America's armed forces will no longer release monthly recruiting numbers. Instead, those numbers will be sent to the Department of Defense for "review" and then released to the public. The Army and Marines have been missing their recruitment numbers lately and have been getting bad press about it.
The shortage of recruits has led recruiters to resort to unsavory practices in order to make their quotas. Last month, there was a one day halting of recruiting supposedly to give recruiters a refresher on allowed practices. That had a lot more to do with public relations than anything else. If you don't believe that, read this story from the Seattle PI about two recruiters basically kidnapping an eighteen year old kid.
As bad as the recruiting numbers are, they are nowhere near as bad as the active accession numbers. The active accession numbers represent the number of soldiers that actually get through boot camp and make it to active duty. In April, the Army only made 58% of it's goal.
Will Rumsfeld fudge the numbers to avoid bad press? I dunno, but I sure as hell don't trust him. After all, it is standard operating procedure for this administration to solve problems simply by stating that there is no problem.
So where does this lead us? A draft is never going to happen, so how do we refill the ranks of the Army, and Marines? I can see only one politically safe way out. (Other than leaving Iraq)
I call it the UNification of the Army and Marines. We start recruiting ex-soldiers from third world countries to join our army in exchange for US citizenship. Who knows where these guys true loyalty is?
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