DanMargarita.com

Several news outlets have reported that the U.S. military, in an effort to boost sagging recruitment numbers, has simply lowered the aptitude standards for recruits in order to increase their numbers. So far, the military has yet to feature that as a recruitment ad.

“Can’t tie your own shoes, but want to kill people?”

Some 17 percent recruits were accepted despite “medical, moral or criminal problems” according to the Associated Press. While the “criminal problems” are misdemeanor arrests such as drunk driving (hopefully they‘ll be assigned to the infantry, not the tank corps), SFGate reports that Dallas area recruiters have been looking to ex-convicts “with no more than one felony on their record” as Army material.

Movie buffs will recall that this was essentially the plot of “The Dirty Dozen” in which several U.S. soldiers on death row during WW II, are given a reprieve to volunteer for a suicide mission.

There have even been stories of convicted felons, such as admitted arsonist Bob Gidding, serving in the armed forces. Recruiting felons may not be such a bad thing, if you think about it. The most serious felony would definitely be murder. Who better to send into combat that somebody with previous experience? An airline would never hire a pilot who’s never flown a plane, so sending non-murderers makes little sense. You’re asking someone to kill another human being, which goes against every moral instinct for the average person, so why not get someone to whom it wouldn’t bother.

Then there’s armed robbery. Okay, so maybe you don’t want to kill the enemy. If you’re inclined to hold them at gunpoint and take their weapons, cash and jewelry, you can keep them from doing you harm. Better yet, there’s good ol’ fashioned burglary. If we could find the terrorists’ hideouts, we could get burglars to sneak in, steal their stuff and leave. That way no one gets hurt.

Arsonist could be valuable in combat. Why waste ammunition when you can smoke the enemy out of their hiding place?

Although rape happens in wartime, it is certainly not acceptable in “civilized” warfare unless you’re Attila the Hun.

Bribery is listed as a felony, but I don’t think we can get too many white collar criminals to join the military…but if we could, I’m all for giving the enemy theater and ballgame tickets or golfing junkets if it will get them to lay down their arms.

Another felony is operating a lottery. Okay, I see no reason how that could help or even why that should be a felony, for that matter.

We could send an army of felony bigamists over there, and they would fit right in. Osama bin Laden is one of 52 kids and I assume, no, I pray that his father had more than one wife.

The Boston Globe reported that the Pentagon is considering recruiting foreigners to serve in the armed forces. That’s understandable. The saying is that the illegals are “doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do.” We can’t get Americans to pick lettuce, so getting them to volunteer to fight in Iraq is even more of a challenge. This could be bizarre for foreigners, if some are deployed to the Mexican border to keep Mexicans from crossing the border illegally, as many have suggested. This could lead to someone being charged with the job of keeping his own family out of the country.

If these don’t work out, there’s always the tried-and-true method of luring people into the military---the draft.