Lowering military standards

Here's a link to the Register's Monday editorial on the way the military is meeting recruiting goals in the wake of widespread disillusionment over the Iraq war: by lowering standards, accepting more people with criminal records, and more people who failed to pass or barely passed standardized tests. It made the point that the way toward a military made up of competent and skilled people is not to move toward a draft (which would be a nightmare to reinstitute, as the military well knows even if some civilians don't) but to change policies to reduce the number of senseless conflicts the United States decides to involve itself in. I think most of the country is ready for that, but I suspect our elites of both parties -- with the obvious exception of Ron Paul -- aren't yet