CANNON FODDER

Now it comes to light that the Pentagon has been teaming up with a marketing company to track students of recruiting age — in violation of the federal government's own Privacy Act.

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches. ...

Some information on high school students already is given to military recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

It's absolutely horrifying to think that instead of seeing and treating our youth as the future of the nation, the bearers of freedom for a more enlightened tomorrow, our government sees them as mere cannon fodder.

More than Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, this is the true obscenity that we face today.