The San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Sun-Times, the L.A. Times, and USA Today, along with other various media outlets have reported on the lengths the U.S. military has gone to reach recruiting targets in order to provide additional grist for the mills of Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2004, the Pentagon published a "Moral Waiver Study," whose seemingly benign goal was "to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success." That study, along with lowering the bar on educational, medical, and physical standards turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records, no education, possible mental health issues, and general fatness.

Between 2004 and 2005, there was a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms 'serious criminal misconduct' in their background" -- a category that included "aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats." In this one-year span, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent. The military’s own data has indicated that the percentage of recruits entering the Army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001. Under these revised standards, the Army recruited 80,635 soldiers in 2006, roughly 7,000 more than in 2005. Of those, 70,000 were first-time recruits who had never served before and 3.8 percent of them scored below the bottom aptitude percentile level. In previous years, the Army had allowed only 2 percent of its recruits to have scores that low. Shockingly enough, the limit has since been raised to 4 percent, the maximum allowable level under Department of Defense rules. Of course, the Army, taking a page out of the teacher’s union and other educational quality apologists’ playbook, has maintained that good test scores do not necessarily equate to quality soldiers and that test-taking ability does not measure loyalty, duty, honor, integrity or courage.

It is within this context that HBO’s new documentary, The Recruiter, is set and it is within this context that it must be viewed. While the filmmakers go to great lengths to provide an apolitical, non-ideological framework, the Dumb-ocles Sword of recent U.S. foreign policy hangs heavy over the proceedings, which are punctuated by sporadic radio and TV news stories concerning troop injuries and death. Nowhere is this more poignant than an incident that claims the lives of four reservists from the New Orleans town of Houma, where the documentary takes place. It is in this rural, bursting at the seams patriotic hamlet where we meet both the recruiters and the recruits they "close" using tactics right out of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Chris – A quiet, overweight kid who, like John Candy in Stripes, appears to be enlisting in the Army so he can get in better shape, although it would not be a stretch to picture him as being more like Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. Not much is known or shown about Chris beyond this point, other than the fact that he’s a child of divorce with a stepfather who may or may not be abusive and/or engaged in any manner with his stepson’s upbringing. Chris is perhaps the saddest one of the bunch – a lonely, fat nerd just looking for acceptance and perhaps a little payback.

Lauren – A lesbian, gothic/emo, wigger basketball player, who says she wants to join so she can earn money for art school. Her obese and borderline abusive mother encourages her enlistment in hopes that the Army will cure her daughter’s lesbian tendencies. Lauren likes to draw pictures of dead things and people, chain smokes, dresses and talks like a character from The Wire, and probably couldn’t find Iraq on a map. Of Iraq.

Matt – Mr. All-American football player and all around jock with daddy issues who, like his equally clueless teenage fiancé, appears to be sold more on the prospect of creating an instant family courtesy of free military housing and getting his truck paid for than recognizing the grim possibilities of war. Matt is a true believer, through and through, and a poster boy for Army recruiters.

Bobby – The Honor Student, with a school teacher mother and a lawyer father. The only recruit from what appears to be an intact and non-dysfunctional home. Bobby’s motivations are completely unknown, but are speculated on by his father (bored at school, needs time off, wants to serve like his father, grandfather, and other family members). Bobby is quiet, reserved and has been pre-selected for Special Forces Training. I found myself constantly asking why in the fuck did he decided to go this route when in a sane world, he would be headed off to college and four years of beer and easy pussy.

These kids, and their futures, are doggedly and relentlessly pursued by Sgt. First Class Clay Usie, the Ricky Roma of Army recruiters. Usie spends the vast majority of his time staking out high schools and high school gatherings like a modern day Wooderson. But Usie sells death and dismemberment instead of organizing beer busts and runs to Austin to pick up Aerosmith tickets. Usie is the A-number one, biggest cock on the block, soldier of the year who believes in God, family, and country - in that order. His job, apart from conning dumb kids and their friends into joining the Army with promises of relevant training, good pay, and exotic adventure, is to prepare the suckers he reels in for the rigors of basic training. But make no mistake, Usie is a salesman first and a soldier second. And the first rule of being a good salesman is that you never sell the product, you sell yourself. Usie is the kind of guy who will meet you at 5:00 a.m. at the gym to work out, will talk endlessly about himself and his accomplishments, will cajole you into inviting your friends to your little workout sessions, will serve as your big brother, your father, your uncle, and your best friend, if it means that you will sign away your life on the dotted line.

I had a friend who, shortly after graduating college, somehow became involved with Amway and was immediatly ostracized by our group of friends because we didn’t want to hear a sales pitch every time he was around. It wasn’t that we didn’t like him it was that he just couldn’t help himself. He had been totally brainwashed into the American dream of earning vast amounts of quick money by pitching to his friends and family – the soft targets. It is this search for the soft target that drives Usie and his fellow recruiters. The normal, educated, ambitious, and well-adjusted need not apply. Like the Moonies or Heaven’s Gate, the Army cult seeks out the maladjusted, the lonely, the ones seeking any kind of guidance and direction as long as it comes with a sense of belonging and escape. They target the ones with family problems, especially the ones from single-mother homes. They target the disaffected, the directionless, the angry, and the outright dumb.

That these kids don't fully understand what they are getting into is a theme you hear repeated throughout the documentary. You hear it from their parents, from some of the recruiters, and from the instructors in basic training. You even hear it in the way these recruits repeat the military propaganda that glamourizes military service. All of this begs the question why, if these kids can't or don't fully appreciate what they are getting themselves into, are they allowed, or in some cases, encouraged, to enlist in the first place? Bobby's father tearfully tells the camera that he would feel like a hypocrite for discouraging his son's enlistment since he, himself, served. But harsh reality and truthfulness is what these kids need, particularly during a time of war. But in today's context, preying on a seventeen or eighteen year-old's naïvité is the only way to fill the ranks.

However not all of Usie’s recruiters have the brass balls required for such a high powered human sales position. One recruiter who appears to have fallen victim in the past to the same line of shit that he’s selling today, is Willie Loman to Usie’s Ricky Roma, but without the delusions of grandeur. While he never explicitly admits it, he obviously knows that what he’s doing is wrong and does everything he can within reason to sabotage himself and his recruitment efforts. The only honorable man present, he can no longer cope with the guilt of selling young men and women a coffin disguised as money for school or a trade. His heart just isn’t in it anymore after seeing the horrors that await these kids in Iraq.

The last part of the documentary follows three of the four recruits through basic training (Chris was shipped out earlier than the others due to high casualties). Whether or not it was the intention of the filmmakers to "rush" through this part of the feature is unknown, but it does capture the almost hurried process of basic training, with an emphasis on the word, "basic." Recruits do calisthenics, march, wrestle, fire guns, graduate, and are then shipped off to die, that is if they don't succumb to a panic attack when being issued their uniforms and skivvies and coming to the realization that life as they know it is now over. Only Bobby appears to receive anything remotely approaching combat training. After graduation, Matt and Lauren return to Houma on a one-month leave before shipping off to Iraq. Matt spends his month getting married, with Usie as his best man and substitute father. Lauren returns to her rural shack, her lesbian lover, and a month of moping and complaining over her ill-advised decision to enlist and expressing genuine surprise that the Army doesn't offer art classes.

A concluding epilogue tells us the fates of these characters, but I will conclude with an epilogue of my own from the San Francisco Chronicle:

In the latter half of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military started to crumble from within and American troops began scrawling "UUUU" on their helmet liners -- an abbreviation that stood for "the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful."

With a growing majority of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq and even ardent hawks refusing to enlist in droves, new policies creating a lower-quality officer corps and the Pentagon pulling out ever more stops and sinking to new lows to recruit and train troops, a new all-volunteer generation of UUUU's may emerge -- the underachieving, unable, unexceptional, unintelligent, unsound, unhinged, unacceptable, unhealthy, undesirable, unloved and uncivil -- all led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.