In short this is a NON-STORY. The good news is that if the NY Times is wasting space on �news� like this they�re not using that space to publish state secrets.

Yes, and no.
You're quite correct, and that there is no 'there' there. one I think you're missing, is the real story here; who has it that would benefit by miscasting the U.S. military has a bunch of racist killers?

More, why is our domestic press, particularly the New York Times, so willing to spread this idea ?

Should we be concerned that this is already happening on a massive scale? Almost certainly not. The military are certainly aware of the potential problem, as illustrated by Dale's excellent post, and have taken precautions.

Lesson? Don't let the ACLU sue the military for investigating recruits with suspicious taboos. Or, put more generally, don't let military service begin to be treated as a Constitutional right.

1) Salt is supposed to be hazardous to your health - high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, etc.. Since to swallow a NYT story you have to swallow several million grains of salt, maybe the Times should be required to start displaying "Hazardous to your Health" warnings like the ones on cigarette packages.

2) If anybody is tempted to believe the wild ass guess of "thousands" of these boogie men, I refer them to a book called "Damned Lies and Statistics Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians and Activists" publishe by - Gott Sei Dank! - The University of California Press.

The original document - not necessariitly the summary press release or the NYT rehash - quotes 2 current sources - a "Department of Defense investigator" (whatever that is) and an Air Force Office of Special Investigations guy. When I was in the Air Force decades ago, OSI guys were notable for only 2 things: 1)the cheap sport coats they wore; 2) their ability to keep their yaps shut. I guess these 2 guys - if they actually exist - have caught the Babbles from the New York Times.

Could it be that the NYT is so increasingly desperate about it's declining prestige that it is willing to publish anything that is detrimental about the only institution left that is highly reguarded - the armed forces.

I was also a Drill Instructor at MCRD, San Diego from 1995 - 1997. There were several occasions during my two years there that I or another DI found gang/nazi tatoos on a recruit's body. Anytime we found a tatoo like that we pulled the recruit in the duty hut and questioned him regarding his beliefs sytem and then we forwarded a report (verbally or in writing) to our Series Officer (usually a 1stLt or Capt) recommending whether or not to keep the individual in the Corps. The chain of command then made its determination.

Are there Neo-Nazis in the military...undoubtedly. Thousands of them...I doubt it. When they are found (they don't advertise their beliefs usually) they are processed for discharge for unsuitability if the chain of command deems it necessary.

In short this is nothing to worry about. You have to remember that America's military is a reflection of America (usually a better reflection I believe).

I did find it rather interesting that the story cited a defense investigator as saying that "We have grafitti in Bahgdad. Using that as the test we could come to the conclusion that thousands of people in the military "roll their S--- in little balls and write on S---house walls."

In short this is a NON-STORY. The good news is that if the NY Times is wasting space on "news" like this they're not using that space to publish state secrets.

My concern is that there is no _planning_ for what GWOT is going to cost, even within a single year. Ever since we started this thing, all costs associated directly with GWOT operations - the maintenance, travel, combat pay, ammo, etc, etc - have been covered each year by a (sometimes more than one, IIRC) supplemental request to the Congress. That's on top of whatever the Pres already asked for that year as the "regular" DoD budget.

This causes a number of problems... for one, the services have to fund combat ops out of other buckets of money until they get those supplementals, and those buckets don't always get filled back up with what was taken. Then, there's the fact that each year's budget requests become more and more guesswork as the cost of 'doing business' in Iraq (specifically, civilian contracts) goes up. This in turn makes it very difficult to determine the actual amount of money GWOT operations are costing, or likely to cost in the future. And all of this makes it impossible to do any kind of logistics planning or run an efficient procurement system.

No fair bringing facts into this. The SPLC says it, it must be true.

The SPLC exists by defining such groups in order to keep the fundraising going. They or some other alarmist group make this same claim or another like it with great regularity.

As for McVeigh, Kevin Hayden, the FBI and CID investigations showed that his crime was unrelated whatsoever to the military or his service in it. I know because I took part in the investigation.

Well, the New York Times is hyperventilating again. This time(s) it's, "Hate Groups Are Infiltrating The Military, Group Asserts."
A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting s...

The problem is that the NYT ran with a SPLC press release--cribbing much of the piece word for word, I might add--without so much as a mention of the fact that the SPLC is an activist group. They took a series of suppositions, assertions, and anecdotes by this group and passed it off as a "study." In fact, there's not much to it. I've linked the SPLC "report" in the story above. There's just not much there.

Could there be a split in the Militant Right between WASPs and non-WASP pundits on this one?

Any mention of Neo_Nazi groups using the U.S. military to gain fighting expertise, especially when it quotes an Army inspector, is something that should be taken seriously until its been totally investigated in my opinion.

(The same goes for gangs, and other extremist political/religious groups.)

But I don't see that from right wing WASPS in this. There's a rush to play down the whole issue. That worries me a lot.

Regards, Cernig

I know this may be a conservative view of the world, but there are some constitutional restrictions on how far out the money can be allocated.

"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;"

Given that we are on a yearly budget cycle, its not to amazing that things are less than perfect. You might want to read up on some GOP efforts to go to a two year budget cycle.

http://instapundit.com/archives/030903.php