While the United states Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Iraq, the Philippines and west Africa defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” Republican (fascist/socialist) President George W. Bush, at a press conference praises the recruiting and readiness standards of the Armed Forces: “We’re transforming our military.  The things I look for are the following: morale, retention, and recruitment.  And retention is high, recruitment is meeting goals, and people are feeling strong about the mission.”

       NOTE: The truth is U.s. Armed Forces have been lowering its standards into order to meet its recruiting goals.  In 2005, the Army missed its target by eight percent, and the Air National Guard, by 14 percent.  To help cover these recruitment shortages the Armed Forces have increasingly relied upon granting waivers, for criminal offenses, to otherwise ineligible recruits.  Although waivers are supposed to be used only for misdemeanor offenses, they have been increasingly used to admit recruits with convictions for assault, breaking and entering, domestic violence—for which no exceptions are supposed to be granted—drug possession and trafficking, drunken driving, and possession of stolen property.  The percentage of waivers granted in 2005 was 17 percent (more than enough to fill an entire infantry division).  This is up from 10% in 2000.

       [added 2/4/2024]

       Fallout from 9-1-1: While the United States Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Iraq, the Philippines and west Africa defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” the Intelligence Unit, of the Baltimore, maryland, statute enforcement Department, reports to the National Security Agency, on the activities of the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, an antiwar organization; collecting license numbers, inspecting “vehicles” (a legal term for an “automobile or truck” bearing goods, services or persons in commercial transit) with canine units, citing antiwar protestors for “disturbances on government property.”

       [added 8/22/2020]

       The Placer County (California) statute enforcement Department, arrests Steve Kubby, former Libertarian (constitutionalist) gubernatorial candidate, upon his deportation from the Dominion of Canada.  Kubby, who suffers from pheochromocytoma, a cancer that afflicts the adrenal glands, which does not respond to chemotherapy.

       Postscript: The county jail denied Kubby, either Marinol, or medicinal marijuana, for treatment of his condition.

       [added 2/4/2024] Thanks to Chuck McGlawn for this entry.