Military Meets, Exceeds Goals

Yeah great, more young people to be put in harms way so Bush can make his friends rich. Glad your happy about that LSM (by the way, I really can't believe you are female).

"But we've had some problems in the last year with the number and quality of people coming into the armed forces. Generally speaking we've quadrupled the number of the lowest mental categories. We've quadrupled the number of high school graduates. We're putting 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 moral waivers into the armed forces."

The panel on Thursday said recent recruiting difficulties are a combination of a lack of emphasis on military service in society and the heavy deployment of both active duty and reserve forces. And the experts said if those issues aren't addressed, the recruiting difficulties will only grow, jeopardizing the readiness of the military.

None. They are all Americans wishing to serve their country in military service. Sorry if I tend to look at people and see their potential while you seem to want to classify people by their status/IQ/race or whatever you mean by "bottom of the barrel."

CoastalRat wrote:

None. They are all Americans wishing to serve their country in military service. Sorry if I tend to look at people and see their potential while you seem to want to classify people by their status/IQ/race or whatever you mean by "bottom of the barrel."

People who are in political public life need to gloss over the obvious reality like this. People here (who aren't in public life) can tell the truth. We know better than this Coastal.

Military service is largely seen as a way out of poverty for many young kids who join. These are kids who join the service because they don't have many other opportunities.

Poverty is largely seen as a way to reach recruitment goals for many military recruiters. Kids who haven't succeeded in high school and don't have good employment prospects are seen as targets because recruiters know they don't hve many other opportunities.

Don't play the head-in-the-sand patriotism card Coastal. The majority of the kids signing up aren't the kids of Wealthy Americans (or Congress members). Or are you saying kids from lower class neighborhoods are more patriotic than your kids?

I know that college is, or was, a big draw for my generation; the prospect of doing a short peactime tour and then getting bucks for school seemed attractive in the late 90's.

Today, it's enlistment bonuses, re-enlistment bonuses, stop lossing... a de-emphasis has been placed (from what I've read) on officers and 'middle managers' for the Army in favor of recruiting more line troops to make goals.

Goals which, by the way, have been reduced significantly. They don't mention that part when crowing about meeting the goals.

Cycloptichorn