What About Merit Badges? Torture? Interrogation? Crop Destruction?

Photo credit: Todd Krainin / New York Times

Any former Boy Scouts out there? I never got past 2nd Class...But this kinda shit coulda mebbe kept me in the Corps...

(Confession: I got kicked out after being caught jerking off in my tent when I was supposed to be at the archery range in scout camp.)

From the NY Times, via RawStory: It's not your daddy's Boy Scouts anymore:

The United States of America has changed. Naturally, the Boy Scouts of America must change with it. But arming them with airsoft guns and conducting simulations to teach how to fight terrorism, chase down illegal immigrants and raid marijuana fields?

Whatever happened to a campfire and hot dog roast?

The New York Times hits the mother load (Could we call it the "shit-load? W.):

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

[...]

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

The Explorers group, based out of Irving, Texas, has not suffered much controversy over its law enforcement training for scouts.

However, in at least a dozen instances over the last 10 years, law enforcement officials in the Explorer program have been charged with sexually assaulting scouts, the paper added.

Just a minor (nudge-nudge) draw-back...