Too Many Tubby-Tubbies Signing Up For the Army

I'm a product of Navy OCS, but all the military readers can probably relate to the similarities of any boot camp-type environment. Drill instructors built like brick shithouses, getting yelled at incessantly for not having your rack (navyspeak for bed) with proper "hospital corners", and getting PT'd to torturous extents day and night. I think one of my buddies I was going through with lost all his toe nails from all the running and marching we did. No joke, losing 40-50 lbs at these places is not uncommon. So it's very surprising that the Army is having to institute some pre-training "fat farm" for all the hefty recruits signing up. From AP:

The Army has been dismissing so many overweight applicants that its top recruiter, trying to keep troop numbers up in wartime, is considering starting a fat farm to transform chubby trainees into svelte soldiers.

Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, head of the Army Recruiting Command, said he wants to see a formal diet and fitness regimen running alongside a new school at Fort Jackson that helps aspiring troops earn their GEDs.

The whole point of military indoctrination is to fill out a bunch of paperwork to follow you around the rest of your time in the service, to lose the shit attitude you had in your civilian life (mine came back when I started blogging), and to get in shape. It's pretty sad that people are so obese that not even Basic Combat Training will save their fat ass. Ed Morrisey views at as a sign that we are failing our children by dumbing down Physical Education in our high schools. Or, maybe it's a sign that America is just too damn fat.