From CNN, Wednesday, May 11, 2005 you will find this –

The U.S. Army plans to stop recruiting activities for one day this month to review procedures that its 7,500 recruiters use, an Army official said.

Maj. Gen. Michael Rochelle, head of the Army Recruiting Command, is expected to make the announcement, which could come as early as Thursday.

The move follows a CBS News report of least two allegations of recruiting abuse.

In one case, the network reported a recruiter suggesting how a potential volunteer might cheat to pass a drug test, and in another, a sergeant threatened a prospect with arrest if he didn't report to a recruiting station.

The Army said it is investigating the allegations. …

And from a Texas television station (KHOU, Houston) there is this –

Will Ammons, 20, signed up for delayed entry at the Lake Jackson Army recruiting station last year.

But soon afterwards, he fell in love and changed his mind before he ever shipped out.

That's when, he says, Army recruiters crossed the line and started harrassing him.

"He told me I pretty much had two options," Ammons said. "I'd go before a judge and get a sentence of 15 years but he had the option to double it. It was either that or they were going to put me in front of seven other people with rifles and shoot me."

For giggle look up J. R. Hutchinson, The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore (1914) or  J. F. Zimmerman, Impressment of American Seamen (1926, repr. 1966).

A typical encyclopedia entry here –

In England, impressment began as early as the Anglo-Saxon period and was used extensively under Elizabeth I, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell. "Press gangs" forcibly seized and carried individuals into service; frequently subjects of foreign countries were taken. After 1800, England restricted impressment mostly to naval service. The Napoleonic Wars increased English need for sea power and led to the impressment of a large number of deserters, criminals, and British subjects who had become naturalized Americans. (Until 1850, England did not recognize the right of a man to renounce his nationality.) Frequent interception of American ships to impress American citizens was a major cause of the War of 1812. England generally abandoned such forcible measures after 1835. In Prussia, impressment was introduced by Frederick William I after 1713, laying the groundwork for Prussian military power in the 18th cent. It reached its height under Frederick II (Frederick the Great) who made forced recruitment on foreign soil an integral part of the Prussian military system. Impressment was used in many countries as a method of ridding society of undesirables. Persons of property, apprenticed youths, and other respectable citizens were often exempted by law. The system fostered gross abuses and was often a means of private vengeance. It filled the army and navy with a group ready for mutiny, desertion, or other disloyalty, and it adversely affected voluntary recruitment. After 1800 impressment tended to become a means of enforcing conscription, and it fell into disuse after 1850.

Here we go again.

But as of a method of ridding society of undesirables where persons of property, apprenticed youths, and other respectable citizens were often exempted by law.  That works.

One thinks of kids like that Lynndie England lass who join up just to get away from a no-prospects, no-future, stuck-stocking-the-shelves-at-Wal-Mart-for-the-rest-of-my life existence.

And then what happens?

Two – George Bush and Sam Peckinpah

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Probably no one remembers the movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) directed by Sam Peckinpah.  Starring Warren Oates and Gig Young?  Whatever.  Warren Oates is out to collect the head of this Alfredo, in order to get the bounty money, and escape his low-paid job in a bar for a better life.  And he takes his promiscuous girlfriend Isela Vega along for the ride.  (Full plot summary here.)  It’s your typical sadistic Peckinpah bloodbath, intended to shock and appall the audience and all that.

So what to make of this from the BBC on 4 May?  

The CIA sent a team to Afghanistan days after 9/11 with orders to kill Osama Bin Laden and bring back his head, a former agent has revealed.

Gary Schroen flew out soon after the attacks on New York and Washington, helping to set up the 2001 invasion, he told US National Public Radio.

He recalled his orders from the CIA's counter-terrorism chief.

"Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice," he quoted Cofer Black as saying.

As for other leaders of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan, Mr Black reportedly said: "I want their heads up on pikes."

Contacted by the radio network, Mr Black would not confirm that these were his exact words but he did not dispute Mr Schroen's account.

… Mr Schroen has released memoirs called First In, a reference to the fact that he and his team were the first US government personnel on the ground.

He says he is surprised that the CIA has still not managed to track down Bin Laden after nearly four years.

Well, if you want to see that on video, go here for the CIA agent who says he was asked to provide Osama's head on ice, dry ice specifically - as the president said he wanted that delivered to his office.  Chris Matthews on his MSNBC Hardball show asked the CIA guy last week the dumbest reporter-question of the year.  Where do you get dry ice in Afghanistan?  Yeah, we always wondered about that.

And from Sunday's Meet the Press Show (same link) –

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Black gave you specific instructions on what he wanted you to bring home.

MR. SCHROEN: That's true. He did ask that once we got bin Laden and killed him, that we send his head back in a cardboard box on dry ice so that he could take it down and show the president.

Hell, you can't make up this stuff.  It only gets better by the day.

The president has watched too many Sam Peckinpah movies.  But we know now where he gets his ethical principles.  Remember our gleeful display of the mutilated bodies of Saddam’s two sons?  We have to show the world the kind of people we are?

Fine. We voted the man in for anther four years.  That’s what we want.

But over at the Christian Science Monitor we get more detail.  They report that when this guy spoke to Radio Free Europe he said it is unlikely we will ever get bin Laden, in a chilled cardboard box or not.  He’s probably in Pakistan, and getting him might just bring down the Pakistani government – and they seem to be our allies – as in this –

[Schroen] says bin Laden is regarded almost as a "Robin Hood" figure among certain elements of the Islamic world. He says bin Laden's popularity is so great that Pakistan may not want to risk a potentially devastating political backlash by capturing him.

So no help there?  And on last weekend’s Meet the Press there was this - 

Q: "Is there a distinct possibility that [Pakistani President Pervez] Musharraf is afraid of capturing Osama bin Laden because he would fear that his government would be toppled?"

A: “In my opinion, that's a real likelihood ... to take on bin Laden, there would be an uproar within that country and around the Islamic world that would really cause the foundations of the Pakistani government to be shaken. ... And if we were able to find bin Laden, and identify that to the Pakistanis, I would suspect that there would be a great reluctance and probably a refusal to move forward.”

So George will not get his iced human head in a box.  This probably pisses him off no end.

There is no point in harping on what this all shows about our leader, or about us a people who want someone like this to lead us, or about what this would do to our already diminished reputation in what is called the civilized world.  George Bush holding up the severed head on television, and smirking – or more likely sneering – would please the Christian evangelical right.  Heck, they’d wet their pants in righteous delight and praise Jesus.  But one wonders if most other nations would just sever diplomatic relations with the United States in disgust.  Bush would love that.  Sam Peckinpah would just smile.