More lies and deceit from the one plus one equals three crowd.
Today the NY Times reports in a classified report that the newspaper got ahold of, that the US Military is stretched very thin--dangerously thin.
Add to this the story (also broadcast by CBS News last night) that recruiters are advising potential enlistees how to cheat.
I'm adhering to the Kos copyright rules and only including selective portions of both articles with links.
From the Times:
Yesterday, the issue drew national attention as CBS News reported that a high-school student outside Denver recorded two recruiters as they advised him how to cheat. The student, David McSwane, said one recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while the other had helped him buy a product to cleanse traces of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms from his body. The Army said the recruiters had been suspended while it investigated
Pentagon Says Iraq Effort Limits Ability to Fight Other Conflicts
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/politics/03military.html?hp&ex=1115179200&en=8e61d2b8d4bd2
e4b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Army Recruiters Say They Feel Pressure to Bend Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/national/03recruit.html?hp
From the Times:
Despite an Army investigation, the recruiters were not punished and were still working in the area late last month.
Two hundred miles away, in northern Ohio, another recruiter said the incident hardly surprised him. He has been bending or breaking enlistment rules for months, he said, hiding police records and medical histories of potential recruits. His commanders have encouraged such deception, he said, because they know there is no other way to meet the Army's stiff recruitment quotas.
"The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."
The Italians believe (correctly, in my opinion), that their heroic intelligence agent who rescued the captive Italian journalist was murdered by poorly trained and incompetent soldiers. This information adds enormous weight to their charges.
I would add that he was likely killed by men and women totally unfit for military service. Young men and women who were undoubtedly dragged off the streets of some poverty-ridden, inner city neighborhood to become cannon fodder for George Bush.