Well, is this anything new really? How long has the Army been downgrading standards? Not reporting bad numbers? Or not reporting accession rates at all?
Well, I don’t know if anyone has noticed but even though we are recruiting drug addicts and criminals, we still can't find enough of them to fight.
The Army is immediately ordering 1,106 former recruiters back to that duty. The soldiers are being pulled from their current assignments and sent to recruiting stations across the nation as the army struggles to meet its mission in signing up 80,000 new soldiers this year...
...This surprise program comes at a time that Army recruiting has fallen on hard times.
The service missed its active-duty recruiting goal by 16 percent in June, the worst showing in two years. The shortfall was particularly worrisome to Army leaders because the summer, after students have graduated high school, typically is the best recruiting season.
While recruiters are running at 101 percent of their year-to-date mission of 51,150, Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey recently cautioned that the recruiting environment is "very difficult."
51,150 recruits. Before the war that figure was over 80,000. So how are they keeping the ranks filed? Stop loss, and call backs. That’s how bad it is.
That’s how well the Republican war on Iraq is doing.
http://www.armytimes.com/...