The Pentagon’s Recruitment Strategies

Re “Military Enlists Marketer to Get Data on Students for Recruiters,” June 23: You don’t have to declare your allegiance to conservative or liberal thinking to be horrified by the Pentagon’s plans to delve into the personal information of 16- to 18-year-old high school students.

Using the No Child Left Behind Act to develop a database, military recruiters will pry into the lives of innocent children to restock their dwindling ranks.

This is an assault on American families as well as their children. It is also an assault on democracy in America.

Consider that many teachers in America have declared the mindless No Child Left Behind Act to be a failure in planning and execution; actually, it was simply a political con game.

And now we know that this program was merely a Trojan horse built by the Bush administration’s warlords at the Pentagon for military recruitment.

When an illegal war causes the deaths of more than 1,700 American soldiers and thousands more innocent Iraqis, military recruitment offices start to look like dusters in the abandoned oil fields of Texas. So, what’s the Bush Pentagon solution? Welcome to this century’s “1984.”

David Ohman

Irvine

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As a former naval officer and a lifelong Democrat, I have a cheap, efficient method for the Pentagon to find potential recruits. Simply cross-reference all citizens under 35 with registered Republicans -- voila! An instant pool of candidates who should be eager to fight this president’s wars.

John Maloney

Anaheim