DRUG TEST KITS A SAD COMMENTARY ON SLIPPING STANDARD

Even if you don't live in San Antonio, you might have been outraged
when a local television story made national news. U.S. Army recruiters
from our area -- senior noncommissioned officers wearing battle dress
uniforms -- were caught on videotape offering disposable, no-fault,
drug-testing kits to prospective Army recruits.

Investigative reporter Brian Collister of WOAI developed the story
that TV news outlets around the country will surely replay as the
latest indication that, even here in Military City, USA, the volunteer
Army has fallen on hard times.

The undercover video was startling because the prospective recruits
were high school kids just like those you see down at the River Walk
or cruising La Cantera.

But this is what those wholesome-looking kids were told by Army
recruiters: When you leave here today, take this kit with you and
follow the instructions to see if you're clean. If you are, then we
can put you in for the regular enlistment physical (with its daunting
battery of blood and other tests specifically designed to detect drug
abuse).

But if not, then you may have to wait 30, 60 or even 90 days to be
sure you're really clean. So come back in here anytime and just pick
up another prescreening kit. After all, they're free, no records are
kept, and is this a great country or what?

Because Americans often trivialize tragedy as an instinctive first
response, our beleaguered Army may soon become the target of late
night comics. One can only anticipate Jay Leno's next opening line:
"Breaking news, folks! Army recruiters have come up with a whole new
meaning for the 'take-home test.'"

Or from David Letterman: "See where today's Army is
demonstrating what it really means to study hard to
pass your urine test?"

Or possibly from the acerbic Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show": "Did you
hear the Army's newest recruiting slogan? This war's so bad, you gotta
be on drugs to enlist!"

Far worse than the jokes are the larger societal questions when drug
abuse among young people can be taken for granted. Any military
establishment reflects the basic qualities of the society it comes
from -- good or bad. If that larger society has problems with drug
abuse, child abuse and declining test scores, then its offspring will
inevitably share these same characteristics and affect every
institution -- including the military.

The presence of drugs in our schools and among our young people
apparently has become so commonplace that some people simply shrug off
the headlines and wonder what all the fuss is about. If you're on
amphetamines, marijuana or cocaine, no sweat, just get cleaned up and
then enlist, right?

Wrong.

For one thing, drug abuse of any kind is inevitably fatal for an army
at war, particularly when counterinsurgency recognizes neither front
lines nor supposedly secure rear areas. And when that army is as
short-handed and overstretched as the one defending us today, it is
simply inconceivable to tolerate the enlistment of any prospective
recruit even suspected of having a drug problem.

It is also inconceivable that the Pentagon has forgotten the costs
over two decades of ridding that post-Vietnam Army of the scourge of
drugs. Our motto back then: Not in my unit, not in my command, not in
my Army!

Given their two-week warning of Collister's story, the Army's wooly
response seems nothing short of inexplicable. Thus far:
"Investigations" are ongoing, sergeants are being blamed for
misrepresenting policies, and, who knows, an ethics panel may even be
convened. All sheer nonsense because the inescapable fact is that
recruiters are simply being forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel
to make their numbers.

The larger reality is that the volunteer force is quickly running out
of steam, failing to attract sufficient numbers of Other People's Kids
to replace soldiers run far beyond the red line and any conceivable
call of duty. It is far simpler and much less trouble to slip the
standards while strenuously proclaiming that nothing is wrong.

No matter the outcome in Iraq, it will take a generation to repair the
damage done to our Army.

And our steadily declining social values? Stay tuned!