A New York Times story, a Southern Poverty Law Center report, and a Boing-Boing hat tip for pointing out that racist creeps (low-life scum on par with islamofascist terrorists, as far as I’m concerned) are still finding a way into the military. from the SPLC report:

Ten years after Pentagon leaders toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel — a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division — large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world’s best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.

Neo-Nazis “stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they’re inside, and they are hard-core,” Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. “We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,” he added. “That’s a problem.”

These folks shouldn’t be in the military to begin with, and those who are found out should be given immediate dishonorable discharges. But that’s not happening:

The defense secretary at the time, William Perry, said the rules were meant to leave no room for racist and extremist activities within the military. But the report said Mr. Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, Wash., had said that he had provided evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year, but that only two had been discharged. He also said there was an online network of neo-Nazis.

“They’re communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military,” he said. “Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq.”

The whole law center report is worth reading, and it has chilling details of some of the ideas these folks have for some sort of coming race war in the U.S. The Times story is obviously little more than a cut-and-paste of the original report, so it’s less worthwhile.

How extensive the population of extremist racists in the military is obviously impossible to gauge, since the scum know better than to advertise their presence. But training any of these vermin on the taxpayer’s dollar is too much, and something needs to be done. Zero tolerance. Of course, in the current climate of recruitment quotas not being met and bodies needed on the front lines in Iraq, I doubt that’ll happen.

The sick irony is that, while we’re trying to battle terrorists abroad, we may be enabling more of the home-grown variety.

Via the NYT: Many on Base-Closings Panel Question Estimate of Savings.

When has a government estimate of costs or savings ever ended up to be on target? For one thing, such cost/savings estimates are difficult to do in the first place and more importantly the politicians and bureaucrats who do them know, consciously or unconsciously, that they won’t be around to face the heat when the tie comes to determine if the original numbers were good or not.

In this case we are talking about a twenty year period:

A majority of the members of the independent commission assessing the Pentagon’s proposed list of domestic base closings say that the Defense Department probably overstated the nearly $50 billion in savings projected over 20 years, perhaps by nearly 50 percent.

And this is pretty typical as well when it comes to long-term cost estimates:

After scores of base visits and public hearings, most of the commission members interviewed said they now agreed with a report issued this summer by federal investigators that concluded that nearly half of the Pentagon’s projected savings came from cuts in military jobs that, in many cases

Of course, on the flip side, the article does note that while there may well be replacements for eliminated jobs, some (exact numbers not given) will come in the form of new positions related the modernization and restructuring of the military. The movements are not just about movements per se, but are supposed to be about force realignments and restructuring due to changes in mission. If done right these movements and closures are supposed to help transform the military from a Cold War posture to one better geared to the war on terror.

Indeed, the ultimate goal here is supposed to be strategic, not economic. The economic is the political selling point to try and assuage the losses specific communities and states will feel due to closures:

“Military value trumps everything,” said Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., a retired Navy officer on the panel. “It’s very likely that we’ll support a Defense Department recommendation even if it couldn’t demonstrate the payback, if we were absolutely convinced the military value was significant. But the burden of proof would be on them.”