That racist military line again

Reuters is dredging up the skinhead military boogeyman again…in the wake of the gay shooter, Floyd Corkins, at the Family Research Council last week. I guess they’re trying to wave off speculation about his motivation by bringing up Wade Page and the shooting at the Sikh Temple a few weeks ago. Page has become the latest Timothy McVeigh – the crazy vet bent on destroying the world. Of course, they lean heavily on “research” by the Southern Poverty Law Center – you know, those guys who probably influenced Corkins to start his thwarted rampage at the Family Research Council by calling the FRC a hate group. Like they called the American Legion a hate group a few years back.

But anyway, Reuters and SPLC are trying to scare the crap out of the country;

If this scenario [a race war] seems like fantasy or bluster, civil rights organizations take it as deadly serious, especially given recent events. Former U.S. Army soldier Wade Page opened fire with a 9mm handgun at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5, murdering six people and critically wounding three before killing himself during a shootout with police.

Yeah, the only “civil rights organization” they quote in the whole piece is the SPLC who sees hate behind every blade of grass. And you’d think that an article like that would have some facts about someone who has been in the military in recent years, but no, the whole article is about people who left the military in the 90s, about incidences of so-called hate crimes that happened in more than a decade ago. ANd they still blame Bush;

[Matt Kennard] argues the U.S. military was so desperate for troops while fighting simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it allowed extremists, felons and gang members into the armed forces.

The military can grant a “moral waiver” to allow a convicted criminal or otherwise ineligible person into the armed forces, and the percentage of recruits granted such waivers grew from 16.7 percent in 2003 to 19.6 percent in 2006, according to Pentagon data obtained by the Palm Center in a 2007 Freedom of Information Act request. But the Pentagon says no waiver exists for participation in extremist organizations.

Kennard just wrote a book called “Irregular Army: How the U.S. Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror”. An entire book about recruiting criminals during the war on terror and still no examples in the article about these skinheads that supposedly populate the military in the here and now. How can that be? Maybe because “the Pentagon says no waiver exists for participation in extremist organizations.”

“This is the best we’ve ever seen,” said Heidi Beirich, leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s intelligence project, referring to the Pentagon’s attitude. “It was really disheartening under the Bush administration how lightly they took it, so this is a major advance.”

Yeah, it was Bush. It couldn’t have been that there was no real problem, could it?

Ya know, if I worked for the SPLC, I’d do some real research about militant gays who shoot unarmed black security guards in the middle of downtown DC and find out what motivates them. Or what makes college professors shoot up their colleagues, something useful besides looking for boogeymen in the military.

It’s almost as if there’s a concerted effort to write off the military in an election year. But, I guess I’m just being silly.

Category: Liberals suck, Military issues