Berkeley City Council Doing Its Anti-Democracy Bit

[BigV]

Originally Posted by classicman

I call BS.

I think you're serious. I think you're seriously wrong and/or seriously misinformed.

The Army *has* had trouble meeting its recruiting goals for the past few years, and the Iraq war has had a far more negative impact than a positive one.

From here.

The Army previously acknowledged that it has not met the 90 percent mark since 2004, and yesterday officials at U.S. Army Recruiting Command disputed the group's numbers but not the trend. They said that 79.1 percent of its active-duty recruits in 2007 had a high school diploma, down from 87 percent in 2005.

"It's really an indication of the difficult recruiting environment we're in, both with the impact of the ongoing wars, an economy competing for high school graduates, and a decline in the percentage of students who graduate from high school," said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the recruiting command. "But we're not putting anyone in the Army that we don't feel is qualified to serve as a soldier."

The independent study's data were based on more than 66,000 new recruits and did not include roughly 14,000 recruits who had prior military service and most of whom would have high school diplomas. It was unclear yesterday if the recruiting command's higher numbers included new recruits only or covered all recruits in 2007.

Both groups agree that the Army has met its high recruitment goals for the past two years by lowering acceptance standards, offering signing bonuses and loosening age restrictions.

The National Priorities Project said that Defense Department studies have shown that a high school diploma is an indicator of future success in the military, with about 80 percent of those with high school diplomas finishing the first term of enlistment and about half of the others making it that far. When recruits are unsuccessful in the Army, the service loses on its investment in training and has to recruit again.

This stupid war has made it hard on the Army in many ways. One big hardship is the increased difficulty in recruiting good people to become soldiers. You call bullshit on that?