During the World War II, one-third of US draftees were rejected by army doctors as chronically malnourished – a legacy of depression era hardships. Six decades later, fully one third of those otherwise eligible for military service are too obese to serve.
And if that weren’t bad enough, fully 40% of those applying to work for the FBI – our nation’s premier domestic counter-terror agency – either failed the polygraph test or were on domestic terrorism watch lists.
It is to weep.
DoD CI/HUMINT and OGA have even higher numbers for poly rejections.
It would blow your mind.
A very high fraction of people (including me) have failed the polygraph at least once, but passed subsequent ones. I suspect that they (quite properly) dial the sensitivity all the way up, and prefer false positives to false negatives, when screening for certain positions. Either that, or I overthink things.
My father knew his draft number was up in 1950. A Maine farm boy, he decided to choose his fate first. The Navy rejected him because his chest was too small! So he joined the brand new Air Force and that made all the difference.
Polygraphs are utter BS, like the wands waved at Iraqi checkpoints. It’s not the fluttering needles, it’s the interrogator asking questions that makes all the difference, and the wiring is only there to push you out of your comfort zone, giving a quality interviewer more to work with in determining if the interviewee is being honest. Obviously (no disrespect to Ray), but too many good people get screened out and too much shit obviously sails right on through.
This can go back to the question of what is truly being taught at American schools? Are they that broken where after school sports and gym is being sacrificed to fund AP and SAT improvement courses? Or is it the fact that because we want everyone to be happy, feel loved, and feel like they are all winners, that gym is being eliminated along with after school sports because they cause emotional damage to children? If they are unfit to serve in the military then they are unfit to be the local police or fire-fighter as well. This is a shame, but for some of our more left leaning people it probably isn’t that bad, because even the police and fire departments are bad because they are owned by “the man”.
As to the polygraph thing, it seems everyone from Mythbusters on up to funded studies in big name colleges like UPenn, Stanford, Havard; all seem to point about how much a false positive the polygraph gives. One of them I saw cited in a magazine article in Scientific America talked about how most polygraph givers seem to have the equivalancy of a psychic doing a cold reading for dectecting the truth. So polygraphs aren’t the panacea that security experts claim they are. Instead it is people’s belief in them that leads to tripping over themselves.
Hey, worked in “Meet the Fokkers.” Good enough most of America…
Hey, cool it. That’s Obama’s energized voting base you guys are slamming. The one that was absent yesterday.
The obese bit is undeniably due to a whole mix of sociocultural factors from diet due to working lifestyles of harassed mothers who substitute fast food in place of home-cooked meals served at sit-down dinners; to elimination of gym classes; to lack of free time to roam as children in unsupervised play due to parents fear of crime; (I can remember as a child leaving the house on weekends to play/roam and not returning until supper time and my parents had NO IDEA where I was or what I was doing–but then I grew up in a small college town in the middle-west in the late 40s-late 50s.) as well as all the sedentary computer games that had been previously non-existent.
Same with fashion. The armed services has had to substitute tennis shoes for combat boots in much of basic tng because so few kids wear leather shoes to school anymore that their bone and muscle structure can’t tolerate going cold-turkey into combat boots for extended periods until their feet have become “aclimatized” to the more unyielding boots.
As to the poly? As in so many things, only as good as the operator.
Same here. When my father was stationed at Adair in Oregon, I was known to go as far away from home as 5 miles at the age of 10 (on a bicycle). My mother would have a hissy fit when I would show up late in the day, but I never learned. I wouldn’t dare let my grandkids do anything of the sort these days. The danger is much too high these days.
I remember reading that stat about under/malnurised volunteers in WWII. Hard to belive.
My father had to apply a few times to get in the Army in ‘44, though that was because of his trying to get in while underage. Being a farm boy he ate well given the times.
It is my impression that most country folk did especially well during combat due in part to their experience growin up. Did not have a college degree, but they were used to hardship, self-reliance, knew how to use weapons, were comfortable in the woods, and knew how to find North.
Ron,
I can remember my Dad telling me that he used to put mayonnaise on bread and load it up with pepper, etc., just to make the stomach feel full as that was all they had to eat. (His Father was a blacksmith and his mom ran a boarding house.) He joined the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) briefly out of college just to get free room & board until he could get a coaching job. (I don’t want to overdo the “tough times” bit in my Dad’s case–just that things were tough everywhere. Dad’s parents did well enough to put 5 kids thru college and let Dad play tennis–he and his doubles partner were nationally ranked in the Jrs when in HS and went on to a 10 ltr tennis, diving and basketball career in college. He was a piker tho–his older brother won 14 letters in football, BB, tennis and track. Depression couldn’t have malnourished ‘em ALL that much.
Both Hansen and Rick Ames passed their polys. And they spied for 20 and 10 years respectively. Polys are highly overated as a detection tool, however, as a preventive….