Het failliete Amerika 9

Een van de redenen waarom Nederlandse militairen in Afghanistan de taken van de Amerikanen moeten overnemen is domweg het feit dat de Amerikaanse overheid failliet is en bovendien niet genoeg soldaten kan werven. De situatie begint zo nijpend te worden dat nu ook misdadigers worden geronseld voor het leger. Salon. Com bericht: 'Out of jail, into the Army. Facing an enlistment crisis, the Army is granting "waivers" to an increasingly high percentage of recruits with criminal records -- and trying to hide it.

We're transforming our military. The things I look for are the following: morale, retention, and recruitment. And retention is high, recruitment is meeting goals, and people are feeling strong about the mission.
-- George W. Bush, in a Jan. 26 press conference.

According to statistics provided to Salon by the office of the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, the Army said that 17 percent (21,880 new soldiers) of its 2005 recruits were admitted under waivers. Put another way, more soldiers than are in an entire infantry division entered the Army in 2005 without meeting normal standards. This use of waivers represents a 42 percent increase since the pre-Iraq year of 2000. (All annual figures used in this article are based on the government's fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. So fiscal year 2006 began Oct. 1, 2005.) In fact, even the already high rate of 17 percent underestimates the use of waivers, as the Pentagon combined the Army's figures with the lower ones for reserve forces to dilute the apparent percentage. Equally significant is the Army's currently liberal use of "moral waivers," which are issued to recruits who have committed what are loosely defined as criminal offenses. Officially, the Pentagon states that most waivers issued on moral grounds are for minor infractions like traffic tickets. Yet documents obtained by Salon show that many of the offenses are more serious and include drunken driving and domestic abuse. Last year, 37 percent of the Army's waivers (about 8,000 soldiers) were based on moral grounds. Like waivers as a whole, these waivers are proliferating -- they're 32 percent higher than in the prewar year of 2000. As a result, the odds are going up that the soldiers fighting and taking the casualties in Iraq entered the Army with a criminal record.' Lees verder: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/02/waivers/ Of
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020206F.shtml En dit criminele systeem wordt direct gesteund door de meerderheid van de Nederlandse volksvertegenwoordigers, nu die meerderheid beslist heeft nog meer militairen naar oorlogsgebied te sturen.