ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by FORMER_FYRDMAN

So your definition is wrong [snip] The wars we fight today are more complex[/snip].

The fights we are in today are complex. They are not wars. They are 'conflicts'.

War has a binary outcome, win-or-lose

War is Nation vs Nation, with Defeat/Victory as the only possible option.

we are not fighting a war, but we act as though we are?

smart plan.

Not!!!

Originally Posted by verticalgyro

Consistently arrives at conclusions without being able to describe steps used to reach them

Ah! The Richard Feynman research methodology:
Find a problem that stumps every other major league physicist.
Write it down.
Think real hard.
Write down the correct answer.

Originally Posted by verticalgyro

Excessive devotion to ritual behavior of any kind not easily explained by religious or health reasons

Ah! How to get out of the nut hutch.
Wait until the chief-shrink gets replaced by a god-botherer, then convince your invisible friend to change his name by deed-poll to "Jesus".

Originally Posted by Stonker

The fights we are in today are complex. They are not wars. They are 'conflicts'.

War has a binary outcome, win-or-lose

War is Nation vs Nation, with Defeat/Victory as the only possible option.

we are not fighting a war, but we act as though we are?

smart plan.

Not!!!

Either way the mans right! We got trounced in both.

Originally Posted by Buzz

The problem can be that Aspergers can be a nice fluffy middle class name for phsycopathic personality traits.

Robert Napper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Napper was an "aspergers" case until he raped 70 women, murdered two women and a 4 year old girl, if you tested Ian Brady he would probably ping back as an aspergers case as well

I think the medical profession have been avoiding stating the obvious for some years now.

Brady for one is highly intelligent, but is also a delusional, sadistic sexual psychopath. There might be a touch of high-end ASD but he's got so much else wrong with his head its probably lost in the crowd. However, he's also described as 'highly charismatic, vain, manipulative'- charisma is NOT something usually associated with ASD. The rest of it is also highly unusual for ASD. You need to UNDERSTAND people to manipulate them. ASD is by definition an inability to do that. A quick look on Napper shows him to be an Aspergers, but also from an abusive background, and also a sexually perverted paranoid schizophrenic. Napper probably has some underlying pathology, but I think he's probably got a lot else going on in the head as well.

ASD is now believed to be linked to some quite definite hardware defects in the brain. -but that doesn't mean that you will automatically become a criminal, any more than it makes you Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

Many ASD sufferers do end up in prison. Fact.They often have some difficulty with appropriate behaviour. They just can't grasp how 'the law' relates to them personally. I don't think that the legal system is terribly responsive to them, and coppers love people who literally wouldn't think to ask for a lawyer, would answer 'yes' to almost every question, and whose monotone delivery and inability to make eye contact makes them look like 'Mr Guilty-Bastard' when in front of the jury. More worrying is that for some, prison is just what they love. No one else is more eager to becoming institutionalised.

In previous centuries, I suspect most functional autistics become monks. Later, the ritual and routine of the musket-armed Army would have suited most of them down to the ground. It's only in modern war where things are so fluid, and initiative so in demand, that they are not suited.

Originally Posted by fusilier50

Why was he allowed in the TA if he had Aspergers Syndrome a low spectrum form of Autism? It might well of been spotted when he tried to join the Regular army and could have led to them rejecting his application.

The TA didn't start to employ the same Selection process as the Regular Army until c.2008. Before that, it was not uncommon to come across a TA recruit who had (or would have) been rejected for Regular service.

Maybe of interest:

Originally Posted by FORMER_FYRDMAN

Apologies, I assumed from your ramblings that at some point in the last ten years, like most of those serving (and most who are contributing to this thread by the way), you'd been somewhere hot and unpleasant where the natives shot at you - my mistake.

Been there both sandy and dusty places but never left thinking we had lost.
At what stage did we lose?
Enlighten me defeated one?

Originally Posted by fusilier50

Former Soldier Jailed For Killing Landlord

Why was he allowed in the TA if he had Aspergers Syndrome a low spectrum form of Autism? It might well of been spotted when he tried to join the Regular army and could have led to them rejecting his application. I have rejected a number of TA applicants for just this reason over the years.

Talking to an extremely well qualified instructor ( teaches at Uni, has numerous Education degrees ) he informed me that when he raised this issue with a Colonel a few years ago, was eventually told that the TA do not have a problem with autism

When he made the obvious comments about the gene pool being the same for Regular and TA recruits he was eventually told to shut up.

.