He may have a chronic physical condition that was revealed with his injury. Or, he may have been deemed mentally or psychologically unfit to be a soldier.

It’s the casual(ty)/holdover status I mentioned. It’s common enough in Basic Training.

Basic Training is a tightly scheduled, high pace, carefully orchestrated program. Moreover, on top of the individual training, soldiers are training to be a team. All soldiers in Basic are tired and sore with bumps and bruises. And when one of us gets the flu, we all get the flu.

But if you have an injury that’s bad enough to disallow you from keeping up, then you’re removed from your training company and placed in a separate non-training company. It’s not only about the injured soldier – if he can’t keep up, he affects the training for everyone else.

The Army doesn’t just send you home when you’re separated from your training company. Remember, the contract isn’t just for the length of Basic Training. It’s for the whole term of enlistment. You’re being paid in Basic Training. The day I left home for my Basic Training, I was committed to the Army for the next 4 years.

While on casual status, a soldier recovers from his injury with the goal of joining a later training cycle. I believe for the soldier being released from his contract, the Army is still obligated to treat the injury and can’t release him until he’s healed.

But even for the physically fit washout being released, the Army takes its time out-processing him. Normally, he’ll be used for unskilled labor on post while the Army processes his paperwork before letting him go. The process often takes weeks or even – yes – months.

Basic Training is a shock to the system that just keeps going. It’s normal to want to quit. I suspect that the Army purposely delays sending the washouts home in order to dissuade soldiers who are on the fence from believing quitting is an easy way out. Being stuck in indefinite casual status limbo, enduring the Basic Training environment while doing unskilled labor, just waiting for the Army to let you go, sucks hard. It’s easier just to graduate.

It looks like Snowden got hurt fairly early and then spent several months in casual status limbo healing up and doing whatever work details his injury allowed.

Also, part of what makes Basic Training surreal is the stereotypes and misconceptions we enter the Army with and mix together.

I offered one possible explanation for the discrepancy (about the army, the training, and time spent) here, but it still doesn’t quite add up, IMHO. If you read today’s post, I question some of the other things Snowden has said, as well, and I explain why I think the issue of his veracity is important.

As for the Scott Johnson quote, I don’t know why you’d think my quoting someone in this post means I agree with the quote entirely. It just means I think it’s interesting, unless I explicitly say I’m in agreement. After all, I begin the post by quoting Mukasey and then saying I don’t find Mukasey’s arguments convincing. So I’m just offering interesting ideas and opinions from other people here.

As far as whether I agree with Johnson or not, I happen to basically agree (although not on the grounds of Snowden’s loyalty to this country or lack thereof). I agree, though, that neither Snowden (nor Greenwald, for that matter) has the expertise about geopolitical security issues to be able to really assess all the security repercussions of what he has done. I actually don’t think anyone has enough knowledge and expertise to know that for sure—there’s always the law of unintended consequences—but there are certainly people who would be able to assess it a lot better than Snowden, who has expressed a rather large amount of geopolitical naivete (some of which I point out in today’s post about his veracity).

There’s no reason to believe or judge that the Army is lying or that Snowden was lying. There’s a plausible explanation for what both sides said.

“Did you see that that entire sentence was a quote from Scott Johnson at Powerline?”

No, it was getting late. So my comments would be thus directed at him. Although I inferred that you agreed with the veracity of his analysis, although you didn’t explicitly state that.

What who just said?

Did you see that that entire sentence was a quote from Scott Johnson at Powerline?

Also, Snowden’s quote about the soldiers wanting to kill Arabs certainly does fit the leftist narrative. That doesn’t mean that Snowden is himself a leftist, or that he’s making the quote up, although either or both could be the case. But as I said, the story fits the leftist narrative about soldiers in Iraq (and I’m quite familiar with that narrative).

The army spokesman in several articles I read said that Snowden was accepted but never completed any training. To me that sounded like he barely started, and then stopped; almost no training was completed. Basic training is only 8-10 weeks long, and yet he stayed in the service nearly 5 months (see this for the dates). I suppose it’s possible he broke both legs the first weeks of training, stayed in the service for several months to recuperate, and then was discharged (although if he had recuperated, why was he discharged?).

Look at the video. Don’t try to pick up too much stuff from Greenwald’s interpretation. Or else you get things like what you just said.

The Army said he was accepted, although not necessarily what happened when he was discharged.

“My point was that his reports about what his fellow army trainees said fits the leftist story about bloodthirsty, bigoted army recruits better than it fits reality.”

It doesn’t fit anything. That’s an external filter applied to it. There’s no context for it either. So the context can’t be said that it fits the Leftist story because there’s no context for it to fit it. Just external filters people apply to interpret it that way. It wouldn’t need this interpretation if the context and additional info could be acquired.

“And if he says he broke his legs in a training accident, and the army says he never was trained, somebody’s lying.”

The Army never said that in any of the reports you quoted or I read.

The Army said there was no record he finished his training. IF he was medically discharged before the end, that would fit the claim. Any number of people are discharged or withdrawn from basic or infantry if they feel they can’t cut it. Voluntarily even. At least that was the case back then.

No, I don’t think he was against the army as an institution, particularly. My point was that his reports about what his fellow army trainees said fits the leftist story about bloodthirsty, bigoted army recruits better than it fits reality.

And if he wasn’t in training at all (according to the army), who were these recruits he was talking to? Was this conversation he reports on one that only occurred the day he entered the army, or what? The story doesn’t hang together somehow. And if he says he broke his legs in a training accident, and the army says he never was trained, somebody’s lying.

So I’m questioning his veracity in reporting on the events of his life.

Are you artflgdr with another handle?

For the most part, the generation that enlisted during that time (circa 2005), grew up with 9/11 as the cultural template. Killing terrorists=protecting America. And the terrorists just happened to live in Arabia. Combine that with arrogance, swaggering confidence, a civilian vision of what soldiers do on missions, would support the contention that it would be all too plausible for Snow to have heard such comments in private little get togethers with his training buddies.

To go back to a previous issue, Snow’s primary problem seems to be with Obama at the national command level. Not with the Army. The Army’s not in charge of PRISM, NSA, or intel as far as I know.

The one thing that might connect Snow to anti-Army feelings would be Manning, his stated admiration for Manning, and Glenn. Those 3 together would be able to share an antipathy for the hierarchy or organization of the army itself. I wonder if that might be why he first was drawn to the Left/Democrat ideology. But it wouldn’t lead directly to why Snow would take the risks he would against Obama. I wouldn’t say it is a primary motivation. And more data would be needed to explain why it would even be a secondary motivator.

If it’s not a motivation at all, then it doesn’t matter whether Snow feels antipathy towards the military or not. If Snow’s bitterness is supposed to be part of his internal motivation and psychology, then this has to be traced out more.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/bs-md-snowden-profile-20130610,0,156315.story

Reading some of the supposed backstory about Snowden’s early life.

“In May 2004, Snowden enlisted in the Army, hoping to join the Special Forces. He took advantage of an option that allowed recruits to try out directly for the elite force without prior service. He reported to Fort Benning, Ga., but was discharged four months later, the Army said Monday.

Recruits designated for Special Forces normally go through eight to 10 weeks of basic training, followed by an advanced infantry training course, then Special Forces assessment and selection. Snowden told The Guardian that he left the Army after he broke both legs in a training accident.

An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. S. Justin Platt, confirmed Snowden’s service but said no records indicate he completed even basic training. Platt said he could not comment on Snowden’s claim that he broke his legs in training because it involved medical records.

In 2005, Snowden worked as a “security specialist” at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language in 2005, a school spokesman confirmed. The center, founded in 2003 as a Department of Defense-affiliated research center, is “dedicated to addressing the language needs of the intelligence community,” according to a university website.”

Whether the people Snowden talked to in training were SF candidates or Army reserve/active candidates, i would have to say that both would be plausible in speaking in the terms Snowden claimed.

This is confirmation of the concrete details given by Snowden, assuming Justin Platt is on the level. The difference in years and dates may be attributed to memory looseness over time.

Because Snowden would have attempted to enlist in 2003-2004 (there are training cycles, he might have been told there was no room and to wait next year), yet he was 18 in 1999, that meant he was almost 6 years the senior of his fellows. People fresh out of high school, gung ho on the Army vision (recruitment message). But Snowden’s process of development wasn’t intellectual – > Army. He spent 6 years doing things like surfing the net and reading blogs, probably. Reading about Iraq, probably, and debates about WMDs even. Just a surmise of what he spent his time on. It would make sense that he, with some extra information at his disposal, might have felt like he wanted to help Iraqis (the terror war was going full steam in 2004), but didn’t like or understand the comments he heard in basic or infantry school.

The basic timeline synchs together, although little hard confirmation of which is what. The personalities of the people he would have been talking to provides some basis to support Snowden’s quotes. At least on the plausibility level.

If Eric is right, Snowden would have primarily encountered high school graduates. If Eric is wrong, then Snowden was in infantry training and in SF assessment training. But he didn’t say where those comments came from that he heard. So it could still have been back at basic. Even if you don’t believe that a SF candidate can think or say such things, there are other options for why Snowden’s claims are plausible rather than implausible or Leftist/Chinese influenced.

Snowden would then have been on healing and recovery for awhile. One year? Two years? That would easily cover the period of 2005-2007. Just in time for the Obama election campaign. Snowden’s ties to Greenwald are harder to pin down. Perhaps he read Greenwald’s articles on Manning?

“And the training is not to make people gung ho about killing Arabs”

Ah, they’re like that BEFORE training. Before. It’s not that training makes them think like that. They “already” thought like that, sometimes.

Neo, you seem to still think Snow’s comments are directed at the Army as an institution? Why is that? That’s like the conclusion proving itself. It’s far more likely he was talking about his fellow recruits. Who do not control training or army or SF training procedures or elements. Snow claimed he was disillusioned by such talk. But he would be, given his life context up above. The only thing the instructors talk to for new recruits… probably doesn’t involve anything to do with Arabs or terrorists. Unless of course it was a reply to Snowden’s only views.