Good morning. We're all pulling together to help with The Third Estate Sunday Review and all grabbed a break to do a number of things. (Rest, install new software UK Computer Gurus recommended.) C.I. slid a story from this morning's New York Times over to me and said that if I was planning to blog today, it was an issue I talk about here and that if I did it on a break, that would be one less thing to do later today.
I appreciate that. The story's by Eric Schmitt and it's called "Army Likely to Fall Short in Recruiting, General Says:"
The Army's top personnel officer acknowledged this week that the service will probably miss its recruiting goal this year, the first public admission by a senior Army official and a stark reminder of the Iraq war's impact on enlistments.
The officer, Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, said in testimony to the House Armed Services military personnel subcommittee on Tuesday that an improving economy, competition from private industry and an increasing number of parents who are less supportive of military service meant that the active-duty Army, as well as the Army Reserve and Army National Guard, would fall short of their annual quotas.
"We will likely miss recruiting missions for all three components," said General Hagenbeck, voicing publicly what many senior Army officials have said privately for weeks.
Schmitt goes on to note that this will be the first time since 1999 that the army has missed it's recruitment figures.
Remember when the army was trumpeting their monthly figures right after high school graduation? We talked about that in "Are the numbers for June really up? Not so fast."
Remember when we talked about the desire to raise the age level for recruitment? From 35 to 42? We talked about that in "Iraqi casualities continue to mount, recruiters want to raise age limit, spicing up foreplay and a song."
You need to be paying attention and thinking because besides destroying the economy, Bully Boy's got us in two wars presently (Afghanistan and Iraq) and he's on the bone for at least one more (probably Iran). We're short in recruits and it will only get worse. Maybe that will mean the draft, maybe it will mean something else. But we are over extended.
Time's up for the break so I got to get back to Third Estate Sunday Review. Hope everybody else is either asleep or about to get there. Shout out to C.I. for sliding the Schmitt story my way. Peace.
