The Associated Press is running yet another story about how the US military is recruiting felons into the force:

Under pressure to meet combat needs, the Army and Marine Corps brought in significantly more recruits with felony convictions last year than in 2006, including some with manslaughter and sex crime convictions.

Data released by a congressional committee shows the number of soldiers admitted to the Army with felony records jumped from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007. And the number of Marines with felonies rose from 208 to 350. [Lolita C. Baldor - AP]

As always with these articles absolutely no context is provided.  Over 180,000 soldiers were recruited into the military last year and only 903 recruits needed a waiver.  That is .005016% of all recruits that needed a waiver which is hardly of concern.  Also the claim that felony waivers are needed to meet recruiting numbers doesn’t hold up either.  In 2007 the US Army recruited 80,635 soldiers.  511 of the soldiers had the felony waivers.  If the US Army did not allow in every recruit with a felony waiver they still would have met the recruiting mission of 80,000 soldiers in 2007.  The Marines on the other hand recruited 32,377 Marines.  They allowed in 350 with the felony waivers.  If these 350 recruits were not allowed to join the Marines they still would have barely missed their recruiting goal of 32,301 new recruits in 2007.

The other important thing to realize is that these waivers are only issued on a case by case basis and signed off on by a senior field grade officer.  The vast majority of the waivers are thefts and drug crimes:

According to the data released Monday, a bit more than half of the Army’s 511 convictions in 2007 were for various types of thefts, ranging from burglaries to bad checks and stolen cars. Another 130 were for drug offenses.

So if a teenager writes a bad check, shoplifts, or gets caught smoking marijuana, according to this AP journalist they shouldn’t be allowed in the military?  If anything these are probably people that need to join the military to learn discipline.

Here is what the more serious crimes by recruits were:

The remainder, however, included two in 2007 for manslaughter, compared to one in 2006; five for sexual crimes (which can include rape, incest or sexual assaults) compared to two in 2006; and three for negligent or vehicular homicide, compared to two in 2006. Two received waivers for terrorist threats including bomb threats in 2007, compared to one in 2006.

First of all look at how small these numbers are.  These 12 soldiers could have been barred from joining and it would have made no difference to the military.  Some senior field grade officer reviewed their cases and signed off on them enlisting.  If the AP writer would do some real journalism she could have figured out the details of these crimes.  Was the manslaughter convictions caused because somebody was drag racing and rolled their car killing someone inside?  If so should that bar somebody from enlisting?  Could the sexual assaults be because someone grabbed some girls butt in high school?  What are the details?  It is only 12 soldiers.  How are these soldiers performing while enlisted?

This is where the real story is, how are these soldiers with waivers performing?  I guess that would actually take some real reporting to determine which it appears journalists are more and more unwilling to do and instead sensationalize a non-story as this where .005016% of new recruits have these felony waivers.  Hardly a sign of the collapse of the US military as this AP writer tries to allude people to believe.