"I knew I was going into the military," he said. But that hope came crashing down Wednesday when an Army recruiter informed him that a minor marijuana case stemming from his senior year at Carmel Valley High School in 2004 has made him morally unfit for t
up and said.
"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:
("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")
I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm
sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench
'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints
off to Washington."
With the trouble the US Army is having recruiting and retaining personnel, you'd think they'd wave this idiocy and let these guys in.
Thats the issue, they are not having a problem recruiting or retaining people, with the recession more and more people are flocking to the military because they think its easy to get in.
Its kinda happening in Canada, but we dont recruit as aggressively as the Americans and civilians know next to nothing about the CF. So every so often a trade will meet its quota for recruits but it doesnt last long, and we still have many trades that are seriously under manned.
Kids would rather be like that guy they saw in the movies, than be a Lineman or an AVN Tech.
I do have a problem when someone says something like "I took it once or twice" 6 years ago. Well what is it? Once or twice? I'm sure if you took it more than once you'd remember. The only time the number of incidents are going to get cloudy are when you've taken it many times and have lost count. Add on he got busted for it and I really have to wonder, he took it just once and was so unlucky that this was also the one time he got busted?
regardless of this questionable character I think if ones been free of minor (like smoked one joint) drug use from their teens for five or more years they should be given the benefit of the doubt they are not going to become a dope head for life.
Ya I agree that he may be a wonderful citizen and may some day still serve his country, but he is going to have to wait until his military wants him.