Military or militias? Thread title says military but the opening comment seems to ask about militias. Regarding the military, it was ripe for corruption under Donald Rumsfeld. The private contracting went to Dick Cheney's mob and other corporate thieves in the oil and energy industries. Recruitment numbers were pathetic during the Iraq war. Seems with all of the support for the war and all of the faux patriotism, nobody wanted to actually go and fight in it. Go figure. They didn't want to impose a draft, figuring it would doom Bush's reelection, so they instead decreased the recruitment requirements. The military began recruiting people with criminal records, and people on gang files in their local law enforcement jurisdictions. Not sure if any mafia members or associates ended up serving, but the time was certainly ripe, because nobody was looking. They wanted recruitment numbers, and they didn't care how they got them. Naturally, several criminal operations took place within the military ranks during this time, from stealing weapons and supplying gangs with them, to drug dealing right on bases. There was also a drastic increase of known white supremacists in the military ranks in this time. Basically, Donald Rumsfeld turned our armed forces into an extension of the prison system. They recruited from the same pool. There's a book called "Irregular Army" that goes further into this.