book matt ken ard, retired colonel jack jacobs, msnbc analyst. gentlemen, glad to have you here. an absolutely fascinating discussion we ll have about this book. matt, how pervasive of a problem are you alleging this is? well, the figure that s often used is 1,500. that sounds low in a military of over 2 million, but some of those people are some of the most violent and criminal-minded people in america. so if you think of it like that, all it takes is one of them to lose it on one occasion like we saw with the oak creek massacre, which was carried out by a veteran of the u.s. army from the 1990s. tragedies like that, i mean, are rare, but the threat they pose has increased marketedly over the past decade. you ve kind of preempted something here i was going to pick up. but, look, 1,500 you re suggesting here, are you somewhat managing to pluck needles from a haystack? because the u.s. military is massive.
inside the service that solves that problem. there was some laxity in that, too. but now the requirement is for a far smaller number of people in the service, that problem has largely disappeared. matt, what types of soldiers did you meet while you researched this book? i mean, i met and spoke to on the phone a lot of extremist veterans and leaders of the far right movement who are basically saying they were using the military to train their members for a racial holy war back in the united states. so they didn t see the u.s. military as a way to spread democracy to iraq and afghanistan. they didn t believe in the fairy tale narrative of the war on terror. what they saw the u.s. military as was a means to acquire the training in weapons, in tactical skills in order to fight their war back in the united states. but, matt you mention the small number. matt, my question is, you also talk about convicted felons. really? you re going to stand by that,
soldiers with mentally unhealthy disorders. that is perhaps an entirely separate conversation. when you talk about the suicides and all those kind of things, deplorable numbers there. that said, colonel, regarding the first part of our conversation with matt, any validity to this? do you or any of your current military colleagues recognize this as a problem? well, there had been some problem in the past. don t forget we decided that we were going to go to war and we required a large number of troops without having the political will to have a draft and, therefore, widespread service. and anytime a society does that, you re going to have to relax the standards. and for a period of time we did have either mlax standards or standards not followed. the people who recruit soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines into the service don t have to deal with them once they re in. having said all that, at the end of the day, it s good leadership
of a lot of arsenal as he attacks the insurgency. he s basically going to be covering other missions to make sure that other, say, chinook helicopters, supplies coming into different areas are getting there safely. he s providing cover for them. right now he s in the initial period where he s training. he s looking forward to it. he s wanted to come back when he left in 2008. back then his deployment was a secret. this time it was announced beforehand. it was blown by a tabloid and prince harry was forced to leave. thank you so much for the live report. a new book questions whether the modern u.s. army is fit for service. it is called irregular army, the premise has the military struggled to attract new soldiers? america s armed forces became populated with an increasing numbers of neo-nazis with criminals even those physically and mentally unfit. joining me is the author of the
past decade as we re trying to fight wars in southwest asia but without a draft, without universal service. if you re going to do that, if you re going to fight wars without widespread service you re going to have problems like this from time to time. matt, quickly the last word. can i give you just another example of why it became such a chronic issue, also because donald rumsfeld had this idea of transforming the pentagon whereby wars would be short and fought with special forces who would overthrow the regime and let the u.s. military getting out within a couple of years. that didn t happen as we know in iraq and afghanistan. basically the pentagon was not prepared in any way for the kind of extended deployment of huge numbers of troops. in the absence of enacting subscripti subscription, they turned back on changing regulations. some of those regulations were public, like they raised the enlistment age from 35 to 40,