I GUESS IT'S CONTAGIOUS

From Pandagon:

Wagner: "But when the questions turn to safety, some Tri-state recruiters make Iraq sound more like a trip to Tahiti than a journey to war."

Recruiter: "You have more chance of dying here in the United States at, what is it, 36-percent die, kill rate here in the United States, people here just dying left and right, you have more chance of dying over here than you do over there."

Wagner: "The U.S. does not have a 36-percent kill rate. If that were true, more than 100 million people, one-third of the U.S. population, would be killed each year."

Based on this report, military recruiters are having a wild time lying habitually to potential recruits about conditions in Iraq. The Army is, of course, in a much publicized recent move, temporarily halting recruiting efforts to investigate the process, and this is to their credit. However, one must wonder that if the top levels of the military chain of command -- notably the Pentagon and the Commander in Chief -- create a culture of deception and lies about the war effort (going back to "everything they said between summer '02 and the start of the war), then perhaps this culture trickles down.