meta-roj

and we’re not talking about terrorists and secret bunkers… we’re talking about children in american high schools.

i remember filling out the “selective service registration” paperwork, and that was awkward on its own, but now, it seems the pentagon’s decided that that information isn’t quite specific enough, and they’ve enlisted help from companies that do america best – marketing companies.

Pentagon Creating Student Database [washington post, 2005.06.22]

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

…

School systems that fail to provide that information risk losing federal funds, although individual parents or students can withhold information that would be transferred to the military by their districts.

…

Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers’ license records and other sources, including information already held by the military.

…

The Pentagon’s statements added that anyone can “opt out” of the system by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate “suppression file.” That file will be matched with the full database regularly to ensure that those who do not wish to be contacted are not, according to the Pentagon.

trust us. we’re from the government.

truly a gem, since we were promised a quick and clean war and… no draft, right? not even considering.

if you’ll allow me a moment to comment on that comment – i think it’s the pentagon’s job to plan for wars. i’d much rather have the pentagon planning wars the conducting wars. i’d like to think that aside from the whiz-bang technology gadgets we buy with pentagon money that somewhere in that budget is enough money to cook up, consider and come up with a strategy for every concievable war situation… including the draft.

the new draft won’t be called a draft. it will precisely target (with military precision) vulnerable, under-employed individuals that are not contributing enough to the domestic economy, and bludgeon them with sales pitches about the glory of military service.

update: picked up in slate (and unfortunately, they picked up the link before i fixed the typos). no worries; sorry about the url. hi slate.