Hello we are Cheyenne and Romilly. We are youth interns here at SWOP this summer and we have been learning a LOT about the military and wanted to share some of that information with you.

Do you know exactly how many people have died since the war? Well we do. Approximately 4,116 troops have died since the beginning of the war in Iraq (antiwar.com). Would you want to be that parent that gets a call at 2 o’ clock in the morning from your child’s commander saying that your child has just been killed in combat? We certainly wouldn’t want to hear that about someone we love nor would any other parent.

Here are the facts:

- Congress has decided to increase the total size of the army by 74,000 by 2010 but now they increased that number to 574,000 active duty reservists AND national guard.

- Roughly about 30,333 US soldiers have been wounded since the beginning of the war
(antiwar.com).

- The military doesn’t mention that 1 out of 8 soldiers suffer a long term health problem
called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

- The civilian deaths in Iraq are estimated to about 1,236,604 (antiwar.com)

So where do they find all these soldiers?

In 2005, the pentagon announced in the federal registration the existence of the Joint Advertising Market Research Studies Database (JAMRS), a massive registry of 30 MILLION Americans between the ages of 16 and 25 for the military purposes. This branch is devoted to maximizing military recruitment efforts (nyclu.org)

Part of their campaign involves a database, which has information about millions of people over 17 years old or in the eleventh grade and contains their contact information. This can only be kept for 3 years, but that’s enough time for recruiters to contact hopeful soldiers. The JAMRS database can have your name, birth date, gender, mailing address, e-mail, race, ethnicity, telephone number, high school name, graduation date, grade point average, college intent, military interest, field of study, and the ASVAB Test score.

You can choose not to have your information used by opting out at the following links below or by talking to your school. As high school students, we are being targeted daily by recruiters. They come into schools giving presentations that glorify war and the military. This gives the impression that the military is the only way to go in order to avoid college loans. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has recently released a report demanding the reduction of military recruitment of young people. They want to end the JAMRS and create an option of giving information to the military only if the individual wants to, instead of opting out. As youth we need to be protected and our information needs to be kept safe. Protect your children and tell your friends and family about opting out. TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR FUTURE, GET INFORMED!!

Via SWOPBlogger

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!