Posted on 12/12/2006 2:28:38 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Though Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the war in Iraq, the Pentagon said Tuesday it is having success enlisting new troops. The Navy and Air Force met their recruiting goals last month while the Army and Marine Corps exceeded theirs, the Defense Department announced.
The Army, which is bearing the brunt of the work in Iraq, did the best. It signed up 6,485 new recruits in November compared with its target of 6,150 — meaning 105 percent of its goal.
All the services turned in similar performances in October as well, meaning they so far are meeting their goals for the 2007 budget year that began Oct. 1.
"The services are starting off well," said Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman.
The progress in recruiting comes as U.S. pessimism over the Iraq campaign mounts, according to a recent AP-Ipsos poll. Some 63 percent of Americans said they don't expect a stable, democratic government to be established in Iraq, up from 54 percent who felt that way in June.
Dissatisfaction with President Bush's handling of Iraq has climbed to an all-time high of 71 percent, according to the AP-Ipsos survey this month. A bipartisan commission last week released its recommendations for a new course and the president held a series of meetings this week to hear from his advisers.
According to figures released Tuesday by the Pentagon, the Navy signed up 2,887 recruits last month, or 100 percent of its goal; Marines signed up 2,095, or 104 percent of its 2,012 target and the Air Force signed up all 1,877 it was seeking.
The Army also met its goal in the 2006 budget year after missing its target in fiscal year 2005 for the first time since 1999. It added recruiters and offered recruits bonuses to help attract more to the service.
The Army has been recruiting about 80,000 people a year, setting differing monthly goals depending on the time of the year.
Though the active services are doing well, recruiting has lagged for the Army Reserve and Navy Reserve, officials said.
The Army Reserve last month signed up 1,888, or just 79 percent of its 2,376 goal and the Navy Reserve signed up 687 recruits, or just 91 percent of its 755 goal.
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On the Net:
Defense Department http://www.defenselink.mil
That was a satirical comment, right?
Keep reading, it gets better...
"Clinton hurt our Military, financially and otherwise."
I don't want to pick a fight, but can you explain how Clinton hur our Military, when for most of his time in office Republicans had power in Congress. I really would like to know as I have a son in Special Forces, planning to do his 20.
Apparently in your world.
That you johnkerry?
In the real world where people are hiring the young people going into the military are highly prized and would make much more money by going private.
They are bright, willing to work and ready to learn otherwise they never would have made it into the military in the first place. Oddly enough that is the exactly the same thing that employers are looking for.
This country is still worth defending, but with a third or more of it's population essentially communist and wishing for my defeat, I'd have a hard time being a soldier right now. Just MHO.
I appreciate your early comment on the thread, even though it doesn't dovetail with the false patriotism of many here.
Young people join the military for as many reasons as there are people joining the military. However, I don't remember anyone - - be it a basic trainee, a fellow pilot, a fellow student in one of the service schools, anywhere - - ever saying "I'm in it to kill a commie for [Christ]." Had they done so, I believe most would have given them a wide berth.
Ping
Fair enough, let's see what you got. But before we go on, let's be clear that I'm criticizing the fine organization that paid for so many of my road trips and foreign holidays because I want it to succeed and do the right thing. I don't see that happening, hence my criticism.
Before shipping off to basic training, recruits must meet physical standards and those 40 and older are given additional medical screenings.
Why would they need additional medical screening, if they're just as fit as people in the teens and 20s? (That's a rhetorical question, of course.)
They must undergo the same training exercises as younger recruits.
I'm 5'10 and almost 200lbs. Any man or woman I work with has to be strong enough to drag or carry me off when I'm in 50lbs of battle rattle. My concern with older recruits is the same as my concern with working with women in a tactical environment.
"They have the college-aged mind and the high school mind," said Pfc. Caroll Martinez, 42, of Kansas City, Mo. "I'm so beyond that."
Having someone mature around a group of young adults can be gold. I'll readily admit that the one benefit of having older recruits is having more mature recruits. Maturity is one of those things you don't appreciate until you're surrounded by a lack of it.
Covington agrees -- especially after being called "Grandpa" by his military peers. But he had the last laugh, receiving the highest fitness score of his entire company in basic training.
The fitness scores are staggered by age and gender. If I did 40 pushups at age 18, I'd score a 57, which is three points shy of passing, whereas it would be a perfect score of 100 if I was 42. Stuff like that always makes me smile when I read things like..
"A bullet and a bayonet don't discriminate," Shwedo said. "As a result, our training program has to ensure that every soldier is going to be able to outmaneuver, outfight and win on today's battlefield."
The Army loves to talk like this, especially when talking about training women, but it doesn't really translate into the real world.
Age isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'll stop here and point out that well trained men in their late 30 and 40s make up the U.S. Special Forces. I've worked with and met a lot of them. With that crowd, it's not the young ones who spend all their time in the gym that are the most dangerous. The really formidable ones are the guys that look like they should be bagging groceries or teaching high school, not Green Berets. Many of them have forgotten more about fighting than most soldiers will ever know.
Still, those guys are career soldiers who have spent years becoming what they are, physically and mentally. Taking someone who's already set in his ways, physically and mentally, and starting him out from scratch that late in the game, isn't the same thing. I've worked with some guys who joined later in life, and they struggle harder or are more prone to permanent injuries.
The Army knows that. Once you get over 30, and then 40, they expect more regular physicals for you. The physical standards for tests lower. That's on the expectation that you've moved into a leadership role by then, anyway. What most people in the Army are doing at 40 is flying a desk and looking at retirement, except for the ones that are well conditioned to still be out in the rain and snow.
Taking in recruits at such an age helps our numbers, but it hurts our strength. That's my concern.
That might be true if your bleak (and incorrect) view of the economy were accurate. But the more important factor that refutes your theory is that every one of the young men and women volunteering in the past five years knows that they are most likely going to have to go to war for their country.
It is highly unlikely that any intelligent, educated, moderately wealthy young man or woman would give up their comfortable lifestyle (which they know they are doing) for any reason other than a desire to serve and a love of their country. They know that we are at war against terrorists, and they want to help fight them.
And they are also reinlisting in droves because they want to continue to serve, and they want to go BACK to Iraq.
So not only is your argument wrong based on the economic reality of the Bush Boom, but it is wrong based on the self sacrificing requirements of being in the military that all these recruits now know about.
It's not a matter of broad brushing anything. It's a matter of being factually accurate, and your hypothesis, based on a Viet Nam era draft mentality, is not.
Are we at war or not? That statement doesn't make sense. Unless, of course, you're trying to stay that I don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not an OEF/OIF vet. In that case, you do make sense, but you're wrong.
Seems to me the people who scream loudest about "The American people need to realize we are at war and make sacrifices" should not also then turn around be the same people trash talking every single issue related to the war.
Seems to me that there's nothing wrong with asking the American people to realize we're at war and to make some sacrifices. Like, serving their country when they're at an age that it will be the most help.
I think it's the patriotic duty of young Americans to enlist and fight for their country, not sit back playing Xbox while single mothers and folks old enough to be their parents go to war instead.
You seem to think it's the patriotic duty of Americans to shut up and follow the leader. That's fine for a nation of cheerleaders, but a sad departure from what America should be.
Well said! :)
Clinton took the extensive Bush Sr demobilization in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise even further, and brought our military down to levels too low for our global committments.
The Clinton trashing of our military used to be a common complaint around here. As the years go by, without any effort to raise the military back up to previous levels, you hear it a lot less. It's kind of hard to blame Clinton for a problem you've had over five years to fix yourself.
I see a lot of griping and moaning from you, and accusing more positive people of being 'cheerleaders,' but what do you think you're accomplishing here?
My son signed up before 9/11, and almost all his friends did AFTER 9/11. This generation is filled with patriotic kids who want to defend their country against evil, because they love America and want to keep us safe.
What is your point in belittling them, and continuing to dismiss what's really going on in the military?
I really want to know. What's made you so cynical and negative?
They've only taken in about 1400 new recruits in the new age bracket, so it's not like they've opened the floodgates to tired old geezers.
I guess that the new recruits for American Forces do not listen to or read the MSM propaganda.
Sure they do. They just know that it's important to win, despite the mismanagement. Bungled or not, it's important to not leave Iraq as a problem that will come bite us in the ass later. The troops want to win now rather than come back later.
No
That's a valid argument.
Just a quick comment on the article, I know the current enlisted force has an extreme sense of pride and devotion to the mission that hasn't been seen in the more recent past deployments. For example, I was deployed to Haiti for election security. To be honest, I did not want to be there, and to be even more frank, I didn't care if Haiti collapsed. We are not seeing that in Iraq. These men and women are volunteering for multiple tours. There is an extreme sense of engagement.
Certainly, the military is only going to seriously appeal to a small number of people in that age group. My concern is that lowering standards does two negative things.
First, it masks problems, rather than deal with them. The numbers look fine, so everyone assumes that things are going as well now as they were before. In reality, we have recruitment and retention problems that are being papered over with solutions like this.
Second, you can take a really good football team, sub out a random player for a girl, and do well. The team adapts and overcomes. You can sub out another player for an old man, and still do well. The issue is that at some point, you'll keep lowering and lowering the standards until it does hurt.
While we're not there yet, we should always be striving to raise the bar. Lowering the bar, and then patting ourselves on the back for doing so well, is an unwise trend.
Thanks for summing that up in an articulate way. A way I have forever failed to do. In my mind, the men and women who are in uniform deserve the best plan, the best thinkers, the best stregy we can possible offer. I know how extremely important I felt, when I knew the civilians stateside were actively engaged and interested in the mission...even if it was a mundane deployment. When I perceive things to be going, "not right" I feel we are doing a disservice, if people don't speak up.
if any of that makes sense, it probably doesn't.
Let's just say I have some experience in fishing the truth out of a sea of optimism, pessimism, and bull$%^#. It's rarely a job that will win you friends, but what it accomplishes should be clear.
My son signed up before 9/11, and almost all his friends did AFTER 9/11. This generation is filled with patriotic kids who want to defend their country against evil, because they love America and want to keep us safe.
I'm sure that the first sentence is true, and you're clearly quite proud of your son and his friends, with good reason. They are doing more than their share.
The second sentence, on the other hand, may be a bit of an overstatement. We wouldn't be discussing this topic at all, if this generation was pulling it's weight, since we're calling on the generation before us for help.
What is your point in belittling them, and continuing to dismiss what's really going on in the military? I really want to know. What's made you so cynical and negative?
You don't really love someone if you don't tell 'em like it is. The Army and I may have parted ways, but I'd never want to see them fail, or to pursue losing strategies. So, my words of harsh truth are for a service and a mission that personally cost me in, as they say, blood, toil, tears, and sweat. I want them to win more than you can imagine, and I'd rather they hear harsh words from me than taste real failure.
An organization full of smart, motivated people like your son, that insists on running itself into the ground, will have a hard time recruiting and retaining. Eventually, it will see those smart, motivated people leave to become contractors, and have to lower hiring standards to replace them. That's what I fear, and that's why I'm complaining.
If I come across as cynical and negative, it's because unrealistic people tend to be more positive than negative. When I deal with unrealistically negative people, I get accused of sugarcoating things. You push people out of their comfort zones, and they'll accuse you of anything.
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