Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts - New York Times

Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts - New York Times: "July 7, 2006
Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts
By JOHN KIFNER
A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed 'large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists' to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
'We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad,' the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. 'That's a problem.'
A Defense Department spokeswoman said officials there could not comment on the report because they had not yet seen it.
The center called on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to appoint a task force to study the problem, declare a new zero tolerance policy and strictly enforce it.
The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote 'The Turner Diaries,' the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.
The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure "

This is very frightening. Can you imagine a Balkans-style ethnic cleansing in our country? Perhaps it hits home to me because I have a friend from Bosnia who survived the war, was taken prisoner, and lived to tell about it. Her stories are blood curdling. This type of behavior should have been nipped in the bud, but again, The Pentagon seems to be ignoring this issue, as they have many others.