AssKissinger wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080421/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/military_felons
Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions
The military has always had these recruitment procedures and if you look at the examples cited in the article, you can see why they could be waivered. They have many classes of waivers. My brother-in-law even had to get a waiver because he had too many kids and he had a Master's Degree.
There is no particular "pressure to meet combat needs." The position requirements of the military for combat or non-combat slots ebb and flow, so every few years they will lower requirements, such as accepting non-HS graduates, but when they do allow such exceptions those recruits are pushed to graduate through courses, or GED testing, or they will not progress.
This is again the elitist view that the AP dearly loves in order to paint the military as the poor, dumb, felons from poverty and ghettos in the big cities. Shades of John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) and his infamous "if you don't study, you'll end up in Iraq." During Vietnam it was widely espoused by the drive0bys that only blacks (or the majority of blacks) were being drafted and as a result were being killed off at a higher rate by the white establishment. This was totally false, but thanks to the drive-bys portrayals, how many new it to be false?
