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Having gone through military basic training (and later being peripherally involved with recruiting), we had people wash out relatively often for 'shin splints'.

by mpyne 10y ago

Having gone through military basic training (and later being peripherally involved with recruiting), we had people wash out relatively often for 'shin splints'. If you washed out it would have to be severe -- if the shin splints were minor you'd simply be given time to heal and the ability to rollback into the next class. But even if they were severe, we (recruits and staff alike) called them 'shin splints', not 'broken legs'. However technically true Snowden's usage of 'my legs were broken' may have been, we would never have called it 'broken legs' unless he'd suffered a macroscopic fracture or a break (in other words, something that'd normally require a cast, splint, or crutches). So the fact that Snowden did so is actually quite consistent with the HPSCI's assertions about his 'narcissistic' and 'self-serving' nature. There /should/ be little shame in washing out for shin splints, certainly not enough to be deceptive about it when your credibility is about to be closely examined for something that is theoretically far more important to you.

tptacek 10y ago
A wrinkle: Snowden was 18X, so he wasn't doing standard basic training, but accelerated basic/advanced combined. So a shin splint injury that might have been manageable in normal basic training, in 18X...?
- mpyne 10y ago
  That's just it, I heard it was training for SF, so I thought he had literally broken his legs, their training isn't just doing a bunch of running so it would certainly be plausible to break a leg doing something like fast-roping out of a helo or a parachute jump. I haven't gone through anything close to SF training but wash-outs happen all the time; you heal up and generally get to try again, since it's not like you can just stay with your class, and the military services need SOF-quality forces bad enough that if you're otherwise qualified to get into that pipeline then it's beneficial for them to give you that opportunity. On the other hand in a basic training environment, if you get shin splints you may get a medical profile or light duty chit saying not to do certain types of exercise (or even to wear different shoes) to give your lower legs time to heal. But if it's bad enough you can be pulled out of training completely and put in a holding company to heal up properly and then roll back into a class. I was briefly in a holding company for something else; there were recruits there who had been out of training due to shin splints for months, usually when they refused to go to medical when they first started noticing symptoms and tried to tough it out.
mnordhoff 10y ago
Snowden literally said "I left on crutches." https://twitter.com/snowden/status/776543206938906625 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/776543206938906625
- mpyne 10y ago
  He also said 'it wasn't shin splints' when the conceit to this thread appears to be that 'shin splints are just a different way of saying bone fractures in your legs'. We have Barton Gellman defending Snowden by saying that he was diagnosed with 'bilateral tibial stress fractures'. But, this is consistent with shin splints (albeit more severe) and could be the result of trying to maintain the exercise regimen that gave you shin splints in the first place. But nor are bilateral tibial stress fractures something you get in a training accident or other single event -- it's a repetitive injury that you get when your body cannot sustain the level of demand being placed on it over time. It still hurts like a bitch if you let it get to that point, and Snowden would not be anywhere near the first or the last to wash out of a military training pipeline due to that. But he sells it like he broke his legs in some sort of accident at a single SF training event, not like the exact same type of repetitive stress injury that has been a common cause of medical washouts in many other men and women attempting the same training (even for ceremonial duties! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807419/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807419/).

by mpyne 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

A wrinkle: Snowden was 18X, so he wasn't doing standard basic training, but accelerated basic/advanced combined. So a shin splint injury that might have been manageable in normal basic training, in 18X...?

mpyne 10y ago
That's just it, I heard it was training for SF, so I thought he had literally broken his legs, their training isn't just doing a bunch of running so it would certainly be plausible to break a leg doing something like fast-roping out of a helo or a parachute jump. I haven't gone through anything close to SF training but wash-outs happen all the time; you heal up and generally get to try again, since it's not like you can just stay with your class, and the military services need SOF-quality forces bad enough that if you're otherwise qualified to get into that pipeline then it's beneficial for them to give you that opportunity. On the other hand in a basic training environment, if you get shin splints you may get a medical profile or light duty chit saying not to do certain types of exercise (or even to wear different shoes) to give your lower legs time to heal. But if it's bad enough you can be pulled out of training completely and put in a holding company to heal up properly and then roll back into a class. I was briefly in a holding company for something else; there were recruits there who had been out of training due to shin splints for months, usually when they refused to go to medical when they first started noticing symptoms and tried to tough it out.

mnordhoff 10y ago

Snowden literally said "I left on crutches." https://twitter.com/snowden/status/776543206938906625 https://twitter.com/snowden/status/776543206938906625

mpyne 10y ago
He also said 'it wasn't shin splints' when the conceit to this thread appears to be that 'shin splints are just a different way of saying bone fractures in your legs'. We have Barton Gellman defending Snowden by saying that he was diagnosed with 'bilateral tibial stress fractures'. But, this is consistent with shin splints (albeit more severe) and could be the result of trying to maintain the exercise regimen that gave you shin splints in the first place. But nor are bilateral tibial stress fractures something you get in a training accident or other single event -- it's a repetitive injury that you get when your body cannot sustain the level of demand being placed on it over time. It still hurts like a bitch if you let it get to that point, and Snowden would not be anywhere near the first or the last to wash out of a military training pipeline due to that. But he sells it like he broke his legs in some sort of accident at a single SF training event, not like the exact same type of repetitive stress injury that has been a common cause of medical washouts in many other men and women attempting the same training (even for ceremonial duties! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807419/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807419/).