Good point about the Navy, Bret. Of course, for a young kid whose psyche is suspect, the safer-and-saner alternative might NOT be the most attractive.

The Army in general, and of course most authority figures up and down the chain of command, certainly wants to weed out potential troublemakers and "crazies." However, the recruitment command is faced with unrealistic quotas, and the lower-ranking NCOs who have to do the actual recruiting are subjected to very intense pressures, so there's no guarantee that some very shaky candidates won't be inducted (even if they will inevitably be kicked out in the near future, perhaps under the lifelong shadow of a Dishonorable Discharge).

That's also good news about your young relative who "just got out" and is now a more mature person with a brighter future than before. A heavy dose of reality can do that for a person.

But are there not many others who desperately want to get out, and can't? I'm pretty sure that not everyone going back into combat for second, third, and fourth tours of duty is an enthusiastic volunteer. Many of them originally signed up for the National Guard or the Reserves, not the full-time regular Army. These are people who did NOT start out with visions of "guts hanging from their teeth"; many of them have had enough and want out, but they can't get out ~ even, in some cases, despite having completed the term for which they signed up.