Help Me out Here: MACP = Not battlefield effective?

[Rand]

MACP is pretty horrible, at least at the current Level 1. Have a few guys in my unit (Reserve, sigh, for now) that are "Level 1 qualified" and think they are pretty bad, or a few that have "done combatives" and want to show off.

Because I wanted to get more than the piddly amount of training offered by the Army I went out on my own dime and got training, and because of that I am now an amateur MMA fighter in Florida with my second super heavy weight fight coming up in two weeks.

If it wasn't for a prior engagement, SRP/Pre Mob, I would be doing this "Combatives" tourney that the MIRC is putting on. I'm not sure if it is full on MMA or just grappling, but I am going to try and get in it if I can and I'll bring back some info for you guys on how the MACP crap is working for us Intel guys.

[wetware]

It would certainly help explain the Abu Ghraib furore. ;)

It's not like everyone in the forces is on the front line. Six support staff per front line soldier is the figure that sticks in my head, although could easily be a lot higher than that. What it is today will depend on how you define front line.

The first problem with Abu Ghraib as I understood it was essentially reservists. Until they were deployed they were doing their one weekend a month, two weeks a year and apparently weren't up to speed on how to treat detainees. When they were accused they immediately pointed the finger at the army interrogators, saying that they were told to mistreat the detainees. Even if that's the case, A) they still should have known better and B) those interrogators don't know what they're doing either.

The second problem, in my eyes, was a problem with the officers in combat arms and MP units. In a combat deployment a significant portion of your OER could (and was) built around enemy KIAs and captured. For a place like Abu Ghraib (and holding locations around the country) "Oversaw A Block of Abu Ghraid, which contains 500 detainees." sounds a whole lot better than "Oversaw A Block of Abu Ghraid, which contains 200 detainees." The result is that no matter how many screenings and interrogations we conducted and how many times we recommended release very few were actually released. They were simply processed for transfer to higher command. It happened in every location I was at within 4th ID and I can only assume the same thing was happening elsewhere, which leads to interrogators at higher levels having to sift through the human equivalent of needles in a haystack with pressure to essentially squeeze water from stones, since very few of them were of intelligence value.

Edit: Almost forgot. There was one right evil bastard of a corrections officer who it seems was doing similar stuff in his civilian life.