www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8155830
This time, it missed its recruiting goal after first lowering it without telling anyone, according to the New York Times. Retired US Army Colonel and MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs joins Keith Olberma nn to discuss. MSNBC Too few good men Army headed to recruiting shortfall MSNBC Updated: 2:27 pm ET June 9, 2005 Even after reducing its target for May, the Army missed its recruiting go al by about 25 percent, according to the New York Times. The shortfall would have been even bigger if the Army did not lower its goal for the m onth. With no public notice, the they lowered its May recruit numbers fr om 8,050 down to 6,700 recruits. But the Army is expected to announce that it met only 75 percent of its recruiting goal for May The Associated Press reports that the Army appears likely to f all short of its full-year recruiting goal for the first time since 1999 . Prior to February, the last time the Army had missed a monthly recrui ting goal was May 2000. The US Army National Guard and Army Reserve h ave been fighting this increasing battle for the past few months. Retired US Army Colonel and MSNBC military analyst Jack Jacobs joined K eith Olbermann on Countdown to discuss the issue. The following is a tr anscript from the program: KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC HOST: According to The New York Times, the Armys original aim was to get 8,050 new recruits in May It then scaled that number back, without making that news public, to 6,700. Thats 63 percent of the original goal, 75 percent of the revis ed goal. Even that doesnt guarantee that there will be 5,000 new soldi ers ready for combat. In 2004, 14 percent, nearly, of all the new recru its dropped out after initial training. And that number jumped to more than 17 percent this year. One of the solutions, as reported by The Wall Street Journal today, the Army is trying to retain more of the GIs it usually kicks out. The guy s, as the Journal quoted one battalion commander, quote, on weight co ntrol, school no-shows, drug users, etc. Im joined by retired US Army colonel and now MSNBC military analyst Ja ck Jacobs. OLBERMANN: OK, we started with slight misses on the recruiting quotas, t hen big misses, then a moratorium, a one-day moratorium to remind recrui ters what was legal and what wasnt. Now they were delaying the numbers , hiding the numbers. Besides the obvious, that people are not signing up, is there something wrong with the system that were not recognizing? Our biggest worry is that we just cant recruit the numbers that we ne ed. Even the Marine Corps, who typically has no problem recruiting peop le, has had difficulty the last few months or so. Not only that, we rely so heavily on Guard, National Guard, and Reserve t roops, because they provide us with the military occupational specialtie s that are in short supply in active duty ranks, and we require them the re for the Guard and the Reserve people to perform extended duty in Sout hwest Asia. If we rely so heavily on them, and their recruitment goals are not being met, were going to have a very big problem a couple of years down the r oad. OLBERMANN: To speculate about that time, Army recruiting down 42 percent in April, they lower the quota by 18 percent for May, still miss the qu ota by a quarter. At what point do we run out of the personnel required just for the commitments we already ha ve? I think we may h ave ifanother six months or so before things really get dire, and somet hing significant is going to have to be done. Its difficult, I think, for the Defense Department to come up with solut ions, however. Theyre going to have to do things like you suggested ea rlier, keeping people we would otherwise throw out, lower the standards for people we do bring in. Weve had nothing but high sc hool graduates, fairly high standards, for the duration of the all-volun teer Army. And now were at a point where were going to have to lower the standards if we want to make the numbers, and its going to be extre mely difficult to do so without turning the Army into what it was in the 70s, after the war in the Vietnam, a really ineffective fighting force . First of all, I dont like to s ee my Army denigrated like that. And secondly, we have enormous worldwi de commitments that we will not able to satisfy with that kind of force. OLBERMANN: Yes, and additionally, we might wind up with Lee Martin and t he Dirty Dozen, the way theyre talking this way. When I was in the Army in the 70s, after Vie tnam, after we came back from Vietnam, we had an Army that was greatly r educed in size, and not very good at what it did. OLBERMANN: Last question, during the presidential campaign last year, th e Republicans insisted, no draft, never, no draft. Or what changes need to be done regar ding those commitments? JACOBS: Well, weve already raised the sign-on bonus to as much as $20,00 0 I guess we could raise it more. We do have some active duty people who could be used in commitments that we have in Southwest Asia, in Afgh anistan and Iraq. All we really need is one American sold ier there to die if the North Koreans decide to come across the DMZ agai n So we could deploy, oh, I guess the better part of a division, maybe two- thirds to a complete division, from Korea to Southwest Asia, and make it part of the rotation. We have some people in Europe still who could be moved, maybe 100,000 or so, and we could rotate some of them through. And we have some units in the United State s that havent rotated through. But at the end of the day, were probably about six months away before we have a situation thats something of a crisis, and were going to have to think up novel solutions right now if were going to avoid that six m onths from now.
Kerry on impeachment Olbermann blogs: "Last Wednesday, Senator John Kerry told the editorial b oard of the newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the "Standard-Times ," that he was amazed at the lack of American media coverage of the so-c alled "Downing Street Memo" -- notes of a July, 2002 British cabinet mee ting that suggested the US was making all the evidence fit a pre-plann ed invasion of Iraq."
|
http://csua.com/feed/