called to spread this information. The basics of veracity here, the roots of the matter, are elemental – not elementary, not simple, but basic: they are that torture is immoral, torture is inhuman, it is rarely effective, and torture defiles the law and debases a culture. Like the widow’s cries, these truths cannot be repeated often or loudly enough.

And then Audacity: imagination and creativity are crucial. As current examples, I’m grateful for the presence of Lady Liberty outside this building, and the presence among us of some of those who have been protesting the CIA torture flights that have been taking off from right here in North Carolina. There is a “torture industrial complex” that has been surreptitiously created in our society, and a key part of our work will be to name and expose it, and give it no rest. We can’t hope to do this unless we can bring imagination and creativity to bear on the truth, the information we gather.

I can’t overstate how important such creativity is to our hopes of long-term impact. When we began planning this conference last year, I told the other committee members that I wouldn’t put in all the work that it would entail, and I wouldn’t spend a weekend sitting here, if what we were going to be told would boil down to telling us to write to Congress – again.

Of course, we can’t ignore Washington. But I say to you today, the salvation of this country from the curse of torture is a force that will end will end up in Washington, it will not begin there. It will come from the sparks lit by those in the far corners of this land, who have imagination and daring.

I’m talking about the spirit of six Quaker housewives in Seneca Falls New York, who started a revolution for women around their kitchen table. I’m talking about Rosa Parks, on a shabby bus in Montgomery. I’m talking about Cindy Sheehan, crouched in a ditch in rural Texas. I’m talking about Martin Luther King Jr., crossing a rusty bridge in Selma, Alabama. And I’m talking about Bernadette O’Neill, who you’ll hear from later today, who risked arrest in Johnston County, two hours east of here, to challenge CIA torture flights.

That’s the audacity that will set the wheels of change will turning, wheels that will roll across this country and rumble into Washington, until torture is driven from the land.

I won’t pretend that the weapons of the weak, and the powers of the powerless, will bring quick or easy results. But I can make a prediction. As we sit here today, there is not an anti-torture movement in America. There are some dedicated anti-torture activists, and we’ve met some of them. But there isn’t a national anti-torture movement. Not yet.

But here’s my prediction: by the end of this year, and even by the end of this summer, there WILL be such a movement. It is being created even as we speak, and taking form almost right before our eyes. It is not just here, but in a dozen other rooms, filled with members of other churches, mosques, and synagogues.

Quakers are not the center of this movement, or its leaders. But today those of us in this room are literally on the leading edge of this campaign as it is comes into being, and our role in it can be crucial – if we will take this opportunity and run with it.

To play that role, let us remember Luke’s widow, and her cries for justice. Let’s seize the powers of the powerless and put them to work. And let us remember those three silly initials that can point us in the way we are to go: TVA. Can you say them with me–can we Quakers do something as radical as a little call and response?

What’s This? (”T!”) What’s it stand For? “TENACITY!” (Can’t hear you!)

What’s This? (”V”) The V For? “VERACITY!”

And this one?(”A!”) “AUDACITY!”

All right – now be radical again and give yourselves a hand. Thank you.

All the articles below are reproduced strictly for educational purposes.

An Army of one wrong recruit

Autism - The signing of a disabled Portland man despite warnings

reflects problems nationally for military enlistment

From the Portland Oregonian – Sunday, May 07, 2006

By Michelle Roberts

Jared Guinther is 18. Tall and lanky, he will graduate from Marshall High School in June. Girls think he’s cute, until they try to talk to him and he stammers or just stands there — silent.

Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Jared is polite but won’t talk to people unless they address him first. It’s hard for him to make friends. He lives in his own private world.

Jared didn’t know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall — shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Southeast Portland strip mall and complimented him on his black Converse All Stars.

“When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ ” said Paul Guinther, Jared’s father. “I told my wife not to worry about it. They’re not going to take anybody in the service who’s autistic.”

But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army’s most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.

Officials are now investigating whether recruiters at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Southeast Portland improperly concealed Jared’s disability, which should have made him ineligible for service.

Jared’s story illustrates a growing national problem as the military faces increasing pressure to hit recruiting targets during an unpopular war.

Tracking by the Pentagon shows that complaints about recruiting improprieties are on pace to approach record highs set in 2003 and 2004. The active Army and the Reserve missed recruiting targets last year, and reports of recruiting abuses continue from across the country.

A family in Ohio reported that its mentally ill son was signed up, despite rules banning such enlistments and the fact that records about his illness were readily available.

In Houston, a recruiter warned a potential enlistee that if he backed out of a meeting he would be arrested.

And in Colorado, a high school student working undercover told recruiters he had dropped out and had a drug problem. The recruiter told the boy to fake a diploma and buy a product to help him beat a drug test.

Violations such as these forced the Army to halt recruiting for a day last May so recruiters could be retrained and reminded of the job’s ethical requirements.

The Portland Army Recruiting Battalion Headquarters opened its investigation into Jared’s case last week after his parents called The Oregonian and the newspaper began asking questions about his enlistment.

Maj. Curt Steinagel, commander of the Military Entrance Processing Station in Portland, said the papers filled out by Jared’s recruiters contained no indication of his disability. Steinagel acknowledged that the current climate is tough on recruiters here and elsewhere.

“I can’t speak for the Army,” he said, “but it’s no secret that recruiters stretch and bend the rules because of all the pressure they’re under. The problem exists, and we all know it exists.”

Diagnosis and struggle

Jared lives in a tiny brown house in Southeast Portland that looks as worn out as his parents do when they get home from work.

Paul Guinther, 57, labors 50 to 60 hour weeks as a painter-sandblaster at Sundial Marine Tug & Barge Works in Troutdale. His wife, Brenda, 50, has the graveyard housekeeping shift at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas.

The couple got together nearly 16 years ago when Jared was 3. Brenda, who had two young children of her own, immediately noticed that Jared was different and pushed Paul to have the boy tested.

“Jared would play with buttons for hours on end,” she said. “He’d play with one toy for days. Loud noises bothered him. He was scared to death of the toilet flushing, the lawn mower.”

Jared didn’t speak until he was almost 4 and could not tolerate the feel of grass on his feet.

Doctors diagnosed him with moderate to severe autism, a developmental disorder that strikes when children are toddlers. It causes problems with social interaction, language and intelligence. No one knows its cause or cure.

School and medical records show that Jared, whose recent verbal IQ tested very low, spent years in special education classes. It was only when he was a high school senior that Brenda pushed for Jared to take regular classes because she wanted him to get a normal rather than a modified diploma.

Jared required extensive tutoring and accommodations to pass, but in June he will graduate alongside his younger stepbrother, Matthew Thorsen.

Last fall, Jared began talking about joining the military after a recruiter stopped him on his way home from school and offered a $4,000 signing bonus, $67,000 for college and more buddies than he could count.

Matthew told his mother that military recruiting at the school and surrounding neighborhoods was so intense that one recruiter had pulled him out of football practice.

Recruiters in Portland and nationwide spend several hours a day cold-calling high school students, whose phone numbers are provided by schools under the No Child Left Behind Law. They also prospect at malls, high school cafeterias, colleges and wherever else young people gather.

Brenda phoned her two brothers, both veterans. She said they laughed and told her not to worry. The military would never take Jared.

The Guinthers, meanwhile, tried to refocus their son.

“I told him, ‘Jared, you get out of high school. I know you don’t want to be a janitor all your life. You work this job, you go to community college, you find out what you want. You can live here as long as you want,’ ” Paul said.

They thought it had worked until five weeks ago. Brenda said she called Jared on his cell phone to check what time he’d be home.

“I said ‘Jared, what are you doing?’ ‘I’m taking the test,’ he said — the entrance test. I go, ‘Wait a minute.’ I said, ‘Who’s giving you the test?’ He said, ‘Corporal.’ I said, ‘Well let me talk to him.’ ”

Brenda said she spoke to Cpl. Ronan Ansley and explained that Jared had a disability, autism, that could not be outgrown. She said Ansley told her he had been in special classes, too — for dyslexia.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a big difference between autism and your problem,’ ” Brenda said.

Military rules prohibit enlisting anyone with a mental disorder that interferes with school or employment, unless a recruit can show he or she hasn’t required special academic or job accommodations for 12 months.

Jared has been in special education classes since preschool. Through a special program for disabled workers, he has a part-time job scrubbing toilets and dumping trash.

Jared scored 43 out of 99 on the Army’s basic entrance exam — 31 is the lowest grade the Army allows for enlistment, military officials said.

After learning that Jared had cleared this first hurdle toward enlistment, Brenda said, she called and asked for Ansley’s supervisor and got Sgt. Alejandro Velasco.

She said she begged Velasco to review Jared’s medical and school records. Brenda said Velasco declined, asserting that he didn’t need any paperwork. Under military rules, recruiters are required to gather all available information about a recruit and fill out a medical screening form.

“He was real cocky and he says, ‘Well, Jared’s an 18-year-old man. He doesn’t need his mommy to make his decisions for him.’ ”

Question of comprehension

The Guinthers are not political activists. They supported the Iraq war in the beginning but have started to question it as fighting dragged on. Brenda Guinther said that if her son Matthew had enlisted, she “wouldn’t like it, but I would learn to live with it because I know he would understand the consequences.”

But Jared doesn’t understand the dangers or the details of what he has done, the Guinthers said.

When they asked Jared how long he would be in the Army, he said he didn’t know. His enlistment papers show it’s just over four years. Jared also was disappointed to learn that he wouldn’t be paid the $4,000 signing bonus until after basic training.

During a recent family gathering, a relative asked Jared what he would do if an enemy was shooting at him. Jared ran to his video game console and killed a digital Xbox soldier and announced, “See! I can do it!”

“My concern is that if he got into a combat situation he really couldn’t take someone’s back,” said Mary Lou Perry, 51, a longtime friend of the Guinthers’. “He wouldn’t really know a dangerous thing. This job they have him doing, it’s like send him in and if he doesn’t get blown up, it’s safe for the rest of us.”

Steinagel, the processing station commander, told The Oregonian that Jared showed up after passing his written exam. None of his paperwork indicated that he was autistic, but if it had, Jared almost certainly would have been disqualified, he said.

On Tuesday, a reporter visited the U.S. Army Recruiting Station at the Eastport Plaza Shopping Center, where Velasco said he had not been told about Jared’s autism.

“Cpl. Ansley is Guinther’s recruiter,” he said. “I was unaware of any type of autism or anything like that.”

Velasco initially denied knowing Jared but later said he’d spent a lot of time mentoring him because Jared was going to become a cavalry scout. The job entails “engaging the enemy with anti-armor weapons and scout vehicles,” according to an Army recruiting Web site.

After he had spoken for a few moments, Velasco suddenly grabbed the reporter’s tape recorder and tried to tear out the tape, stopping only after the reporter threatened to call the police.

With the Guinthers’ permission, The Oregonian faxed Jared’s medical records to the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Carlton in Portland, who on Wednesday ordered the investigation.

The Guinthers said that on Tuesday evening, Cpl. Ansley showed up at their door. They said Ansley stated that he would probably lose his job and face dishonorable discharge unless they could stop the newspaper’s story.

Ansley, reached at his recruiting office Thursday, declined to comment for this story.

S. Douglas Smith, spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, in Fort Knox, Ky., said he could not comment on specifics of the investigation in Portland. But he defended the 8,200 recruiters working for the active Army and Army Reserve.

Last year, the Army relieved 44 recruiters from duty and admonished 369.

“Everyone in recruiting is let down when one of our recruiters fails to uphold the Army’s and Recruiting Command’s standards,” Smith said.

The Guinthers are eager to hear whether the Army will release Jared from his enlistment. Jared is disappointed he might not go because he thought the recruiters were his friends, they said. But they’re willing to accept that.

“If he went to Iraq and got hurt or killed,” Paul Guinther said, “I couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t try to stop it.”

Michelle Roberts: 503-294-5041; michelleroberts@news.oregonian.com

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comments in bold by Chuck Fager, Director of Quaker House

Freddy–

Thanks for getting back in touch; I’ve been wondering and worrying about you.

Chuck, thank you for the info on my situation. It was really encouraging to talk with you as well. I know that I’m not alone and some crazy person with these feelings and ideas.>>

Definitely not, on either score: you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.

It’s been a while since we talked, I spoke with my command about options on getting out and they presented me with one: being a CO. But after looking at the regulations that cover that option and looking over the criteria I felt that it wasn’t for me.

I’m not surprised, or dismayed by this. There are plenty of people who are don’t have CO convictions who nonetheless are deeply opposed to the Iraq war and all that goes with it. No matter what the regs say, their consciences (and yours) are as authentic and worthy of respect as anyone else’s.

I know this is different than what you believe, and I respect your stance and especially the support you offer soldiers coming back and dealing with these things, but I felt that I didn’t fall into that category. In my heart, after praying and getting in the Word, I felt that God justifies the taking of life in certain situations. Even in certain conflicts (ie. WWI/WWII etc.), but definately not this one.

Maybe sometime when this is over with we can talk about all this. meantime, just stay safe and know there’s no judgment on this end.

I do, however, feel that my feelings and stance is completely valid and legitimate.

Yep.

A few sundays ago, during worship, I was praying about things and felt a real peace about leaving. So, last week I packed my stuff up and left leaving a note that explained my feelings and that I wouldn’t manipulate my emotions to categorize myself into qualifying for CO.

Okay. I’ll certainly stand behind your choice.

I have contacted GI Rights Hotline and they are helping me, but please pray for guidance and protection if you would. Only time will tell what will happen, but I wanted to thank you and let you know your help is definately appreciated. God bless and stay real.

I’ll do my best.

If you haven’t already, let me recommend you google the piece “AWOL in America” which was recently published in Harpers. Here’s a link: AWOL in America. It tells of several GIs who have been through inner conflicts much like yours. It would be valuable reading.

If you need to talk, give me a call anytime (tho I’ll be away a lot in July). Just be careful about where you’re calling from, as we assume that somebody else (other than God) could be listening.

Let me know how your situation resolves itself.