(no subject)

[csi_sanders1129]

“And so, now, you’re on the ground. How do you gage success? Because you’ve got all of these officers telling you that you got to win this war. Was, was, was Hill 543 or whatever the heck that number was, was that a success? // Class: …No? // Yes, it was a success, because we took that hill! Whatsamatter with you people, don’t you understand success? We took the hill. Nononononono, we took the hill, It was a success. You guys are watching in 2009 going ‘that’s nuts…’ but in ’67, that was a success, because the battle reports will say ‘We took the hill.’ How do you gage success? We took the hill. …Then we gave it back. But, how do gage success? Cause we’re gonna take hills and give ‘em back all through this thing. So it’s not geography, kay? World War II, that was easy – go to Berlin, go to Tokyo. Easy! // Me: Body count. // Body Count! Jess has got it. Body count. We decided we had to have another way to gage success. Cause you gotta have success, right? I mean, you can’t just keep sayin’ ‘hey, let’s send another 100,000 eighteen year old boys to go die’. ‘Well, is it successful?’ ‘Yeah!’ ‘Okay!’ How do we gage success in this? Body count… What in the world does that mean? How many of them do we kill? Now, how do you know? // Me: Whose stopping to count? // Whose stopping to count and what do you count? Do you count ‘maybe’s? Or do you only count the bodies that are there with the bits and pieces here and there. But, see, the game is different. Your game in World War II, where these guys were all there and they knew they were all there until the duration and they knew what the common enemy was. If you’re a Sergeant and you become a Lieutenant, then the first thing that captain is gonna ask you is… *in booming military voice* ‘Jess, how many’d you kill today?’ // Me: I dunno. Maybe twenty? // Ah, that is an unacceptable answer, Jess! I want you to go ahead and I want you to give me an exact number so I can send it up the line. What’s your exact number, Sergeant? // Me: Twenty-five. // Alright, twenty five.’ Now, captain comes to me, and says ‘How many’d you kill?’ ‘I heard 35, sir.’ Alright? And then the Colonel, he goes to the captain and he doesn’t wanna be in Vietnam no more. You’re sick of livin in that double wide with an air conditioner stuck in the window outside the airbase shuffling papers for requisitions. You wanna go someplace nice like Fort Knox. So, when that Colonel asks you, are you gonna say 35 or are you gonna say… // Guy: 150! // 150! By now, we have got the most efficient military in the history of ever. Did you see how many of them guys were killin? Why, that one patrol there killed 150! And where do the numbers go? To the defense department. And what do we have now? We have body count! And one of the really cool things is that most folks knew it was a fraud but we didn’t care! It would not take too many more years of killing at the rate we supposedly did to completely destroy everyone in the nation.