The 21-year-old’s parents told recruiters their son has a bipolar disorder and was fresh out of a three-week commitment in a psychiatric facility. But, reports the NYT, he was “all set to be shipped to boot camp, and perhaps Iraq … before senior officers found out and canceled the enlistment.”

[A]nother 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.”

So, just who is fighting for our country these days?
More from the New York Times, reprinted at Truthout:

   Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions. Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military’s aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way. And they voiced doubts about the quality of some troops destined for the front lines.

    The recruiters insisted on anonymity to avoid being disciplined, but their accounts were consistent, and the specifics were verified in several cases by documents and interviews with military officials and applicants’ families.

    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. …

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