They Still Aren't Accepting War Criminals, So It's OK
Written a bad check? Smoked a joint? Killed someone with your car? Good news: You can still sign up to go shoot at people and/or be blown up by roadside bombs!
The Army has employed a variety of tactics to expand its diminishing pool of recruits ... It has also increased the number of so-called "moral waivers" to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army's moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.
Sorry, sodomites: despite the sound of it, "moral waivers" are not available for ass-fucking.
The Marines are the ones who use these the most -- more than half of its recruits needed one -- as you need a waiver to join the Corps even if your entire drug history is limited to a single incident of marijuana use. The other services will let you in if you've only smoked pot once. Because so many people smoke pot once and exactly once. Yeah.
Liberal whiners are of course pissed off about this.
"If you are recruiting somebody who has demonstrated some sort of antisocial behavior and then you are a putting a gun in their hands, you have to be awfully careful about what you are doing," Mr. Hutson [dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire and former judge advocate general of the Navy] said. "You are not putting a hammer in their hands, or asking them to sell used cars. You are potentially asking them to kill people."
And who better? Especially if you're asking them to start ramming insurgents with their cars.
Army Giving More Waivers In Recruiting [NYT]
Military Accepting More Recruits With Criminal Records [Fox]