The world’s greatest military is no longer what it once was.

Soldiers in Iraq are being charged with rape, premeditated murder and cold-blooded massacres. Troops with severe mental illness are being sent back into battle. And the Army keeps lowering recruiting standards, roping in high-school drop-outs and now, skinheads and neo-Nazis.

According to a shocking new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, neo-Nazis and skinheads are infiltrating the military, perhaps in the thousands, as a result of lax recruiting enforcement.

“Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don’t remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members,” says Defense Department investigator Scott Barfield.

Barfield presented the military with evidence of 320 extremists in the past year, but only two have been discharged.

“We’ve got Aryan Nation graffiti in Baghdad.”

Is that what the Bush Administration means by spreading freedom and democracy?

If the kids of the rich and privileged won’t fight this war, I guess skinheads will.