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Saturday July 31, 2010

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Hinch Blog tackles 'Eddie's Army'

Posted by: By Derryn Hinch, 3AW Drive | 10 November, 2008 - 5:25 PM

 

I was one of the speakers at a Victims of Crime Awareness Week ceremony in Kings' Domain yesterday. And it never gets easier talking to the mothers and fathers who have lost loved ones to violent crime.

And maybe that's why I was in more scathing mood than usual when I read Eddie McGuire's column in the Sunday Herald Sun.  It concerned a radical plan to put people convicted of serious assault charges into the army rather than send them to prison.

You wouldn't even get a conviction recorded against you. The newspaper thought it such an important idea that they lifted it out of McGuire's column and also put it on Page Three.

Eddie says the proposal is being floated by senior police and backed by victims of assaults and their families. Well, it's not backed by the victims families I talked to yesterday. And not by a retired Warrant Officer with twenty years in the Army.

But it was a naive line in McGuire's column that jumped out at me. He wrote 'The army likes young men with a bit of aggression'. No they don't Eddie.  They actually have psych test to weed out such applicants. The Americans tried knuckleheaded losers called Grunts in Vietnam. It led to the My Lai massacre and 500 women and children were killed.

Also professional soldiers don't want their Army turned into a garbage dump for anti-social thugs. They certainly don't want to give them guns and boxing lessons.

One other thing perturbed me about the McGuire column., He wrote: … 'when someone suddenly goes down for drink driving, culpable driving and more recently street violence in spontaneous moments of madness, their lives and those of their families are destroyed'.

Wish you'd been there yesterday Eddie and seen what destroyed lives really are. The destroyed lives of totally innocent people - destroyed by the lives cut short for loved ones by the bashers you want to turn into soldiers.

Blog comments Your Say

  • Why dump the dregs of society into the army.
    Put them on Van Diemens Land, to fend for themselves , or starve.
    Our Army have people with pride , respect, families.
    Let the dregs live with te dregs.
    Put your money where your mouth is, EDDIE.
    You hire them as your employees, and wet nurse your babies

    Ken Bolitho Thursday 13 November, 2008 - 9:01 AM

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