Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 63 - Project 100,000

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

Project 100,000 was a Vietnam War Era experiment conducted by the United States to see how low they could lower the standards for enlistment or conscription. Thousands of developmentally disabled Americans would be killed. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy a book: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Earth-Galaxy-Fire-Book-ebook/dp/B07NSMFSHN/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1 Buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store sources: https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/story-behind-mcnamaras-morons https://www.historynet.com/mcnamaras-boys.htm

Your man in Vietnam, James Daly, Specialist 6, United States Army. Jim is a flight engineer. Nursemaid to the Army's newest workhorse, the CH-54. He babies it on the ground and bullies it in the air. Makes it carry everything from tractors and trucks to bulldozers and artillery. It's an ugly angel that works like the devil. Who trusts a 26 year old with the care and feeding of a million dollars worth of equipment? The United States Army. Even at its best, Vietnam is no tourist attraction. Jim and his buddies, like all GIs, make their own fun, and that's the best kind. Specialist 6, James Daly, your man in Vietnam.

In today's Action Army, see your Army recruiter. Hello! Welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. With me today is Nick, per always, and Rich. Not always. Hey, I'm sitting here being verbally abused by these two. Yeah, well, that's how we get you in the right mindset. We do this all the time to each other. Yeah, we verbally abuse each other, and then it's like making wine where you stomp on grapes

to get the juice out except verbal abuse and comedy. This is what my dad thought. Your dad was a wino? No, he just stomped on me a lot. Oh, so he didn't like wine. He was more of a Bud Light guy.

Bud Heavy on you. It's been a while since we've had both you guys on the show um and I thought that we would combine your forces for people who are unaware Nick is a sergeant in the United States Army and Rich is a staff sergeant in the United States Army

um so I thought should I be? questionable no the answer to that is no i made corporal uh because that's easy to me uh yeah because nobody wants it nobody wants it's good that's the the storyline of my entire life yeah corporal is like the army's biggest fuck you to its soldiers and that's saying something i agree i could not agree more. So the reason why I brought you two together is I thought it would be interesting to see what two NCOs think about this topic. And I did kind of ruin the surprise because whenever I get rich on this show, she's like, why the fuck are you talking to me?

Why am I on the show? So I kind of have to tell her a little bit. He usually bribes me with pizza, but little do you guys know. We're having pizza? We ate pizza last night. No, we're not having pizza. What the fuck? Little do you guys know, pizza isn't even my food of choice.

He just always uses his food of choice to get me here. I like burgers, so we're having burgers. Because Pop Murphy's is very, very cheap, and I just clock it up to the Patreon bill. Little Skeezer's is cheap. You know, I grew up in Michigan. I'm all Little Caesar the fuck out, man. Yeah, you have to be.

There's a whole arena named after it. I try my best not to give the Illich's any money because they're soulless goblins. So have either one of you, before I kind of ruin the surprise, heard of Project 100,000? No. Negatron.

Okay, so before I go into what Project 100,000 is, I know I did and I know you guys do every day. You deal with soldiers who you have to ask yourself, how the fuck were you able to enlist? Yes. Yes. Now, I need you to keep in mind while we go through this. No.

I know NCOs don't exactly take outside advice well, but... Speak for yourself. So I need you to keep in mind through this. It's a different time, much different, about 1966. Is it a different time, though? Much different. So, for instance, you guys might not believe this, but about 95% to 98% of the current military has a high school diploma. That was not the case in the 1960s.

Right now? Yes. Like not high school diploma or GED? High school diploma. Or equivalency. So I don't know how they count that on the stats. It just says diploma. Technically, a GED is a diploma.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, depending on what high school you graduate from, a GED might be a little bit harder. But so the ASVAB, which we all know now today is our standard entrance exam existed then with a slightly different name and we'll talk about that but i want you to gauge what you think a bad soldier is to what we're talking about today and i want you to kind of think maybe some soldiers are bad because they just shouldn't be

soldiers. It's not necessarily their fault. We're going to go a bit less than that. We get to go back to when I first joined the army around the surge. Now, I actually joined in 2005, but the surge

happened in 2007. Old bitch. Now, for people who are unaware, the surge was a huge influx into the American war in Iraq. Otherwise known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Can't forget what it's called these days. The war was not going the way the Bush administration had thought it would. In order to try to regain control of the situation, they would flood Baghdad and the Anbar government in general. This is one of the most recent topics I've heard. So I'm talking about the recent one because Project 100,000 got compared

to the surge. And it's not quite fair to the people who joined during the surge, but also because it's the closest equivalent that people alive or people who listen to our show have no... Nobody who fought in Vietnam has probably listened to our show. I'm just going to go ahead and spitball there. Don't spit in their face. That already happened

if you listen to the narrative. Now, one White House staffer put it, quote, if you're going to be a bear, you might as well be a grizzly bear. And I feel like that's a fair gauge of the surge. Are grizzly bears like the worst kind of bear? They are the biggest. The biggest.

They're also the California bear. Do they fight a lot? Yes, I have a video of it. I've heard that polar bears are very aggressive. They are. Polar bears are super aggressive. So maybe they should be polar bears. So until humanity snuffs them all out of existence through climate change.

Grizzly bear versus polar bear? Maybe a pay-per-view? Grizzly bear versus polar bear pay-per-view? I'm pretty sure they're, so the polar bear, because they are dying, is starting to crossbreed with other types of bear in northern Canada. Fuala bear. Welcome to the Lions Led by Science,

which none of us are qualified to speak i don't agree with that crossbreeding i don't like my polar bears miscegenate with the black bears oh i feel bad even making that joke yeah i'm really sorry guys i regretted it as soon as i said it. That bears voting Republican. Your Texas came out so hard. So for people who were not in the Army during the surge, Rich, when did you join again? 2008.

Okay, so there was a lot of people bitching and complaining about the standards of enlistment falling. And that is somewhat true. But the main standard they dropped was criminal waivers um now even then you cannot be uh charged with the domestic violence um things of that violent felonies were not allowed these are people who you know drug charges like classy felonies like a minor drug charges i mean well even like if you say i'm not saying you smoke meth but if you get caught with meth that's a classy felony so you know your your

felony may vary um and a lot of misdemeanors got waived they also waived um having a high school diploma and that's how 30 of the entire united States Army ended up deployed, which is a lot for what is not technically supposed to be a war. Now, waiving all of those things hurt the stats of the Army a bit. Now, like I said before, greater than 90% of the Army today and then had a high school diploma. When the surge happened, that number dropped to 70%. So that is a huge drop in a very short amount of time. I believe I was telling Nick earlier, we didn't join super far apart and we certainly didn't.

But if you think about it, these people who came in on waivers, not saying they're bad soldiers, but they probably had a much lower level of education than us, are now probably your bosses. Or they probably did what I did, taking my ASVAB. I took it to get out of class.

I also did that. But I also did patterns on the Scantron and did not try. But came out with a pretty okay score. That's somehow. We're going to talk a little bit how those scores work in a bit for the story to make sense. Okay. Now that is now some people say it's a big deal.

But as I've said before, I'm a high school graduate. That was a terrible soldier. So your high school education doesn't exactly bring you very far in being a soldier. Not anybody who has served in the United States military knows you have to score on the ASVAB, military knows that you have to score on the ASVAB, which is known as the Army Service Vocational Aptitude Battery, where it will judge where your job ends up or what you can pick as a job. It's a series of math, writing, various other things.

It's like a general test. It has mechanical, a whole bunch of different... Yeah, and the ASVAB is questionable at best because it said I should be really good at mechanics. Yeah. And I can't change my own oil. You might if you actually learned how to change your own oil. Those are skills that have to be taught.

Hard to disagree. Never, ever, ever looking into how to change your oil and just saying you can't do it is kind of a cop-out. I'm taking the cop-out. The word problems were probably the dumbest things. Like, which gear is going in this direction and what color does the waffle end up at the end? It doesn't make sense to be on a test, in my opinion. No. So, more importantly than scoring highly, it kind of is a judge of how you function

as a person. Grades of the test are broken out into different categories, from Category 1 being the best all the way down to Category 5. Category 5 is failing the test. Now, I know both of you have told me in private that you know several people who have ASVAB waivers. About that. That did not mean they're Category 5.

ASVAB waivers about that. That did not mean they're category five. ASVAB waivers come from category four, which is the 10% of the 10th percentile. They're the 10% lowest scoring people in the population. Only a certain number of that, of that 10% can enlist. Waivers come from category four, meaning they did not do well on the test but you didn't necessarily fail because it's not a pass or fail um they they might have some problems but they're

waverable from category four um now a lot of people in the military like to think that they surrounded by these ASVAB waivers. And it might seem that way sometimes. But only 1% of new soldiers can be waivers, and up to 4% during the surge was the max it's ever been allowed to be outside of an experiment. Well, I guarantee you that myself and Nick have been around more than most because all of those waivers become cooks. That is a relatively new thing.

We'll talk about that, too. Now, that might. I don't know. A lot of percentages getting thrown around and statistics. It's like a baseball game, you know, and there's a lot of people probably disagree with what I'm saying. And that's why I just went back instead of doing the normal thing we do and telling people to shut up i just went to the rote statistics that the military puts out now obviously we know that statistics are variable and that impacts jobs races and communities much

different than one another which by the way we will talk about that much more in depth in a little bit what i told you and what you've lived through did you have a burp coming out on that one? I did, yeah I did, it sounded like it I tried to breathe it through my nose it looked like you were swallowing it swallowing is how you make the money nice

now you guys and myself have dealt with some soldiers that you think cannot get possibly worse than this. What if I told you it could? And it did. Go on. So for me to do that, I have to go all the way back to the American War in Vietnam circa 1966. Don't go back.

Don't go back. New topic. So anyway, back to the Soviet Union. New topic. Not that one. So the Soviet union, uh, not that one. Uh, so the war was not going well for the United States. Um, over 6,000 Americans in that by 1966 have died.

And triple of that had been wounded. Um, the draft was kicking into high gear, pulling over 300,000 American men off the streets and throwing them into uniform a year. Which happened to be the highest level of draft output since ever. Yeah. And as listeners of the show and hosts of the show, you know who that draft impacted the most. The middle class.

Don't have the wrong birthday. The best class. No, it's not. It's really not. A class that barely exists anymore. I'm glad we killed that class. I don't have to worry about this problem anymore. So the draft is becoming incredibly unpopular.

Furthermore, the Vietnam War, by all metrics, was already lost. So the U.S. Secretary of Defense and world renowned piece of shit Robert McNamara knew as much that the war was completely lost when he talked to journalists in private saying quote no security exists anywhere and quote there's no reasonable way to bring

the war to an end anytime soon and no amount of bombing will win this war so yeah he also went on to say like at no point in the middle of the night do we control any part of Vietnam. So the guy in charge of the war doesn't have high hopes on the war. No, he doesn't. Now, McNamara kind of gets a pass by lay people. Have either one of you heard of him?

No. I don't. History. No. I don't history. Well, most people put the blame of the Vietnam War kind of deservedly on Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, sometimes even Kennedy. Yeah. The heaviest of that blame should fall on Robert McNamara.

Yeah, there's a good chance that if it wasn't for him, that the Vietnam War as we know it simply wouldn't have happened. For example, in the wake of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Oh, yes. Which we will talk about in great length at a later date. We should. It's been on the board since I think day one. Fun fact, didn't happen. Anyway, so he urged President Johnson to attack North Vietnam and purposely withheld calls from military commanders who were against military action.

He withheld them? Yeah, so they were reporting to the Secretary of Defense, like, we should not fucking do this, who then obviously is supposed to report that to the president. Yeah, he just didn't do that. What was his angle? What did he get out of it? He wanted a war.

Just for funsies? Not quite. A lot of people, most people in Washington, and the vast majority of the United States at the time, believed in the domino theory. So a long story short, the domino theory was if you allowed a state to fall to communists, all surrounding states would fall to communists.

So if North Vietnam took over South Vietnam, that would lead to Laos, Cambodia, and everybody else becoming communists, all surrounding states would fall to communists. So if North Vietnam took over South Vietnam, that would lead to Laos, Cambodia, and everybody else becoming communists. Oh no! Which honestly ended up happening anyway. One of those communists we actually supported. What up, Khmer Rouge? But we'll talk about those guys in a series

much later on. As long as it's not seven parts. No, no, no. It will be shorter and much sadder it'll be our first genocide we ever cover yeah uh but um that is the vietnam war a long story short um he wanted war he believed that the war was righteous which he ended up kind of backpedaling on much later in life i'm not going to give him too much credit because fuck him. But anyway, after he got those airstrikes that he won after the Gulf of Tonkin, he immediately wrote a memo to the president saying airstrikes would simply never win the war

and a ground war would be necessary. Okay. Yeah. He is the guy who's like, just the tip, I promise. Yeah. You know what? You know what, Nick? It like, just the tip, I promise. Yeah. You know what, Nick? It wasn't just the tip. Is that even possible for guys?

Just the tip? Yeah. Never in my life. Air high five. Don't air high five that. We did. Mental high five. It's exactly what that is.

I swear I just never do stuff like this before. But he anally cored them. Oh, God. Yes. But the person he fucked was America and also Vietnam. It was a three-way. So by the time the story starts, McNamara would get his wish. Nearly half a million soldiers would

end up being deployed to Vietnam. One of the main lingering facts of Vietnam is most people remember it as a war of attrition. Now, for people who are unaware, a war of attrition is simply killing as many people as possible. This is also McNamara's idea. He attempted

to apply a mathematical metric to decide the amount of dead enemies would eventually chart their route to victory. He fucking did math? Yeah, he was a nerd. What a fucking asshole. He was known as the whiz kid. That's what you have,

this is what you fucking have a problem with, that he did math? What a dick. In this situation, I'm forced to agree. He did body math? Yeah. So if you remember... That's an asshole move.

You've watched Full Metal Jacket. When they're counting bodies, they get body counts. That's what he wanted. So he could chart the metrics. Well, this is what our intelligence says. It's how many people North Vietnam recruits every year. This is how many people we kill. Is that accurate?

So even if it was not accurate and it wasn't, he thought at no point did we ever kill more people than North Vietnam recruited every year with by 1990, by 1966, he knew that. So he knew he already knew it wasn't working. Yeah. But he just went on for another fucking 10 years,

less than 10 years, but you know, more closer to than, than than less but a long time yeah uh so he wanted to kill people as a way to victory now that for people who are not educated in military theory that might sound like a fun fact or like a a good way to win a war, but it's not. Because to do that, you have to ignore every other aspect of traditional military operations, such as controlling territory, winning over populations, especially when it comes to counterinsurgency.

Long story short, spoiler alert, it didn't fucking work. Self-Defense Now doesn't exist anymore. So he actually did so bad at that metric for the war of attrition, that a logical fallacy known as the McNamara fallacy was created. They named it after him? Yeah, a group of actual mathematicians named this logical fallacy after him. That's awesome. Which is the exact opposite of a badge of honor, I think.

That's nerds hating on another nerd. That's nerd roast. The McNamara fallacy involves making a decision based solely on quantitative observations or metrics and ignoring everything else. To make it really dumb so someone like me can understand, this requires you

to say what cannot be measured does not exist. That makes sense. That checks out. Yeah. That checks out. So he was also responsible for the horribly failed rapid fielding of the M16 rifle, which will be a future episode. That will be next episode.

So stay tuned next week for us to show McNamara some more. Anyway, even someone as totally soulless as McNamara knew that if he wanted to continue his little pet war, he'd have to find a way to bring draft numbers down while bringing actual enlisted men up.

The main reason for that, if he gets people to enlist, he doesn't have to worry about lowering the number of student deferments, thus pissing off the middle class, thus pissing off the main voting body of the United States. This guy's an asshole. What it came down to be is he could not make the war so unpopular that people would not vote for the president.

He plays Sudoku. Yeah, he plays that on the side. He's an asshole. I fucking hate him. Everybody who plays Sudoku is an asshole. I had a math teacher who played that. I've never played a game of Sudoku. I tried and I couldn't understand it because it's math.

I didn't want to. We're standing hard of the anti-Sudoku crowd right now. I don't know why you would be anti-Sudoku. It's supposed to be really good for your brain. Fuck my brain. That's why, Rich. Yeah, well, your brain's already fucked, so I get you. Some of us have a chance in this world.

Fuck your chance. So in order to do that, he would obviously have to get more people to enlist on their own free will rather than be drafted. Or more than that, make more people available to the draft, which would not have been available before. So as to not draft the white middle class. Right.

So the problem was there's a war going on and enlistment sounded like a really bad idea for most people now a lot of people are saying well we've had a war going on for 20 years and I understand that I enlisted during a war everybody on this podcast enlisted during a war but

all wars are not created equal I am willing to bet if Afghanistan had killed 50 000 american soldiers we all would have gave it a white birth uh i know i would have in in that short amount of time too yeah i mean afghanistan has gone off almost gone for almost uh double as long i believe uh by now it's almost 20 years yeah yeah we have not even come close to 50% of wounded in that war. Now, I know that sounds like a really cowardly thing for me to say, but I'm a cowardly person, and I joined for college.

So, full disclosure, I'm a pussy. There are very few people in the Army who, when you ask why they joined the Army, say, because I'm just so patriotic and wanted to fucking go kill people like they all joined for other reasons I know a few people who totally joined to deploy but once

they did they're completely disillusioned I joined to pay bills yeah it's a career for the lower class none of us exactly came from fucking busy rich households very true I mean us exactly came from fucking busy rich households. Very true. I mean, we both came from a slum and you wanted to get out of

San Antonio. I wanted to go to San Antonio? You wanted to get out of San Antonio. No, I didn't want to get out of San Antonio. I wanted to pay off my thousands and tens of thousands of college loan debt. That was really bad.

I believe they call it a freedom bill. You unpatriotic fuck. It's crazy. When you go to college for something bullshit like culinary arts and rack up $50,000 in debt, you can't get a job that actually pays that. I counter that there's no such thing as unskilled labor, and your labor is highly appreciated but because of our economy they fuck over your skills and all that money goes the person that owns your company right anyway that's my labor uh that's my that's my labor message for

this episode yeah brought to you by uh dalala bad local dick suckers union Oh we're doing that So Alright Like I said he McNamara had to Make more people available for the draft Now So we're all fed that Line where 1% of 1% Is available for military service right

Yes That isn't totally untrue The reason for that is high standards of education and health and it also was mostly true in 1966 um so it's according to a rand corporation report that was made after operate or project 100 000 was over with um so the report said 1.8 million young men came to military age every year it might seem like a lot it's really not uh in a country as big as ours yeah of those 600,000 would be ruled immediately ineligible for military service this is based on uh standards prior to the project okay uh half would fail the physical standards. The other half would fail

education and mental test score standards. Do you have the physical standards for back then? I don't, but what it came down to was like, you're too skinny, you're too fat. They didn't have to pass a PT test. It's probably worse now, right? The numbers? The numbers are much greater now.

As far as military age males that wouldn't be eligible for service. Well, as one number inflates, so does the other one. So like our population is much bigger now. So if 50 million people would become eligible for the draft every year, I mean, there's going to be a healthy percentage of that that I think would be mostly equal to the same number then would make you draft ineligible

depending on what the ineligibility status of the time was so the variables are much different so this is where project 100,000 enters otherwise known as the new standards program they could have picked a better

name I'm all about names well it was an experiment it wasn't so it's an experiment. Even then. It wasn't, so it's an experiment that failed, which is why I did not continue. That's why the name sucked. The project was, of course, a study to see how the hell they get those 600,000 people who rolled immediately ineligible in uniform somehow.

So before we get how horribly this went down, we'll start with the official explanation via the RAND report. So, according to Robert McNamara, the main goals of the project were to broaden opportunities for enlistment, broaden the draft pool, no shit,

upgrade the qualifications of disadvantaged youth, and prepare them for more productive civilian life. Now, there's a lot to unpack there. I think the first one is the draft pool, because it quickly became obvious that even if they started listing people with no fucking hands, they still wouldn't have enough people

to fuel this war effort. They would just have to draft them, so they'd have to add more to the pool. Secondly, is it me, or when the government starts talking about disadvantaged youth in the 60s, you immediately want to throw up racism flags. Yes.

Still, you know, there's a reason there that racism aspect of this whole thing, which will come flying in our face in a little bit later. This is the same reason why I support like a lot of draft Dodgers. You know, a lot of people hate our current president. I want to ask you to,

to comment on that. Cause I know you're not allowed to, um, my commander and my commander in chief. Yeah. A lot of people hate our current president. I want to ask you two to comment on that because I know you're not allowed to. My commander in chief is the commander in chief of the army. You are correct. The main reason why I disagree with some people when it came to hating him on draft dodging is because I would have tried to dodge the draft too. I don't hate him for that. I hate him for getting away with it because he's rich. Like if he just would have like severed a toe or like shit his pants in the

draft office, I'd have way more respect for him than just a medical report. Yeah. You gotta Yakuza that bitch off with a knife. Shovel. Yeah. So Jesus, that's a sweet sound of a dollar store carbonated water going into vodka.

The last part allowed McNamara to frame this new project as a part of Johnson's so-called War on Poverty. War on Poverty? Now, it's going to sound weird. If you're not familiar with the War on Poverty, now, the War on Poverty was the attempt by President Johnson to expand the federal government's role in education, health care and social programs. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah, it does. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Right. We're still waiting. It's only been 50 years. Now, the reason why McNamara framed this as a part of the war on poverty was because it was a job program. We're going to take the people that can't do anything else, and we're going to put them in the military.

That's like those people that say, oh, the homeless people that are of age. What about our troops? I'm going to take them straight to the recruiting office. This is exactly like the people who get really pissed off when I talk about universal education and higher ed. Like, well, I didn't deploy to Afghanistan, so Susie, whoever who works at Walmart can go to college. talk about universal education and like higher ed like well i didn't deploy to afghanistan so

you know suzy whoever who works at walmart can go to college like i don't fucking care why you have listed dick back why yeah if you didn't deploy to afghanistan for somebody else's freedom to go to fucking college and not be in a million dollars of debt why did you no i fought for the freedom to everybody to get the blood sucked out of them by federal student loans. That's what I fought for. They more deployed

for the cool gram pics. Yeah. I assume. That's what I go off of. Do it for the gram! The seal says he stabbed the teenager in the throat.

Ooh. That's kind of recent. Because it's actually true. I don't think he did Instagram. I believe he did Snapchat. I'm not sure how much of that is true anymore. Lions led by donkeys dabbling in the fake news. Also, possible Snapchat coming up.

Lions led by donkeys. When Nick deploys to Afghanistan, he's going to send us some glamour pics of him in the port-a-potty now like this is interesting to me as someone sitting in 2019 because that same fucking attitude

of 1966 could be copy and pasted and placed right back on us today it's like any counseling I've seen it's like it's exactly like uh today like people say that we worship at the civil church of the military and it's exactly i believe this is where it starts we didn't make america great again joe like it was in the 60s america's never been great next question um now it turns out

uh that by lowering the military standards you could bring in a lot of people oh yeah firstly remember we talked about those test scores categories one through five um well those didn't really matter anymore uh now I have to point out first that

the project was only supposed to take people from categoryategory 4, which we all know as ASVAB waivers now. But soon they began to take people from Category 5. It should be noted that at no time since the ASVAB has been created has there been people recruited from Category 5. And that's for good reason. Now I have to put a little addendum here.

There's gonna be a lot of quotes from sources at the time that frame these poor people in a pretty unfair light. At no point of this episode, are we going to make light of mental disease or defect. Or people being mentally deficient to be a soldier. But a lot of people back then did. Every time you lie your balls butt gets bigger. I'm just saying that because in order to compare some of these test scores.

I had to find comparisons. And some of those comparisons are not good. Also, as you can imagine, much like soldiers today do not have nice words to say about the people who may or may not be Category 4, people back then did not have nice things to say about people who were in Category 5.

I'll just move on, so I'll just move on. And I'll just say now, if you are offended by people saying the R word, just pause the episode. I possibly recently came across a soldier that was probably category four. And I felt very bad about the fact that he could not continue in our program. You know, and that's one of the problems here

is like if it's someone who's from the population who's supposed to be recruited and they fail, failure is a failure, move on. It's their fault for not picking up on what they're supposed to be doing. In my opinion, I could be wrong. I don't care.

Uh, I don't train people anymore. Um, but if people are category five and some people who are category four, um, they just simply don't lack the ability. Like they, they lack the ability to become a soldier.

They have underlying mental illness. They have underlying, illness they have underlying developmental disabilities they're being exploited that's what it was that's i and i i'm trying not to take it too far off topic here but this soldier like i was frustrated with him at first because i just i felt like he wasn't motivated enough to be catching on to things. And then I quickly realized that he just could not catch on to things. It was not, he was trying so hard and it just wasn't something that could happen. Right. And I want you to remember what he was like.

He, right? Yes. Okay. And we're going to compare that to some of the firsthand accounts that I have from the 1960s. And we'll see how you feel. Sounds bad. So another thing that they did was waive physical standards. I have from the 1960s and we'll see how you feel sounds bad so another thing that they did was waive physical standards so

before they started the project a study was done to compile what exactly was the physical barrier of American men from military service not like you were born with an arm there's no waiver for that I would hope not you gotta have your limbs you gotta have your eyes.

It turned out that a full 80% of them were either too skinny or too fat. So they just went ahead and got rid of that. Huh? Yeah. It doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. So it didn't matter? No.

The height and weight scale? It was gone. Like, gone. Do you think they did like a little ocular look at you? Ocular pat down? No. They were just like, nope, gone. Yeah, you they did like a little ocular look at you? Ocular pat down? No. They were just like, nope, gone.

Yeah, you're good. Nope. If you could walk into the recruiter station and the response, so there's only a certain number of waivers available for project 100,000, which ended up being more than 100,000. But if you qualified for it, it didn't matter what you looked like.

You could be morbidly obese or looked like you walked out of a death camp. Which, yeah, we'll talk about that. As long as you could tell the recruiter, I can't sign my name, the recruiter would do it for you. Cool. I wish you knew how right you were. Really? Holy shit. Hold on.

Hold that thought. So they also began to waive medical conditions. My favorite of which is, quote, undescended testicles and hemorrhoids. What? For no reason other than I'm a child. Yeah.

So they had a list of waverable medical conditions. So their balls didn't drop. Yes. That would be the adult way to put that. Without giggling afterwards, yeah. Because I'm the only adult in this room just let's make that clear that is confirmed I'm so if you were I'd already kind of ruined

this part for you but I already said more than 100,000 people got dragged into the uniform this way how many people do you think found their way into the army all of them so about 300,000 How many people do you think found their way into the army? All of them. So about 300,000. Holy shit.

That's way over 100. I was going to say five. That's way over 100. That project doesn't fucking work. So over 300,000 men would be forced into uniform that otherwise would not be able to enlist. Those recruiters made quota. So some of these people found their way into the Navy and some of them found in the Air Force. But the vast majority found their way into the Army and a smaller percentage of the majority found their way into the Marines.

Fuck yeah, because we do it in the Army. So we can no longer call Marines stupid. Ruining all my stereotypes here. So if you were to give these people a unkind nickname, I'm not going to ask you guys to come up with one because it's going to be really offensive. That's exactly what they did. They decided to call these poor people McNamara's Moron Corps.

That's actually really creative. Did they tell them that they eat crowns no that's still marines just marines in general these guys I'm pretty sure would get lost on their way of eating crowns what if the crowns are sitting right in front of them that doesn't bode well

the 300 and something thousand people that found their way into the program would not have a happy ending so project 100,000 this isn't a fun episode that found their way into the program would not have a happy ending. So Project 100,000... This isn't a fun episode? No. Project 100,000 would be an experiment

if the military could lower standards and continue on with the mission. So this was to be a project to see if this could just be how things are going forward. Every good experiment needs some control subjects. So every normal scoring, every couple people, a normal scoring person would be inserted into the project.

Like, yep, you're one of McNamara's moron corps. Now, they didn't know that they were part of anything. Okay. Nobody knew. They just thought, hey, I can join the army now. Sweet. Yeah. Those people would be used as a control to see how they do in training, how they score, and how they

do later on in combat. Oh. This sucks. Yeah, they go to Vietnam. What? Oh my god. It gets worse. Since it was an experiment, it was impaired if the soldiers allowed through the project to be treated exactly the same

as everybody else. The only people who were supposed to know it was a project or an experiment was various HR personnel who'd write up monthly reports on the soldiers while they were in training and then forward them to DC. However, it quickly became

apparent to everyone what was going on and who was a part of the project. For instance, we found a first-hand account of a Hamilton Gregory. He was an enlisted man who reported to Fort Benning for training and was given supervision of a poor

private he named John Gupton. He changed his name to changed it just in case. Nobody wants to know that their uncle or dad was enlisted into the army to test of dumb people could be good at combat. So the sergeant gave him this duty and said, quote, I want you to take charge of Gupton. I want you to go with him every step of the way. He explained to the young man, could neither read or write, and needed help filling out his paperwork. Then added,

quote, make sure he doesn't get lost. He's one of McNamara's morons. Oh, okay. Gregory went on to say that Gupton was so thin, he was nearly sickly. When he asked him where he was from, Gupton couldn't tell him,

and could not remember what state he was from. Gupton didn't know America was at war, or what basic training was. He didn't know how to tie his boots nor know who was left from his right. You shouldn't be there. When he was given a rifle at the range, he nearly shot himself

and was eventually placed on permanent kitchen duty. This did not stop him from graduating. I mean, everybody checks down the barrel, right? I thought it was bad that they sent me soldiers who had never passed a PT test. That is the lesser of all of the evils we're going to talk about is the physical standards, honestly. Because someone can get in shape.

Yeah. Somebody. Yeah, it just requires willpower. Somebody can't get their mind. Yeah, if you're like mentally disabled, you can't help that. There's no possible workout in the gym. Yeah. No matter how many times you run along and sing stupid songs, it can't help that. There's no possible workout in the gym. Yeah.

No matter how many times you run along and sing stupid songs, it doesn't help. That's where Sudoku comes in. I think Gupton was beyond Sudoku. In fact, everybody's beyond Sudoku. So Gregory tells the story of another man who was so small and weak, he could not throw a hand grenade

more than a few feet. If you're not aware of what a hand grenade is, that will kill you. So, can I also just say this? I have a soldier right now who I just did height and weight on. He is 115 pounds. I don't know how. I just wanted to point that out.

I wanted everybody to know. Two things. Because it's hard to, like, I weigh over 100. I'm 100 pounds over him. I want to one-up Nick. It's insane. I want a one-up Nick. It's insane. I want a one-up Nick.

We had a soldier at our last height and weight who didn't register on the height scale. She was too short. How low does it go down? To 58 inches. I knew that in American units. She was 56. I don't know. What?

Give me feet. Give me freedom units. I don't have my calculator. Nick, pull that up. We're really showing that we should be a part of McNamara's morons right now. God damn it. I was a tank crewman. I was already a member of McNamara's morons.

Now, if you're thinking, I've already kind of ruined this part, that these men would simply never go to Vietnam. Your brain's a smoothie. My brain is so smooth you can actually skip it across the nearest pond. I've already kind of ruined this part that these men would simply never go to Vietnam. Your brain's a smoothie. So yeah, my brain is so smooth. You can actually skip it across the nearest pond. Um,

my backyard pond. Yes. Um, so you're probably still wondering, well, if they wanted to be useful, they would still have to pass basic training. How would you pass basic training?

If you can't shoot rifle or tire shoes? Um, well, people simply forge their paperwork. In many cases, drill sergeants would get together as a group, pick out the youngest looking one, shave their heads, and then appear at training to pass test scores for the privates. So they just lied.

They just lied their way through exams. So the problem was they're using either pencil whipping or using drill sergeants to pass these tests. So these people on paper look like they're crushing PT and rifle scores. Now

Hamilton Gregory notes that every company commander attempted to discharge these men as soon as they got them. Now, I don't want to say it's for pity. Maybe that was some of them. Like, I cannot possibly bring this person to Vietnam in good conscience. They just simply had no idea what was going on, and they feared for everybody's life. In every single case, that discharge was rejected.

It's understandable. What is understandable? That they didn't want them there. It should have been every leader's prerogative to get rid of these people as soon as possible. It's understandable that they didn't want them there. I thought you meant it was understandable that their discharge got rejected.

It's understandable when you find out the army's running them as an experiment. No, I don't... Commanders Oh yeah, definitely. It's understandable when you find out the army's running them as an experiment. No, I don't. Yeah, commanders, honestly, yeah, they did the right thing trying to get them out. Yeah. For sure.

Also, she was around four foot eight. Oh my God. No, no. Like, holy shit. Four foot eight is the minimum of the scale. She was four foot six.

What? Really? Yeah. Wow. That's insane. So if you get ambushed, are you supposed to pick her up and throw her at the enemy yes she is the hand grenade just don't rip her head off before you throw it who doesn't know what a hand grenade is well i meant that as like most people think uh

hand grenades are like this spectacularly impressive weapon um because they see it in movies and video games in reality it's really it's a really huge letdown when you throw it for the first time. Michael Bay hand grenades. Yeah, exactly. Even Call of Duty hand grenades at least have some fire. The first time I threw a hand grenade, I'm like, that's it? That's all you got? Alright.

I've been quoting one person and picking from their first-hand account. I need to underline that what he saw in Private Gupton was absolutely not an isolated incident. Now, there's a novelist named Harry Heinemann who served with the 25th Infantry Division in Vietnam. He recalled in his 2005 memoir that in his basic training barracks at Fort Polk. Oh, God. The worst duty station of all time.

He would look across the street and watch what he knew as McNamara's Boys in a special training company. They would keep them at Fort Polk. Fort Polk was also used for basic training at the time. Yeah, I think I've seen a movie on it. Something with Tiger Land. Yes.

Now, the important thing to remember is these aren't people who were just sequestered into their own company they had already failed out of training multiple times so they're just recycling through what are they expecting eventually that they'd pass they just learned through attrition apparently yeah um he said quote these guys who cannot hack it during regular basic training, he said, is painful to watch. Some of them cannot even get the hang of something so simple as standing at attention. They otherwise seem severely understated for military life. Now, where do you think these people came from?

The McNamara's world? Impoverished areas. You would be correct. Now, army recruiters targeted inner city African-American populations and incredibly rural back roads and incredibly rural communities. They rolled out new recruiting programs with slogans like, quote, Vietnam, hot, wet, and muddy. There's no place to make a man.

That's not even a good one. That's not a good one. No, it sounds good. I mean, was that good in the 60s? Honestly, I liked the Marine Corps, dude. You had me hot and wet. You lost me money. I liked when the Marines were fighting a volcano giant.

No, the dragon got so many people. Yeah, dude. I swear to God, it almost got me. I was like, that's fucking awesome. I want to fight a dragon with a sword, bro. With my saber? I mean, kind of, though. Who doesn't?

Didn't Harry Potter do that shit? Yes. Yes, he did. Not with a sword, with a wand. Significantly less cool than a sword. Yeah, you're right. I would rather have a wand than a sword. I would rather have a magical sword, checkmate.

Harry Potter also had a magical sword, so fuck off. We're moving on. I can whittle a wand from a tree in my backyard. It's not magic, Nick. I bought one at the Redden Fair for 15 bucks. Yeah, I can't believe it. Did it work? No, I have yet to make magic happen.

It turns out my magical community college education. You can never make magic happen with your wand, can you, Joe? And no matter how hard I try, my magical moisture spell just doesn't work. Now, they also had glossy brochures with exotic locations and glamorous jobs portraying

the military, even with the war going on full tilt now, as a good career choice. The pressure on recruiters to sign up more volunteers for the program was intense. In many cases, recruiters grabbed men who in no way

could take the test and did it for them, allowing them to enlist anyway afterwards. The plight of the army recruiter. I would be loath to not include some modern day perspective on this. A large group of recruiters just got

in trouble for not making new recruits take a PT test and that was considered a scandalous affair. I saw that. It was like 300 people. When I was going through it, I did a 1-1-1. I didn't even have to do that. Yeah, I had to through it, I did a 1-1-1. I didn't even have to do that.

Yeah, I had to do that. I did the 1-1-1. That's what the glories of drawing in 2005 were like. You got all your fingers. Go to Iraq, bitch! You were holding Valley Forge down. Dude, in basic training, whenever anybody failed anything, they're like, don't worry about it. You'll learn it in Iraq.

That's not good. No, that's not good at all. For everybody it in Iraq. That's not good. For everybody who doesn't know who's not actually military affiliated, 1-1-1 is the opposite, or is the lower version, like half version of our actual PT test, which is two miles, two minutes of push-ups, two minutes of sit-ups.

We did one mile, one minute of push-ups, one minute of sit-ups. I smashed it. I did not. I didn't even know about it. I was just out of culinary school and a little chubby. My first time I did that one-on-one thing, I think it was four weeks into basic. Really? Yep. My first

PT test came at the end of OSIT. Nice. Which was four months long. Yeah. Whoops. Anyway, so if you're wondering who some of these people are that should not have taken the test, recruiters snapped up kids iqs as low as 62 now uh iq tests are super hit and miss and they're very subjective so the facebook iq test uh how are those not that one uh that is just there to log your password the most legitimate actually the most legitimate ones. I thought those were accurate.

If you get enough people to share your test, your IQ actually raises. Really, all you need is the likes. You don't need the shares. I thought some of my Boomer family members were super fucking genius. I have some bad news, sir.

I don't have a good measure of IQ tests, since IQ tests are pretty pointless for the most part but I do have a comparison so a US Supreme Court case Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 drew the light of mental retardation their words not mine

an IQ level of 70 the purpose of that case to decide how mentally deficient someone would have been or to protect them from capital punishment. I am not sure if that's ironic or just incredibly depressing that some people who are literally so disabled, they could not be executed by the state. We're then sent to Vietnam. Yeah, that's really depressing. For essentially capital punishment.

Yeah. sent to Vietnam. That's really depressing. For essentially capital punishment. It's just via AK rather than electric chair or whatever they were using at the time. Man, that's chaos. Like I said, their words, not mine. Their recruiting goals also ended up being overwhelmingly that ended up impacting overwhelmingly black Americans.

So before the project, if you were to guess how much of the United States Army in 1966, or even today, is made up of African Americans, what do you think it'd be? My number was really low. What did you say?

I said 24 immediately. 24%? Immediately. Okay, what do you say? That was a bad number. I want to go again. Today or then? Is it similar?

Either or. Either or. You're not going to hit it to go again. Today or then? Either or. You're not going to hit it, I promise. Today I would say 30%. What do you think about 1966? Redo these in 1966. 60. 60% of the army is black? No. Going with it. Sure.

They really leaned hard into the Buffalo Soldier mythos 60 do it what is it so at the time only 12% of new recruits

were black just barely now if you were to guess how many of the 100 thousand project 100,000 recruits

80 80 people 80% percent how much you're calling fucking people how much do you think?

80 out of 300,000? What is this, a CEO rate? 60. 40%. 40% of all project recruits end up being black. Now, remember, these recruits

were supposed to better themselves through military service, right? Through the war on poverty. They're supposed to make them better people, teach them job skills, and then release them upon America later. Job skills, like bombing your local village. Yeah. I know that's helped

me a lot. The neighbors are terrified of me, but I have a lot of job fulfillment. Now, they sold this as a job skills program. You're going to learn to be a mechanic. You're going to learn to be a cook. You're going to learn to do whatever. So misleading.

Well, exactly as it is today for the most part, but way more back then. Way more. They're working on it. Yeah, they've been working on it for fucking 100 years. It turns out the only thing they're good at is studying Afghanistan or Vietnam.

Now, most people think, I know you guys, there's a heavy part of our listening population is military or veterans. But even them and the vast majority of the civilian population believes that an entire

army fights wars um technically that's true you can you know bulls don't fly without supply and all that stupid shit but we're talking about combat shut the fuck up yeah shut the fuck up every combat arms person out there yeah shut the fuck up pog Pogues. Now, I get it. My tank would not have gone anywhere without that fueler whose name I never learned. But about 25% of the military at the time had a combat-related job. That is being infantry, mortars, tanks,

whatever. You're pulling triggers. Got some bad news for people people are joining in the project 40 once again would end up being infantry we you know it's kind of interesting about that is a a co-worker of mine was talking the other day there's um two black males that i work with that are both infantry um they're both 11 Bravos. And they were talking about how much of a minority they are in the infantry world. Very. I wasn't aware of that because one of the guys was saying that in his basic training,

he was one of three guys and only two of them actually made it through basic training. So I didn't know that that was such a... It really is. only two of them actually made it through basic training. So, um, I, I didn't know that that was such a, it really is. I've had a bit of a, um, a pet theory on that.

Yeah. I want to hear, actually, I would like to hear that. Yeah. So, um, now this is a mostly uneducated opinion.

That's fine. I get that from you all the time. Yeah. That's all my, that's fine. Um, most people join the army. Um, the vast majority, uh, had that from you all the time. That's all my opinion. That's fine. I'm used to it. Most people join the army, the vast majority, had a family member who joined the army,

who had a family member who joined the army, who had a family member who joined the army. Now, if I was an African-American man in the United States and my dad served in the army, he probably fought in Vietnam. His dad, if he fought in the army, he probably fought in Vietnam. His dad, if he fought in the army, he probably fought in world war two or Korea. Well, if you remember during world war two,

they could not have combat jobs. So there's, uh, you know, there's a, the carryover of generational racism there where, well, my dad was supplier.

My dad was a cook. So I'm going to be a cook or I'm going to be a supplier. And I mean, people don't realize there's people alive today who could not have the same job as I had simply because the color of their skin. Now, that could change a lot

with how long these wars have been going on and how big our army's got. And I could be completely wrong. I could be completely wrong i could be talking about my talking on my ass but like i wanted so like my parents didn't weren't in the army my grandparents were not the american army but like you know i wanted to be a paratrooper because it's what my grandpa did in the legion that's what i want to do and they're like nah your eyesight sucks which i end up which I end up finding out was a fucking lie.

So I end up having to blaze my own trail. Like most people want to take over, take over after their family, especially in the. I can kind of see that. Yeah, I can see that, but not my path. Well, there's you know, there's outliers for everything. Yeah. I mean, when you joined for instance rich you could not do what your grandpa did right my my granddad was uh special forces

airborne all of that um and i and i did for a long time when i go airborne but then i realized how bad it is for like your entire body and life and you know drop that goal but every male who joined the army before me and my family was airborne yeah i mean we're we're still at the end state of generational change where only now uh can everybody truly do everything and even then that's not really true right there's still no female green berets but you're right you're right and saying like even though even though they have i could be wrong about that i know some women have made it through ranger school i don't know if they made it through special forces if i'm wrong i hope i'm fucking wrong but i don't think i am but even though um even though they can't can do whatever they want maybe

they do just want to do whatever their their dad did or their grandpa did or i could again i could be talking out my ass i hope i am um but at the time these guys weren't getting much of a choice because remember they didn't qualify for anything else um and there there is something of a notion of uh african americans were overwhelmingly impacted by the vietnam war through draft numbers and casualties the stats that don't quite work out. It turns out that the, that the percentage of casualties killed, wounded and enlistments were in comparison to the overall numbers within the ranks and within the general population.

But project 100,000 changed all that. Yeah. Because it just had to find a way to make everything worse. This wouldn't be an episode if you did that. Yeah. So some compassionate officers, once these soldiers hit Vietnam, would find any fucking job for them to do outside of patrols. Because they realize if they send these dudes out, they're going to die.

Yeah. Or what is probably more realistic, they're going to kill my other people. Yeah, they're going to put other people in danger. Yeah. But that was by far an outlier and many of these guys suck combat. So have you ever watched or read the movie We Were Soldiers? It was originally a book.

Yes. No. So the journalist from that story, Joe Galloway, who ended up getting all sorts of awards for his actions in combat, even though he's a civilian, had a few run-ins with these soldiers. He said, quote, The young men of Project 100,000 couldn't read.

They had to be taught to tie their boots. They often failed basic training and were recycled over and over again until they finally reached some low standard of competence. They were declared trained and ready. They cannot be taught any more demanding jobs than trigger pulling. So most of them went straight into combat where the learning curve is steep and deadly. If you can want to chart where this story goes.

I'm going to go with the deadly part. So it gets a little bit more depressing than that. You're probably thinking now, we now know people on the spectrum, the autistic spectrum, of people who, back when I was a kid, you would just assume, oh, they're hyperactive or whatever.

Yes, yes. And as many people know, there are significantly more severe disabilities when it comes to intellectual disabilities than that. So let's talk about one of those. A soldier, not one on the project, named Robert Romo, who had served in Vietnam, was horrified to find out his nephew was being allowed into the army. You see, his younger brother had a form of Down syndrome. Yeah, in the army. Down syndrome, his younger brother had a form of Down Syndrome. Yeah, in the arm.

Down Syndrome. His brother did, so not his... Sorry, his nephew. Oh, okay. He quickly wrote a letter to a general, begging for them not to allow his nephew to serve. He ended the letter by, if you send him to Vietnam, he will die.

The general ignored it. He would. Yep. Romo ended up being correct. His nephew died within one month of arriving in Vietnam. Yeah. Romo's nephew would not be alone in his fate. A project.

Sorry. Soldiers of the project were three times more likely to die in combat than their comrades. Over 600,000 of them would die. Sorry. 6,000 of them would die. That, 6,000 of them would die. That's a big difference, Joe, first of all. Yeah. Second of all, it's really hard to be funny and quippy

when you're just feeding us depression stats. That's my life. You haven't been on most of the time. This is how I feel every week. More people in the project die in Vietnam than anybody else. 6,000 of them died. It's a lot. The numbers aren't totally solid.

It's around 6,000. That's terrible. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. For the ones who did not die in Vietnam, their misery would not end. Still unhappy.

And it would be waiting for them. Nearly half were 180,000 of them, would be kicked out of the military for various reasons and given other than honorable or dishonorable discharges. Jesus. For what? They force them into the fucking military, then they're going to give them an other than honorable discharge.

For what? Most of these things were what you would expect of people who are not adapting well to their surroundings drinking drug use and talking back to superiors that's horseshit yeah um so david addlestone the director

of the national veterans law center uh from its founding in 1978 to his retirement in 2005 so when the leading reasons that the military had for giving bad paper discharges for Project 100,000 men was, quote, unsuitability. You think?

Little fucking wonder. The men were never suitable to be in the military in the goddamn first place. You think maybe when they got recycled in training three or four times? Or when they were illiterate and couldn't tie their boots and didn't know what fucking state

they were from. Or that there was a war happening. Yeah. Like, I understand that, like, mass media was relatively new, but I don't care if you're from bumfucksville, Tennessee, you know there's a war going on.

I used to go with Alabama on this one. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, it just doesn't. I have family in Bumfucksville, Tennessee. That's why I picked it. Either one of us have family in Alabama. Yeah. It's just mind-blowing to me.

You know what? I decided I would draft my dog into the military. Then I had to give my poor dog, Laika, a bad conduct discharge because she was a dog. How dare you? I know. It's this weird thing that she was-

Don't fucking say that when she has a kukri in her fucking hand next to me. Yeah. It's weird that, one, we have a podcast kukri, and two, that I had to discharge her for doing something she was born with and simply could not change. And also, she's right here, Joe. It's kind of like kicking people out now who are not citizens. Ooh, wee. Well, I will not ask you guys to comment on that.

You know how I feel. Our president is our commander in chief, and he is a commander in chief. Thank you. Thank you for that deep insight. Now, this... I thought really hard about that one. So this obviously flew directly in the face of the idea

that the people who are enlisting or drafted would be better off. So for people who are unaware, or people who have never dealt with the VA such as myself bad paper discharges or other than honorable or dishonorable discharges makes it incredibly hard to get a job and bars you from using VA disability or benefits.

So the very reason that many of these people were tricked into getting out of whatever you know urban center or rural backgrounds community. I'm going to get a job. I'm going to see the world. Now you can't get a fucking job. They just fuck those people. You fuck them harder than you ever could have just by leaving them

alone. Did the Americans with Disabilities Act exist back then? I don't believe so. The ADA is relatively new. 80s, I think. Also, the ADA doesn't impact the military. No, but all of these people, I feel like, should be covered by that.

I believe all these people should have been covered by comprehensive government programs that force the military service. I know I joke all the time like hey if i never enlisted my knees would work but like if their life would be so much better if the recruiters never would have found them and they never would have wasn't for robert fucking mcnamara um sudoku motherfucker so you're probably wondering well v Vietnam era vets are pretty bad off in general by the popular narrative. They're not, but also things get worse. Their counterparts, meaning people who were rejected from military service and did not join outside of the project, were still better off than them. Project members made nearly $16,000 less a year on average, which is inflated for a change of worth inflation,

probably closer to $30,000 or $40,000 now. We're more likely to be divorced, go to prison, and we're much more likely to be unemployed. Yeah. This is literally a project deployed by the American government to how they can make poor people's lives worse. Yeah. I would like to say that that surprises me.

I would really like to say that that surprises me. I would really like to say that that surprises me. Yeah. It just doesn't. And I... I'm not impressed by this information, Joe. I could not find a single first-hand account of a project member who are now aware of who they are. There's a good chance

most of them don't want to talk about it, or simply can't. Imagine they just don't. I would hope that they don't. Imagine how all these problems compound upon each other. They're obviously not... I would argue nobody is mentally equipped to handle war, but they're certainly not mentally equipped

to handle war and carnage and everything. They go through that. They somehow survive even though statistics are against them. They get back. They don't handle things well most people don't handle ptsd or tbi as well which are two things nobody understood at the time so they get kicked out of the military so they can't get therapy so now they're very very very mentally disabled but also now they have uh mental illness stacked on top of them thanks us government now

they can't get a job because they have a bad conduct discharge. For instance, have you ever had a job or applied for a job that did not ask if you had a dishonorable discharge from the military? I know I haven't. I Army. I've been in for

a very long time. Nick, I give a little bit more of a pass on that, but you were in your 20s when you joined. I was 20. I've had jobs, asshole. They were just under the table. I had some minimum wage jobs before I joined. So what happens when you're a fucking Mexican dick?

I haven't filled out a job application in 11 years. So I remember one of my first and only jobs that I had before I joined was working at McDonald's. I still had to know if I had a bad conduct discharge. How do you remember that? You were like 15. 14. Really?

Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I made $5.15 an hour minimum wage. I made $5.65 an hour as a lifeguard. Skilled labor. I worked at a shooting range. That makes so much more sense now that knowing that your dad's an LAPD officer.

Or was. I'm curious, out of reflex, did he just turn and shoot you because you're brown? Oh yeah, his fucking LAPD instincts kicked in. Colored person. He's brown too.

My dad's brown too. Every time he walked in the house he would come against the wall like oh fuck. Through the badge mirror everybody's white. Anyway.

Shit talking about his family too much more. I'll close this episode out with a quote from me. This is a terrible episode. I fucking hate it. From a Colonel

David Hackworth. I don't like it already. Now Colonel David Hackworth is a terrible episode. I fucking hate it. From a Colonel David Hackworth. I don't like it already. Now, Colonel David Hackworth is a pretty well-respected and well-decorated soldier from the Vietnam War. Ah, so I can expect something good. I'm going to say the most critically thinking quote from a high-ranking member of the military in general. He said, quote,

Project 100,000 was implemented to produce more grunts for the killing fields of Vietnam. It took unfit recruits from the bottom of the barrel and rushed them to the war zone. The result was human applesauce. Ooh. That's not good. That's disrespectful. He's not wrong. He's not, but

Jesus. I mean, I feel like because for me, I had a hard time writing this episode, writing the script because I had to expand upon how ridiculous this was and it is ridiculous it's incredible it's one of the most exploited like exploiting things i think we've ever talked about um but also be like respectful for the people who fell into the trap because it's not their fault they were exploited by the government i'm not like every time i i talked

about you know mental retardation or disability, like, one, I wouldn't use the hard R word there without it being a quote from the Supreme Court, which is what it was. And I apologize if anybody was upset by that. But we had to expand upon how disabled these people were to underline how evil the fucking secretary of defense was at the time.

Because like, how could you do that? That's like going into an old person, like a retirement home, and like, look at all this labor. Like, these people could be building roads. Sure, you're not qualified at all, and it'll kill you, but look at all this labor i mean so our ideas research medical uh like medical statistics all those things like on uh mental disabilities

and everything are still evolving and relatively new and very, very, very sometimes outdated and need to be reformed. So I can't even imagine what they were back in the 60s. Oh, definitely. And I'm not saying like, why didn't they understand what the spectrum was? Like, I'm not saying that. They had standardized tests for that and they disregarded them. And the people who otherwise would have passed and then failed otherwise were waved through and the people who simply could not even take a test

were waved through. I'm not expecting a military recruiter from the 60s to understand mental disability. I don't understand a military recruiter in 2019 to understand mental disability. That's completely unacceptable and I'm not trying to excuse

it by any means. I'm not trying to excuse it by any means. I'm just saying that like, we're still not where we need to be on all of that. We never will be. We're always working backwards. The America will always be working

in our back foot for mental disability because it's like, well, have you tried going for a hike or thinking positive thoughts? Like, bitch, my brain is melting. I've had a recruiter friend try to get one into the military. Just because...

Well, there was a story not that long ago. Well, fuck, probably 15 years ago now, where the Marine Corps recruited someone who had autism, even understood then as autism. Really? Like the kid's parents knew he was autistic. And this is so long ago. this is like pre-spectrum so he was he was pretty pretty heavily disabled and he did not um adapt well to boot camp as one

would fucking imagine yeah um to include like having fits um and when he acted out, he'd get violent. I've seen that firsthand. Yeah. And it's not his fault. It's just how his brain works. He would piss in canteens and drink from them. I've done that on accident. I've also done that on accident, but it was a water bottle.

There's not a lot of room in a tank, Rich. Rich looks like she has never done that um first of all girls cannot piss in canteens or water bottles well not with that attitude right second of all why the fuck would you it's dark i can't see i don't want to get up and go somewhere and pee sometimes that shit ain't an option anyway uh this this poor kid ended up graduating boot camp somehow and he ended up um acting inappropriately with a underage girl oh um i believe he grabbed her not excusing that but i'm willing to bet he did not understand what he was doing yeah um and that i don't i couldn't find any update on that case but you know this it's kind of underhanded recruiter bullshit still goes on,

but this is systemic. This was planned. That's why I think it's... We've covered the Bonus March, or the Bonus Army, which is probably still one of my favorite episodes. It's a good one. We've covered a few other things when it came to underhanded shit the government has done to its own people.

This, I think, might be the worst. Pretty bad. It's up there. Yeah. I don't think we've ever covered anything that is just so victimizing for people who already had life so hard already. These are people who obviously were not going to school. They probably weren't going to have anything resembling a job. probably weren't going to have anything resembling a job um or they were you know disadvantaged um youths from uh you know urban centers who are already discriminated against from race

right and went to a school that was third rate because their government was not funding it and then they're going to be thrown into the killing fields of vietnam it's fucking gross it hits a little close because one of the cool things that I will say about reenacting was one of the units I was a part of had this little thing where they allowed

like autistic kids to come in. And for one of the kids that I was really close with, it almost seemed like it cured his autism. Like he was awesome. Like at first when I met him, he had fits over loud.

Whenever we went to air shows, loud radial engines would fly over and he'd have fits in the middle of a tent. It's fucking terrifying. It is terrible. He's young. He's throwing fits. There's public around. Then you have to handle a child.

Also, he's fucking strong as shit. Also, you don't know how to handle anybody who's being violent. Especially a child. I don't know how to handle anybody who's being violent. Especially a child. Yeah, I don't. So it hits a little close to me in that way, but also... I mean, there's outlets that people can use.

I mean, I think people who are savants are much happier once they find out what their outlet is. I'm not a mental health professional, but... Now, imagine that person was in the army because because that happened so the same the same kid he wanted to join the air force in the army he understands now that he can't right because of his disability now imagine like someone came to him knowing that's his dream. You can enlist. You take it. I mean, who wouldn't? It's not his fault. It's not any of these people's fault. They were exploited.

But that's what somebody did. They did the... It's like if you went to a payday loan place, like, yeah, we got your money, man. We can give you money. Is it bad for you? Yeah. We'll eventually drive you

to kill yourself? Possibly. We got you. That's what the government did to 300,000 people. If it doesn't eventually drive you to kill yourself, it'll definitely drive you

into a lifetime worth of debt that you will never, ever, ever, ever get out of. Yes, but in this situation, debt is severe mental illness. Yeah. I mean, same as you. I'd rather have the debt, I guess.

Anyway, thank you, Rich, for dropping by our hot box of a studio. Yeah. I will not come back until you get air conditioning in this bitch. One week. We're getting in a week. Can't wait. I'm so done sweating. Nick, I would thank you,

but you have to be here. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. This was actually the episode that I paired against the Pepsi Navy episode for voting. And now you see why

the Pepsi Navy episode won by about 100 votes. Because this isn't uplifting at all. No, it's not. It's pretty damn depressing. I hope this burger is fucking good. It's not going to be good enough to get the taste out of your mouth.

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