Not too long ago US Person posted about the scandal involving Air Force launch officers. Their hands rest upon the nation's nuclear trigger. It is not everyone's cup of tea to sit locked inside a concrete and steel tube buried for twenty-four hours beneath the northern prairie waiting for presidential orders to destroy civilization. [photo]. So the tedium and stress apparently is taking its toll on morale. AP reports the Pentagon has been forced to pull from duty nearly one out of five missile launch officers for drug use or cheating on proficiency tests. Presidential orders to loose the nuclear weapon are to be carried out within two minutes. The number implicated has doubled since January 9th when the investigation was publicly announced. 92 officers assigned to Malmstrom AFB, Montana are charged with being involved in cheating. Two launch officers were implicated in illegal drug use and suspended from duties. Malmstrom is the base for 150 Minuteman III ICBMs or one-third of the nation's ICBM force. Each missile carries a warhead 27 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb and can incinerate everything within in a 50 mile radius. Blast, heat and radiation would kill everything for hundreds of more miles. It is an awesome job to say the least with little room for error as Defense Secretary Hagel noted during a visit to another missile base in Wyoming. Troublemakers within US Strategic Command are not just junior officers. Commander Maj. Gen. Michael Carey went on a drunken binge in Moscow during a US-Russian nuclear security exercise. Other officers who saw Carey said he cavorted with questionable women at a bar, demanded to be allowed to play with the band, and insulted his Russian hosts with remarks about whistleblower Edward Snowden and Russia's ally Syria. Vice Admiral James Giardina, second in command at Strategic Command, was fired for gambling with fake casino chips. Top Pentagon commanders point to a widening social gap between a professionalized armed forces and the civilian population they are supposed to protect as a source of disillusionment within the military. The unpopular and unsuccessful Iraq and Afghanistan wars have no doubt contributed to this unease. Admiral Michael Mullen, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Weekly Standard America needs to adopt two years of mandatory national service to prevent an isolated military from becoming "a disaster for America" and a danger to democracy. US Person could not agree more.