Neo-con Regime Crumbling

Wishful thinking department?
I've been beating this drum for a couple of months now, that is, the end for Bush-Rove is near. So here's my latest op ed for the Progressive Media Project in support of this light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel think:

Pentagon Going Too Far With Teen Database
By Ed Morales

Now we know what "No Child Left Behind" really means.
The recent revelation that the Defense
Department has begun working with a private
marketing firm to create a database of high
school students for the purposes of military
recruitment is troubling. And it should concern
all Americans who believe the administration's
claim that it will not institute a draft.
This effort, in addition to other
measures taken to spur enlistment, greatly
undermines the idea that service in the armed
forces today is purely voluntary.
A month after the U.S. Army suspended
recruiting efforts for a day because of
recruiting excesses, the Defense Department
announced it has contracted with BeNow Inc. of
Wakefield, Mass., to create a database of high
school students between 16 and 18 years of age.
The database will contain personal
information, including birthdates, Social
Security numbers, E-mail addresses, grade point
averages, ethnicities and academic concentrations.
It's a program that privacy advocates
feel goes too far. Many people have written the
Pentagon, insisting that the collection of this
information violates the Privacy Act.
What's more, with leakages of sensitive
information by large information-gathering firms
in the headlines seemingly every day, the
collection of data such as Social Security
numbers exposes U.S. teenagers to the risk of
identity theft.
The Pentagon says the information will be
protected by the use of passwords and other forms
of encryption. But the Pentagon also says it
reserves the right to share the data with law
enforcement and tax authorities without notifying
citizens.
This new initiative is only the latest --
and more extensive -- stage of a recruiting
technique that began with a little known
provision of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.
School systems that refused to provide personal
data to military recruiters have been at risk of
losing federal funds ever since.
Recruiters have already been using this
data to contact students at home, something that
has had some parents on edge.
While the Pentagon has stated that any
student or parent can "opt out" of the new data
collection system and avoid being contacted for
recruitment, they still must provide the
information, which the Pentagon says will be kept
in a separate "suppression file."
These measures have been taken on
the heels of several abuses by military
recruiters that recently came to light.
Recruiters often face heavy pressures to meet
yearly quotas. One teen in the Houston area
recorded a conversation with a recruiter who
threatened him with a warrant for arrest if he
did not show up for a scheduled interview.
The Bush administration is between a rock
and a hard place. It needs to maintain adequate
levels of recruitment for a war that is becoming
increasingly unpopular with the American public,
and it has promised not to reinstate the draft.
The creation of the Pentagon database is
a desperate measure taken by a military that no
longer appeals to our young people, even those
with little hope for academic or professional
success.
With a failed Iraq war that continues to
tally growing fatalities every day, the military
and the Bush administration need to stop
intruding into teenagers' lives and start
focusing on pulling out of Iraq.

Ed Morales is a contributor to Newsday in New York, and author of "Living in Spanglish" (St. Martin's Press, 2002). He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

© Ed Morales