This article in Radar Magazine needs to be read:
Desperate to shore up its flagging ranks, the military is quietly enlisting thousands of active gang members and shipping them to Iraq. Will a brutal murder finally wake up the Pentagon?
The free online version only gives you about half the article and doesn't cover the obvious question: what happens when these guys come back to the U.S., fully trained and with combat experience in one of the harshest environments our military has ever faced? I'll tell you what will happen: we'll experience the most severe and violent crime wave ever to hit the United States, and it'll happen throughout the country simultaneously. And you, fellow U.S. citizens and (presumably) tax payers, will have paid for it all with your own money.
Our police, woefully under-equipped against these budding super-criminals who will most likely have access to the same weaponry with which they are being trained to use in Iraq, will clamour for stronger firepower and more political leeway to deal with this new breed of thug. They'll of course be granted carte blanche law enforcement power, at which point this will become a national gang war, with cops on one side and Iraq War veterans on the other. In the middle will be you and I, and the police state in which we increasingly find ourselves living will grow ever more oppressive. In the name of "public safety", our rights will be thrown out the window as we are subjected to unwarranted searches and seizures and arbitrary arrest, innocent people will be thrown in jail, and many will be killed (except when the cops are responsible they'll of course say it was a mistake).
Here it is, folks: Your Future America. As depicted in prescient movies like RoboCop. The people of this country will increasingly become irrelevant as major cities become the battleground between violent thugs trying to carve out a niche for themselves versus politicians trying to prevent encroachment upon their turf. And we'll be in the middle of it all, ducking bullets and paying for the whole spectacle through increased taxes. And some of us will pay with our lives. In effect, we'll come to know what it is like to be an Iraqi today.