Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by TomDispatch.com
Dirty Dozen: The Pentagon's 12-Step Program to Create a Military of
Misfits
by Nick Turse

Military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements
from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White
House, propaganda releases by the Pentagon, and a spate of recent press
reports touting the way the military has made its wo/manpower goals.

But the armed forces have only met with success through a fundamental
"transformation," and not the transformation of the military -- that
"co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" --
Rumsfeld is always talking about either.

While the Secretary of Defense's longstanding goal of transforming the
planet's most powerful military into its highest tech, most agile, most
futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post's David
Von Drehle, "melted away," the very makeup of the Armed Forces has been
mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq.
This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles
on the new recruitment landscape in America.

Last year, despite NASCAR, professional bull-riding, and Arena
Football sponsorships; popular video games that doubled as recruiting tools;
TV commercials dripping with seductive scenes of military glory; a "joint
marketing communications and market research and studies" program actively
engaged in measures to target for military service Hispanics, drop outs, and
those with criminal records; and at least $16,000 in promotional costs for
each soldier it managed to sign up, the U.S. military failed to meet its
recruiting goals. This year those methods have been pumped up and taken over
the top in twelve critical areas of recruitment that make the old Army
ad-line, "Be All That You Can Be," into material for late night TV punch
lines of the future.

1. Hard Sell

When not trolling for potential soldiers via video games, websites, or
most recently the social networking site MySpace.com and text messaging, the
Armed Forces employ recruiters who use old-fashioned hard-sell tactics to
cajole impressionable teens into enlisting. Recently, one New Jersey mother
told her local newspaper about the Army's persistence in targeting her
17-year old daughter. When the mother finally asked the Army to stop calling
her child, the recruiter argued vigorously against it. The mother, who
otherwise praised the military, was nonetheless aghast at the recruiter's
tactics. "That's what frightened and enraged me. This military person
telling me that I have no rights over my child," she said.

Teens are also subject to military advertising and high-pressure
tactics at school. The Boston Globe recently wrote that recruiters were now
setting up booths in "cafeterias in high schools across the nation." While
the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Illinois reported that local
recruiters were "visiting each school about every three to four weeks." At
one school, administrators were forced to "clam[p] down on aggressive
recruiters" and bar at least one from ever returning to campus.

2. Green to Gray

The military has always filled its rolls primarily by targeting the
young, but these days the "old" are in its sights, too. In 2005, the Army
Reserves increased their maximum enlistment age from 35 to 40; then, later
that year, to 42. This year, regular Army green went grayer as well with a
similar two-step increase that boosted active duty enlistment eligibility to
42 years.

3. Back-Door Draft

Another group of old-timers has recently been targeted by the
military: the Marine Corps Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) -- troops who have
left active-duty status and transitioned back into civilian life. In August,
the Marines announced that they would begin making up for a shortage of
volunteers by "dipping into [this] rarely used pool of troops to fill
growing personnel gaps in units scheduled to deploy in coming months." As
the Boston Globe noted, it was "the first time since the invasion of Iraq
three years ago that Marine commanders have taken the extraordinary step of
drafting back into uniform those who have left the ranks."

For its part, the Army, according to the Washington Post, "has used
its IRR several times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It has mobilized
about 5,000 soldiers from that pool over the past five years, most of them
since the middle of 2004." CBS News reports that, from the Army Reserve,
"approximately 14,000 soldiers on IRR status have been called to active duty
since March 2003 and about 7,300 have been deployed to Iraq."

4. Rubber-Stamp Promotions

Earlier this year, the Army admitted that, to maintain desperately
needed numbers, it was forgoing almost any measure of quality when it came
to its officer corps. According to 2005 Pentagon figures, 97%% of all
eligible captains were promoted to major -- a significant jump from the
already historically high average of 70-80%%. "The problem here is that
you're not knocking off the bottom 20%%," one high-ranking Army officer at
the Pentagon told the Los Angeles Times. "Basically, if you haven't been
court-martialed, you're going to be promoted to major." Despite
near-guaranteed promotions, the San Antonio Express-News reported that the
"Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the
number rising to 3,300 in 2007."

5. Foreign Legion

In July, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee,
Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness David S. C. Chu listed
a series of inducements currently offered to get foreigners to risk life and
limb for Uncle Sam. These included: "President Bush's executive order
allowing non-citizens to apply for citizenship after only one day of
active-duty military service," a streamlined application process for service
members, and the elimination of "all application fees for non-citizens in
the military."

While noting that approximately 40,000 non-citizens are already
serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, Chu offered his own solution to the
immigration crisis. With the services denied the possibility of a draft, he
made a pitch for creating a true foreign legion from a group "potentially
interested in military service," the "estimated 50,000 to 65,000
undocumented alien young adults who entered the U.S. at an early age." Chu
then talked-up legislation like the DREAM Act -- which would give illegal
aliens the opportunity to, among other options, join the military as a
vehicle to conditional permanent resident status.

In addition to proposing a possible source of undocumented cannon
fodder that might prove less disturbing to Americans than their own sons and
daughters, Chu noted that the "military also has initiated several new
programs, including opportunities for those with language skills, which may
hold particular appeal for noncitizens." Just in case noncitizens aren't
thrilled to the depths by the chance to serve with the occupation forces in
Iraq, the Army promises expedited citizenship, quick advancement, and a host
of other perks -- including a boatload of cash. In addition to "foreign
language proficiency pay while on active duty," those willing to sell their
"Middle-Eastern language skills and join the U.S. Army as a Translator Aide.
in Iraq and Afghanistan" will receive an enlistment bonus of $10,000 -- a
sizable sum given yearly per capita incomes in those countries which hover
in the $800-$2000 range.

6. Mercenary Military

To solve its wo/manpower woes, the military has also enhanced its lure
at home -- in the form of "more recruiters and more financial incentives."
In some cases, this can mean enlistment bonuses as high as $40,000 for those
documented but poor Americans looking to put themselves directly in harm's
way for three years as an Army infantryman or explosive ordnance disposal
specialist -- markedly more than 2005 per-capita yearly income for African
Americans ($16,874), Hispanics ($14,483), and even non-Hispanic Whites
($28,946).

According to a recent Associated Press report, the Army is doling out
yet more fistfuls of taxpayer dollars to entice troops to reenlist -- "an
average bonus of $14,000, to eligible soldiers, for a total of $610 million
in extra payments."

Marine reenlistees seem to rake in the biggest bucks of all. This
July, Maj. Jerry Morgan, who runs the Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program,
told Stars and Stripes that "the maximum bonus has been raised. to $60,000
for Marines" serving in five critical military occupational specialties.

Add to these sums promised benefits of up to $71,424 and $23,292, for
active duty and reserve personnel respectively, to "help pay for college"
and you've got a potentially life-changing bribe, provided you still have a
life when that college acceptance finally comes through.

7. Abuse of Power

More recruiters waving more money has its pitfalls. Last year, amid a
swirl of complaints as recruiters struggled to meet monthly goals (including
tips to potential enlistees on how to pass drug tests), the Army suspended
all recruiting activities for a one-day nationwide "stand down" to reexamine
its methods and retrain its men. Just last month, however, the Government
Accountability Office issued a report showing that "between fiscal years
2004 and 2005, allegations and service-identified incidents of recruiter
wrongdoing increased, collectively, from 4,400 cases to 6,500 cases;
substantiated cases increased from just over 400 to almost 630 cases; and
criminal violations more than doubled from just over 30 to almost 70 cases."

What also came to light last month, courtesy of the Associated Press
was this revelation: "More than 100 young women who expressed an interest in
joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their
recruiters." According to one of the victim's lawyers, a recruiter "said to
her, outright, if you want to join the Marines, you have to have sex with
me. She was a virgin. She was 17 years old." Another teenage victim spelled
out the situation quite clearly, "The recruiter had all the power. He had
the uniform. He had my future. I trusted him."

8. Civilian Headhunters

Not surprisingly, given tough times and an administration that never
saw anything it couldn't imagine privatizing, the private headhunter has
landed on the military recruitment landscape. According to Renae Merle of
the Washington Post, as part of a pilot program that began in 2002, two
Virginia-based companies, Serco and MPRI Inc., "have more than 400
recruiters assigned across the country, and have signed up more than 15,000
soldiers. They are paid about $5,700 per recruit."

While these companies rake in the recruitment money, the mercenary
recruiters themselves reap cash bonuses, free gas cards, and suede jackets.
They can augment their base salary by about $30,000 a year by successfully
shuttling large numbers of aimless kids and others into the Armed Forces. As
has been true with the military's use of private contractors in all sorts of
roles in recent years, this step has drawn ire. According to Rep. Janice D.
Schakowsky (D-Illinois), "The use of contractors for this sensitive purpose,
dealing with the lives of young people, is troublesome." She was
particularly worried by the lack of oversight. Quality-control has been
another issue. While an Army report recommended continuing the $170 million
program, it also noted that the civilian headhunters "enlisted a lower
quality of recruit."

Yet the Army's less than complimentary assessment of the private
sector's performance didn't sway its officials from announcing in August
that they had awarded MPRI "a firm-fixed price requirements-type contract
for $11,196,996 as the base-period portion of an estimated $34,272,571
contract (if all options are exercised) for recruiting services to. be
performed at any of the Army's 1,700 recruiting stations nationwide."

9. How Low Can You Go?

Lowered standards have hardly remained the property of privateers
these days. As Brad Knickerbocker of the Christian Science Monitor noted,
"The Army has had to recruit more soldiers from the 'lowest acceptable'
category based on test scores, education levels, personal background, and
other indicators of ability." Even Undersecretary of Defense Chu admitted in
July that almost 40%% of all military recruits scored in the bottom half of
the Armed Forces' own aptitude test.

Other how-low-can-you-go indicators of the military's desperation are
now regularly surfacing in news reports. Here are two examples:

Last year, the New York Times reported that two Ohio recruiters were
quick to sign up a recruit "fresh from a three-week commitment in a
psychiatric ward. even after the man's parents told them he had bipolar
disorder -- a diagnosis that would disqualify him." After senior officers
found out, the mentally ill man's enlistment was canceled, but in
"[i]nterviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states," the Times
heard others talk of "concealing mental-health histories and police
records," among other illicit practices.

In May of this year, the Oregonian reported that Army recruiters,
using hard sell tactics and offering thousands of dollars in enlistment
bonus money, signed up an autistic teenager "for the Army's most dangerous
job: cavalry scout." The boy, who had been enrolled in "special education
classes since preschool" and through "a special program for disabled
workers.ha[d] a part-time job scrubbing toilets and dumping trash," didn't
even know the U.S. was at war in Iraq until his parents explained it to him
after he was first approached by a recruiter. Only following a flurry of
negative publicity, did the Army announce that it would release the autistic
teen from his enlistment obligation.

10. Armed and Considered Dangerous

In 2004, the Pentagon instituted a "Moral Waiver Study" whose
seemingly benign goal was "to better define relationships between
pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." That turned out to
mean opening the recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal
records. In February of this year, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was "a
significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms
'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that
included: "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving
stolen property and making terrorist threats." From 2004 to 2005, the number
of those recruits had spiked by over 54%%, while alcohol and illegal drug
waivers, reversing a four-year downward trend, increased by over 13%%.

In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill
the ranks, the Army had been allowing in increasing numbers of "recruits
convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records."
In fact, as the military's own data indicated, "the percentage of recruits
entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has
more than doubled since 2001."

One beneficiary of the Army's new moral-waiver policies gained a
certain prominence this summer. After Steven D. Green, who served in the
Army's 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder
in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been "a high-school
dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life,
yet was sent home early because of an 'anti-social personality disorder.'"
Recently, Eli Flyer, a former Pentagon senior military analyst and
specialist on "the relationship between military recruiting and military
misconduct" told Harper's Magazine that Green had actually "enlisted with a
moral waiver for at least two drug- or alcohol-related offenses. He
committed a third alcohol-related offense just before enlistment, which led
to jail time, though this offense may not have been known to the Army when
he enlisted."

With Green in jail awaiting trial, the Houston Chronicle reported in
August that Army recruiters were trolling around the outskirts of a
Dallas-area job fair for ex-convicts. "We're looking for high school
graduates with no more than one felony on their record," one recruiter said.

The Army has even looked behind prison bars for fill-in recruits -- in
one reported case, a "youth prison" in Ogden, Utah. Although Steven Price
had asked to see a recruiter while still incarcerated and was "barely 17
when he enlisted last January," his divorced parents say "recruiters used
false promises and forged documents to enlist him." While confusion exists
about whether the boy's mother actually signed a parental consent form
allowing her son to enlist, his "father apparently wasn't even at the
signing, but his name is on the form too."

11. Gang Warfare

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, law enforcement officials report
that the military is now "allowing more applicants with gang tattoos because
they are under the gun to keep enlistment up." They also note that "gang
activity may be rising among soldiers." The paper was provided with "photos
of military buildings and equipment in Iraq that were vandalized with
graffiti of gangs based in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities."

Last month, the Sun-Times reported that a gang member facing federal
charges of murder and robbery enlisted in the Marine Corps "while he was
free on bond -- and was preparing to ship out to boot camp when Marine
officials recently discovered he was under indictment." While this
particular recruit was eventually booted from the Corps, a Milwaukee Police
Detective and Army veteran, who serves on the federal drug and gang task
force that arrested the would-be Marine, noted that other "[g]ang-bangers
are going over to Iraq and sending weapons back. gang members are getting
access to military training and weapons."

Earlier this year, it was reported that an expected transfer of
10,000-20,000 troops to Fort Bliss, Texas caused FBI and local law
enforcement to fear "a turf war" between "members of the Folk Nation
gang.[and] a criminal group that is already well-established in the area,
Barrio Azteca." The New York Sun wrote that, according to one FBI agent,
"Folk Nation, which was founded in Chicago and includes several branches
using the name Gangster Disciples, has gained a foothold in the Army."

12. Trading Desert Camo for White Sheets

Another type of "gang" member has also begun to proliferate within the
military, evidently thanks to lowered recruitment standards and an
increasing urge by recruiters to look the other way. In July, a study by the
Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia
groups, found that -- due to pressing manpower concerns -- "large numbers of
neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" are now serving the military. "Recruiters
are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed
forces and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we
positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Scott
Barfield, a Defense Department investigator quoted in the report.

The New York Times noted that the neo-Nazi magazine Resistance is
actually recruiting for the U.S. military "urg[ing] skinheads to join the
Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units." As the magazine
explained, "The coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be
very much an infantryman's war. It will be house-to-house. until your town
or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where
they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.'"

Apparently, the recruiting push has worked. Barfield reported that he
and other investigators have identified a network of neo-Nazi active-duty
Army and Marine personnel spread across five military installations in five
states. "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about
recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within
the military." Little wonder that "Aryan Nations graffiti" is now apparently
competing for space among American inner-city gang graffiti in Iraq.

Force Transformation

When the American war in Vietnam finally ground to a halt, the U.S.
military was in a state of disarray, if not near-disintegration. Uniformed
leaders vowed never-again to allow the military to be degraded to such a
point.

A generation later, as the ever less appetizing-looking wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan spiral on without end, an overstretched Army and Marine
Corps have clearly become desperate. At a remarkable cost in dollars,
effort, and lowered standards, recruiting and retention numbers are being
maintained for now. The result: U.S. ground forces are increasingly made up
of a motley mix of underage teens, old-timers, foreign fighters,
gang-bangers, neo-Nazis, ex-cons, inferior officers and a host of
near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big payouts and
promises.

In the latter half of the Vietnam War, as the breakdown was occurring,
American troops began to scrawl "UUUU" on their helmet liners -- an
abbreviation that stood for "the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing
the unnecessary for the ungrateful." The U.S. ground forces of 2007 and
beyond, fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other war du jour may
increasingly resemble the collapsing military of the Vietnam War, the band
of criminal misfits sent behind enemy lines during World War II in the
classic Vietnam-era film, The Dirty Dozen, or the janissaries of the old
Ottoman Empire.

With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq, even
ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, and the Pentagon pulling out ever
more stops and sinking to new lows in recruitment and retention, a new
all-volunteer generation of UUUU's may emerge -- the underachieving, unable,
unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable, unhealthy,
undesirable, unloved, uncivil, and even un-American, all led by the
unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful. Current practices
suggest this may well be the force of the future. It certainly isn't the new
military Donald Rumsfeld's been promising all these years, but there's no
denying the depth of the transformation.

Nick Turse is the Associate Editor and Research Director of
TomDispatch.com. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation,
the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch. Articles from his recent
Los Angeles Times series, "The War Crimes Files" can be found here.