Department of Defense records show that the Army and Marines have granted 65 percent more waivers in the last three years to recruits with prior criminal records.

The convictions that bar enlistments fall into two categories: "serious misdemeanors" (which include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide) and felonies. Any recruit who has committed one of these crimes requires a "moral waiver" to be allowed into the service.

Last year the Army enlisted more than 69,000 men and women, 11.7 percent of whom had criminal histories. The Pentagon said the military approved about 30,000 moral waivers each year since 2003.

The first conclusion that can be drawn is that the Army is scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep recruitment figures up in spite of the vicissitudes -- casualties, arbitrary extensions and repetitions of tours -- of the Iraq war. Other efforts employed to keep the ranks filled have included extra cash incentives, lowering the bar on aptitude tests and educational standards, and relaxations of weight and age requirements.

A likely result of the recruitment of larger numbers of former criminals is that the number of cases of misconduct among troops -- such as that at the Abu Ghraib prison and at the scene of other atrocities -- may increase. The crimes that the recruits committed before enlistment indicated a lack of respect for society's rules. Although they may have learned from their mistakes and their time in prison, it is also possible that the lack of respect for rules will carry over into their new military lives, which are governed by even stricter standards.

Service in the armed forces has in many societies been considered a means of rehabilitating ex-criminals or a means of putting direction and discipline into young lives that have lacked those qualities. Public concern over the presence of former criminals in the military ranks should not amount to a blanket denial to those who have reformed their lives after prison and deserve a chance to serve in the armed forces on the road to rehabilitation and training as honest members of American society.

At the same time, these particular soldiers will require close supervision by their officers. In the case of recruits who have a past that includes violent crime, careful attention also will need to be paid to see that they don't simply take military service as an opportunity to improve their weapons handling, marksmanship and other potentially criminal skills to be used after their demobilization.

As far as the services and the Bush administration drawing from that particular stratum of society to keep the ranks filled, it is an approach that saves them from reinstituting the draft. The Bush administration knows full well that if it restarts the draft, that will spell the end to its war in Iraq.

A volunteer army -- even one including ex-convicts -- will fight, and so the population is likely to go along. The Vietnam experience showed clearly that an unpopular war waged by draftees will come to a bitter, messy end quickly.